Week Three



Stonehenge



Roman Baths

Roman Baths

Bath Abbey

Bath

Bath

My own little adorable tea pot at lunch

Rugby match at Bath

Bath

Bath Abbey

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's Cathedral

View from the top of St. Paul's, Nido my housing in the distance!

The golden pineapples on top of St. Paul's

View of the London Eye from the top of St. Paul's

More golden pineapples

This week was semi eventful.  Thursday I went to St. Paul's for my Art and Society class, which was interesting.  Cameras were not allowed inside so I had to slyly snap some quick photos with my phone, but it was gorgeous on the inside. The ceiling was decorated in different scenes from Genesis in mosaics and gold leaf.  We climbed to the top of St. Paul's, which was pretty easy, until the downward spiral.  Going down was never ending, we just kept turning left and left and left.  Once at the bottom I felt like I had been playing dizzy bat for the past hour, but the view from the top was fully worth it.  At one of the stopping points going up, the area around the inside dome, the walls are known as the whisper walls.  Apparently if you whisper something against the wall on one side, a person on the complete opposite side can hear you, so these little kids tried whispering Lady Gaga's Bad Romance against the wall and low and behold, it worked! 

Then on Saturday we took a bus to Stonehenge and Bath.  Traveling to Stonehenge took about an hour and a half, although I am pretty sure it was suppose to take about two and a half.  Our bus driver drove about 90 mph along the winding bumpy roads which needless to say, went poorly for quite a few after the previous night at the pubs.  But Stonehenge was interesting, a slight let down to be quite honest.  It was fascinating seeing how large the stones were, how heavy they must be and thinking about the fact that they were brought from over 150 miles away over 5000 years ago and trying to imagine how they were transported that far that long ago.  Yet after about a max of five minutes of standing in the freezing cold, this fascination wore off.  There are many different theories, the most interesting of them is that aliens created it.  The town around Stonehenge has the most reported sightings of UFOs and have various reportings of crop circles every year, so this theory is quite popular among the people who live there. 

Next came Bath which was wonderful! The cutest little town I have ever seen.  Every building is made of the same stone, Bath stone.  Which you might think would get boring/ repetitive, but was actually very beautiful.  The town is full of little streets with little boutiques, restaurants, bake shops, the best cookie place I have ever been to (although not as good as Bake Shop cookies), and of course the Roman Baths.  The Baths were really cool to see, I did not know the whole story behind them before I went and it is actually a very fascinating story.  They warn you multiple times to not touch the water before you get down to the actual Baths since it is the same water from way back when.  They were describing how disgusting and foul the water is, how smelly and discolored it is.  I was expecting some clumpy, mucky, absolutely horrid water, but when I finally saw it, the water just looked a little over chlorinated, it had nothing on Lake Springfield.  But Bath is definitely another must see for those who have not been. 

The only other note worthy event I have done this week is go to Brick Lane, twice this week actually.  This is a stretch of Indian restaurants, about 5 or 6 blocks long I believe.  Every building on this street is an Indian restaurant, all supposedly delicious.  So the competition to get customers is quite intense.  The restaurants send out employees to recruit people to come eat at their restaurant.  I went with three other people and we were finally convinced by a restaurant with the offer of two free bottles of wine, pretty good wine at that, and thirty percent off our meal with a free appetizer.  And the food is delicious.  So this block will be frequented a considerable amount during my stay in London I would have to say.  One other interesting thing to do when in London is to ask british people to do an American accent.  This will never get old, it normally ends up either with them just talking absurdly loudly in their british accents or them saying ridiculous phrases including words like rad, yo dude, awesome, psyche, right on, and so on, words I generally do not hear any Americans say. It is always good for a laugh though.
For all of those Royal family fans, still no sightings of the royals, nor Ron Weasley.