Its been a while...

So yeah, I know, I know, its been waaay over a week since my last post. The last weeks have been filled with museums (Tate Britain last week, a few others last week), markets (Camden street market and Covent gardens), and fun times with foreigners on random days of the week. Oh yeah, and awesome canal walks!

So the museums... I guess you could call it a museum so I will, I went to the Globe theater on the 20th. It was quite the interesting piece of history. Fun to see what it would have been like back in the day. I cant wait to see a show there, I'm going later this month! The Tate Britain was an immense museum, some truly great artwork in there! Honestly all the museums are starting to blend a bit and it's getting hard to remember specifics, too many great things to remember at once.

So now, here's a big one I haven't mentioned on here yet, my trip to Barcelona! I absolutely loved the city. So much fun and so beautiful! Not much I can say besides that I walked Las Ramblas, the beach and the harbor, and made it up to the Olympic village and the huge fountain show thing. Oh and they have 2 euro shot bars (not just crappy shots either, they were like lighting the bar on fire and stuff!). Quite a fun time! I'll let the pictures explain though...

Oh speaking of the pictures, I'm just going to lump them all at the bottom this time caus I'm tired of trying to format this stupid blog to look right, don't worry, I'll put a description with each one. Oh and I totally failed at remembering all the names of the stuff I saw so yeah, I guess I'm just gonna have to look stupid (hey, this is all in one day, you gotta give me some slack).

Back side of big important building, taken from old important park near the Olympic village.

Me (duh) in the early evening right near the fountain, with a big important building behind me.

An awesome little beach side cafe, so cool, oh and the weather was perfect too.

I'm sure this building is famous and important but truthfully I cant remember what my friend told me it was...

Inside the huge market off Las Ramblas, they had everything there (even whole pigs for sale)!

Las Ramblas, the local market street complete with street performers!

Somewhere in Barcelona, always busy...

Regents Canal, the high rent district (aka, houses worth ridiculous amounts of money, I want one).

Royal Oak tube stop, the daily commute.

Baaaaaath (thats how the teacher said it at least)

The school scheduled us for a trip to the city of Bath for Monday the 13th of April. We took a comfy tour bus out after meeting with everyone at the student center (which by the way is called Anglo American). The ride was relatively comfortable and we passed Stonehenge along the way, which by the way is really not that exciting in person. The bus stopped and we saw it out the window but we couldn’t park the big bus because we didn’t have a reservation. No real loss though, just basically a bunch of random rocks.


Once we got to Bath we had a tour of the Roman baths immediately following our disembarking. The baths are quite spectacular and the history of the whole area is incredible! The tour is also very well created with telephone like handset which you punch numbers into when you see them on the wall or exhibit you’re looking at, allowing you to wander through the ancient bathhouse at your own pace and learn about topics which interest you.


































After the bathhouse a group of us decided to eat lunch in the slightly fancy restaurant upstairs, The Pump Room. I had a good “organic” salmon lunch with a local white wine. A pleasant lunch in many regards, I did feel slightly “American” as we were the only student aged people in the large restaurant. I kept felling the stares of many of the older patrons (particularly this old couple two tables away) and found them to be quite off-putting, I still have no idea why I was getting the eye… Oh well.

We decided to make our way about town and find a cheese shop that had been recommended by the professor that accompanied us to Bath. We found Paxton & Whitefield with little drama thanks once again to the wonders of the pocket god (iPhone). We had been told that the cheddar cheese there was a must so without any delay we asked to sample the cheddar.













-By the way, I’m having some of said cheese as I write this and I must say it is quite delicious. It has a strong immediate taste that gracefully fades into a pleasant lingering that any person of the cheese eating faith would love.


Needless to say, I walked out of Paxton & Whitefield’s with some cheese. On the way out I noticed the signboard outside which had a quote from Sir Winston Churchill “A gentlemen only buys his cheese from Paxton & Whitefield”. I figure that a place recommended by Sir Winston Churchill deserves some credibility haha.

Our four hours of time in Bath nearly concluded, our small group headed back to the bus only to be interrupted by a fudge shop along the way. I resisted the temptation to buy some of the delicious candy and had to wait for the other five members of the troop outside for fear of breaking down and spending even more money than I already had in Bath (trust me, I had already spent plenty).

The return trip was quite a bit quicker as I was lulled to sleep (again by the wonders of the pocket god) within the first ten minutes of the voyage. I woke up just in time for the rows of auto dealerships that you pass as you enter the city from the west. I love all the cool cars we don’t get in the States’. That was the last interesting part of my day really, not much else to write about, so I wont.

An update!

So it’s been a few day since my last post, sorry… Been busy with classes and getting settled around here. I still am not 100% on some stuff for classes; it’s hard to keep track of all these online assignments… But anyways, enough excuses.

So, here I am in London. Its really just starting to feel like I’m living here instead of on some crazy long vacation. At this point I’ve had a chance to go out and see many of the sights around the city. I’ve been to (in no particular order) the Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum (yeah, the holocaust exhibit is super depressing), the Saatchi Gallery, the Tower of London, the Monument (cool view), Buckingham Palace (tours aren’t open till summer ☹), the London Eye (so worth the admission price, fantastic view!), and a whole mess of other places that I can’t think to remember right now. I still really want to go around to some other great places but two of my classes out here involve going to museums at least once a week so I’m sure I’ll see almost everything in the time I’m here.

Oh, I just purchased a ticket to Barcelona so that will be great fun! Oh, turns out I’m also going to have to go to Belgium (oh darn haha) for a class, so I’ll be planning that in the near future (probably end up just doing a quick flight and 1 night stay). I’m going to be good and not talk too much about the nightlife here but I will say it is lots of fun and the energy around town is amazing at night.

Oh, random aside, I got my phone all working and everything. I was starting to have major withdrawals at one point so I’m glad that’s settled. It took me three calls to O2 customer service and 2 trips back into the store after buying the SIM card. Finally I got a guy that knew what the hell he was doing and it ended up just being a simple network change in the settings. It’s so nice to have maps and Internet again; it makes finding my way around London a breeze. How did people live before the iPhone, I have no idea… Seriously, I just tell it I want to get from where I am to where I want to go and it tells me what bus, tube, how far to walk, etc. very easy! But enough about that.

The weather has still been really great, I’m amazed how awesome the temperature is at night, like it doesn’t cool down at night like in LA where it drops 30 degrees the second the sun goes down. This makes wandering around at night much more bearable. I still wish I had a nice jacket though, I feel like such a dweeb wearing the rubber windbreaker thing with the Rose Float logo on my boob. I mean, it’s a good jacket and all but a nice leather bomber jacket with fuzzies all inside would be soooooo cool.

Ok, time for a random rant! WHY IS THERE NO MUSTARD IN LONDON!!! Like seriously, NO mustard anywhere, its annoying, my sandwiches are bland and I’m being forced to use mayonnaise, ewww. There’s no good BBQ sauce either, this really sucks. Really, I love making my sauces and I just cant here ☹… Also, I have yet to find a deal as good as corndogs at WinCo, what ever will I live off of?

Some observations and such...

So it’s been a few days since my last post, I’ve decided to stop counting the days because that’s stupid… So here we are then, 8:30 in the morning on a Friday and what a beautiful Friday morning it is, not really, its quite gloomy and meh but its still pleasant. Oh, that’s one thing about London; everyone told me it would be cold dreary etc. It’s not really… I mean, its IS overcast and not really the warmest of weather but I have been quite comfortable in a light jacket and t-shirt. There have even been days where just a t-shirt was fine, although you do stand out a bit when everyone is wearing drab jackets and scarves and your wearing a bright turquoise t-shirt and jeans. But hey, whatever… But yeah, the weather has been pleasant really, no rain yet, it actually reminds me of the Midwest in many ways, not amazing weather but its never unbearably harsh.

Speaking of observations I have found false, the food. Everyone told me to be prepared for bad food in London, I don’t know why. Even the people on the trip with me keep complaining about the “horrible” food and how gross it is. I don’t understand this… Every meal I have had has been at the worst decent, and some have been quite tasty! I mean, pies are a bit unusual but its something new and its quite fun! I had a delicious macaroni yesterday for lunch too! But the beer with it was sooo bitter, it was some extra stout thing and boy was it strong, last time I have that one…

I really want to go out tonight! I don’t really know where to go so I have a feeling I’m going to end up wherever the group goes tonight, which could be fun or could be just kind of meh… I really want to find a cool place to go so I can make some friends and get a feel for London from a local perspective, I still very much feel like I’m looking in on the city and am a complete foreigner. It would be nice to meet and connect with some people around here; I don’t have all that much in common with the other people on this trip… I mean, there all cool and fun and such but honestly I really miss my friends back home, even A friend would be nice so I could share some part of the trip with somebody that knows me… (Thanks for bailing on me Siubahn…)

I’m quite over this cold thing that I’ve got right now, I had a sore throat all yesterday and now its turned into like a stuffey/runney nose, I think it must be from riding the underground so much. OOOOO, the underground, that’s something! It’s quite the experience! It’s not the cleanest place, obviously but it’s pretty nice for public transit I guess, not that I’ve really used public transit ever… But the seats are rather comfy and such, which is nice. Oh, on any given trip you’ll hear “mind the gap” at least 20 times… Oh, and listening to music while riding the tube makes the whole experience seem much cooler than it really is.

Well, time to have a go at the day I suppose, I miss you all back home and I’ll post more pictures on my flickr as soon as there done processing and such!