Oh The Places We’ll Go

This is probably just going to be a quick update since we haven’t really done a whole lot since I last posted about our adventures.  Last night in London we ended up meeting some really cool people and stayed up talking with them until 2 in the morning.  We met a really nice girl from Holland who was telling us all about foreigners and Amsterdam, where to go in Holland and how exciting California seems.  We also met a guy from Australia who just got into London after bussing around the entire US for 4 months.  He did it on the GREYHOUND BUS, and I told him I’m surprised he’s still alive after that.  Haha.  Could you imagine going through the whole US on a GREYHOUND?  Sounds insanely scary and sketchy.  Don’t know if I would recommend that one, but he told us California was cool and he liked SF, so it was all good.  We also met a nice guy from Vancouver (yes, another west coaster!), whom I dazzled with my Canadian TV knowledge and my hockey knowledge.  Pretty cool.

Our day today was pretty much entirely spent on a bus.  We got to the Victoria Coach Station (they call them coaches here, not busses) and it was CHAOS because there were so many people and not enough spaces on one bus to Manchester, so they got 2 busses going.  Thomas and I sat in front and behind of each other, which was fine.  What was not fine, however, was the African man sitting next to us who was playing his radio/cellphone REALLY LOUD so the whole bus could hear it, talking on his cell phone the entire bus trip.  We both wanted to kill him by halfway through the trip.  Plus, the bus was stuffy and smelled weird, but it got us to where we needed to go so I guess it all works out in the end.  It took probably 5 hours for us to get to Manchester from London, which isn’t too bad, and after getting in we found our hostel really easily and settled in.  So far we are the lone occupants of our room so we’re crossing our fingers it stays that way!

Other than that, it’s a little gloomy and rainy outside, but everyone has been telling me I had better get used to it because that’s what Scotland is like all the time.  If I had waterproof shoes I think I’d be more excited about the rain because I don’t mind not having the sun out all the time, but since my Pumas are cloth instead of leather… they aren’t too much fun to walk around in when it’s wet outside.

The plan for tomorrow is to go to Old Trafford at 12:30 because I have our tour reservations (yes, I made sure I made reservations, haha), and we’re going to tour the stadium so Thomas’s life will be complete and he can finally get some new Manchester United gear.  I, on the other hand, will try to refrain because I will be a convert to the green and white (Celtic FC) and I need to save myself for their gear so I can wear it when Manchester United plays Celtic in October!  I can’t wait.  There isn’t much else to do in Manchester so I think we may hit up the movie theaters tomorrow to see something, and other than that just sleep in and relax.  London was a lot of walking and not much resting so it’ll be nice to sit back and enjoy the ride for the first time in a while.

Other than that, we’re just waiting to get to Scotland and see Glasgow so I can get myself situated and ready for the arrival of my friends from school and get going with orientations and everything!  Can’t wait.  Will let everyone know how Old Trafford goes.

Catherine

We are finally in an English speaking country and loving it.  No more being afraid to ask directions, no more wondering if we’re going the right way or if we’re accidentally walking to our deaths since we don’t understand the signs- we are in the English speaking world and everything is open and bright.

Maybe bright isn’t the right word, especially here in London.  It’s a little darker and gloomier than the other places we’ve been, but cool with a light breeze is a huge improvement over the weather we were dealing with in places like Rome and Venice.  We’ll take cool and dreary, just don’t make us sweat like the Italians did.  This is our last night here in London and we already have our bus tickets to go up to Manchester here.  Turns out the prices are pretty good around here on the bus.  The trains are insanely expensive, something like over 120 pounds just to go on the train up to Manchester for one person when on the National Express coach (bus), you can go with two people for around 40 pounds the same distance.

Our first real day here in London, Thursday, was spent going to all of the big museums around town.  The Brits know the perfect cost for their museums (my favorite ‘f’ word)- FREE.  Yes, free.  We made our way up to North London to see the British Museum, which has a lot of Egyptian, Japanese, various cultures art.  The coolest part of that museum is that they have the Rosetta Stone, which helped for modern day scientists to unlock the code to understanding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.  The rest of the museum is alright, but the Rosetta Stone is insanely cool.  Nearby the British Museum is the British National Library which houses a bunch of old books and historical manuscripts, like one of Shakespeare’s First Folio’s, old Bibles, and even one of the 7 copies of the Magna Carta that are in existence.  Way cool.  There isn’t a huge museum or anything, it’s more of a library than anything else, but it’s still insanely awesome.

The other two museums we saw that day were the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.  The National Gallery is pretty big, has a lot of different kinds of art inside of it.  Lots of Dutch Art, Medieval Art, all categorized and separated pretty well.  They have one of van Gogh’s “Sunflower” paintings inside the gallery, so that was the highlight for me.  The National Portrait Gallery, however, was my absolute favorite museum of the day.  The gallery has all different kinds of portraits inside, from one of the only known portraits of William Shakespeare, to royal portraits of Elizabeth II, to modern paintings of famous people from today.  Even one of Paul McCartney from the Beatles!  There was a lot to look at and since they were from all through history, you definitely don’t get bored looking at all of the different famous figures in British history.  After walking all through Trafalgar Square, where the National Galleries are, we headed back to the hostel and crashed.

Friday was our Abbey Road day, so Thomas and I headed up to St. John’s Wood station in North London to see the famous crosswalk where the Beatles took their Abbey Road album cover photo, and where Abbey Road Studios is (or was, we weren’t sure if it’s still there).  The actual intersection is really close to the tube station, where Grove End meets Abbey Road.  Turns out it’s a pretty busy street since there are so many cars going back and forth.  It’s nearly impossible to take a picture there!  There was a guy with some camera equipment set up taking photos of this girl walking back and forth across the crosswalk, so that made it even harder to take a proper photo.  Oh, well I got my picture.  We got a picture of the Abbey Road Studios and there is TONS of writing outside on the posts.  Lots of Beatles quotes, little drawings of John Lennon and things.  It’s all really cool.

After that we headed towards Buckingham Palace to see where the Queen lives.  Now where Abbey Road is located is a really nice ritzy neighborhood, but Buckingham Palace is where the LOADED people live.  Oh my God, the houses around there are absolutely insane.  There’s this really nice park next to the palace and the gates outside of the palace are guilded in solid gold.  Yes, solid gold.  The woman knows how to decorate in style I guess.  The Union Jack was flying, which means that the Queen isn’t in residence (probably at Windsor Castle for summer), but the Palace guards are still outside.  They’re pretty far from the gate, actually, but still cool to see them.  We walked from the Palace to Westminster Abbey and Houses of Parliament where Big Ben is!  Big Ben is insanely large, and dings really really loud, but it’s still awesome to look at.  Houses of Parliament are really nice too, the architecture is insanely intricate.  It’s pretty expensive to get INSIDE everything, 10 pounds for Parliament and 10 pounds for Westminster Abbey, so we just looked at them from outside and admired them from afar.  We walked from there to the London Eye across the river, which is a huge ferris wheel.  Cool, I guess?  There was no way we were going inside since it takes over a half hour to go 1 turn around and the line is insane, so we came back to the hostel and watched Semi-Pro with Will Ferrell before calling it a night.

Our last day here, today, was spent at the Tower of London seeing where they chopped off some heads and gawking at the Crown Jewels!  The Tower of London is a really cool place since it’s like a mini town inside the middle of the city.  They give you a map and a little tour around the place, little set-ups and messages up on the walls through these corridors so you can see what they did in the different areas of the Tower of London.  Where they prisoned people, beheaded people, where the King slept, stuff like that.  The highlight of the whole thing is the Crown Jewels, which are definitely worth seeing once in your life.  Not only are the diamonds absolutely INSANE, but even the dishware is impressive.  Solid gold plates, spoons, cups.  I mean, really.  Absolutely everything you could imagine guilded in gold.  They had videos of the Queen being crowned and coronated way way long ago, which was kind of cool.  Soon enough someone else will be coronated and hopefully I’ll get to watch it on TV along with everyone else in the world.

After the Tower of London, Thomas and I headed to the Globe Theater, which was reconstructed in 1997 off of the original layout of the Globe Theater from the 1660’s where Shakespeare’s most important and famous works were performed.  The original burned down, they rebuilt it, and then after Shakespeare died a few years later they tore the Globe Theater 2 down.  Before 1997, there wasn’t anything but a plaque in South End showing anything about Shakespeare but I guess some American came to London and after seeing that there was NOTHING honoring Shakespeare’s work, he decided to build a new Globe himself.  Pretty cool.  You get a whole history of Shakespeare’s career, different aspects of the culture and everything from back then, and then a tour of the theater itself.  Really cool tour, especially for someone like me who LOVES Shakespeare.  I looked at the list of his plays and I’ve read at least 15 of them, if not more.  Insane.

We finally did laundry here in London as well, which NEEDED to be done.  I can’t stress enough how badly we needed to do laundry here.  We haven’t done real laundry in a machine since Rome.  … That was a long long time ago, needless to say.  It was pretty cheap actually, but then again most basic things around here are.  Fish and chips?  2 pounds.  Yes, 2 pounds.  Score.  The food here in general is really good in London.  We found this pizza place with the BEST garlic dough balls in the history of the world.  They are freaking magical, I swear.  We’re going back for dinner tonight.

Manchester’s itinerary basically includes… Old Trafford.  Yes, we are going to Manchester simply to see Manchester United’s stadium.  I shall enjoy it now as I am still a Red Devils fan, but it’s moreso for Thomas than anything else.  Once I go to Scotland, I shall be a converted Celtic fan and the green and white will run through my veins.  My life’s goal right now is to get tickets to Celtic FC vs. Manchester United in Glasgow on October 21st since that’s the first leg of their Champions League matchup.  The city is going to go absolutely insane.  I can’t wait!!  Plus, World Cup qualifiers for Scotland are during the football season this season, so I will be cheering for the blue and white all the way.  Yay!

I think I forgot to mention we went up to Wembley after seeing Abbey Road, which is where the England National Football team plays.  It’s absolutely HUGE.  Oh my God, the football stadium is the biggest stadium I have ever seen in my life, and I have seen some really big ones.  Ohio State’s stadium fits over 80,000 and this thing was even bigger than that.  For reals.

I’ll get Thomas to do the next post so he can tell everyone all about Manchester United and Old Trafford.  Until then, I’m still working on uploading pictures.  Worst comes to worst, I get my computer back in like, 9 days so there will finally be pictures up by then.  Swear!

Bye!