Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The travel season is upon us!

I cannot believe it is already October 26th!??!?!?!? I feel like my time here is going by faster than I ever would have thought, and I know that these next few weeks will most likely go by even faster. As of this past weekend I will be out of town 5 weekends in a row! This past weekend myself and my roomie Eddie went to London and Oxford, England! It was great! I left for London early Thursday morning, so that I could get some of my research done in the British Museum before Eddie arrived at 7pm. When he got into town I already felt pretty good about knowing my way around; I had taken the underground with no problem and after completing my research after a couple hours had gotten onto a couple of the touristy buses to see as much of London as I could. After Eddie arrived we just walked around, got some dinner at Subway haha, and then headed back to the hostel to just hang out since we wanted to figure out some stuff for Friday. On Friday we left the hostel and went first to Starbucks! It was right across from the British Museum, and our hostel was right beside the museum, so of course I had to go to Starbucks three times while I was there!




So after we went to Starbucks we headed over to the British Museum so Eddie could see what it was like. We didn't stay very long, its so big that I feel like you could spend days there and we had other things we wanted to see so it was a quick visit. From there we went to the more famous tourist attractions: the London Eye, Big Ben and Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. We took a ride on the Eye, no matter how many times you do it it is still such a cool experience to see that much of the city! We then walked over to Big Ben and the Westminster Abbey area. After that we went to Wembley Stadium. Now I think everyone that knows me knows I am no super sports fan, I enjoy watching a game here or there but other than that get pretty bored, but Eddie is a major soccer fan and has played his whole life so this was a big attraction for him. We were going to go on a tour of the stadium but it was going to take too long so we just walked up to and then left, with plans for Eddie to return on Sunday when we were back in London. After that we had to start watching the clock because we had to go see the Phantom of the Opera!!!! We went back to get my backpack at the hostel, got dinner, and then went to the show! The theatre was relatively small and everyone was really close to eachother, but it also made you feel closer to the actors.




The show ended and with giantic smiles on our faces we headed off to the train station for out train. We had a while to wait so we got a McDonalds snack and then just waited, our train didn't leave until 12:22am, but it only cost 4 pounds a piece! We arrived in Oxford and got to our hostel by about 2 am and then just called it a night. The next morning we went off to find the next museum for my research. Luckily Oxford is a small city and very easy to get around so we found the museum with no problems and I got to work. This sort of stuff was not Eddie's idea of fun so after about 20 minutes of just walking around he sat down in a chair and settled in for a nap haha. I was able to find some items very similar to the ones found in London, and when I am able to review all the images I think I will be happy with my results. After that we got on a tour bus to go around the city. We got off and on the buses like that all day and would stop to go into different locations. That night we were pretty tired so after a dinner of "Mexican" burritos we headed back to the hostel to be super cool kids and charge cameras and ipods haha.

Sunday we left for London at 10:50 so we didn't do much before leaving other than just getting ready and checking out of the hostel. When we got to London we had a quick lunch of McDonalds again and then seperated, Eddie to go back to the tour at Wembley and myself to go visit the Tower of London. Unfortunately for both of us the London underground was very messed up on Sunday due to different line updates. This meant that without taking a taxi I wasn't going to make it to the tower and Eddie ended up taking buses and going on an adventure that I will discuss a bit later. I ended up just going to a starbucks like place and getting an awesome gingerbread latte writing postcards and then heading to the station. It ended up that these underground updates really messed up Eddie's hopes to get to Wembley and see the tour, he ended up getting there but had no time to do the tour and had to turn around once he got there. He actually ended up missing the train back to London by less than 10 seconds because of all these issues and the unfortunate part of all of this was that his cell phone was dead! He wasn't able to tell myself or anyone what was going so after a nerve racking train back to Brussels and several frantic texts to my host mom I made it back to the house and hoped Eddie would too. He luckily made it back just about an hour after I had, he had caught the train an hour and a half after mine and other than missing the first train had no problems.
Overall, this past weekend was great! It was great to have Eddie there as a research aide haha and as a travel companion! Plans from this week on include Paris with the art class, a yet to be determined destination following Paris, Ireland, and a WWI and WWII battlefields tour with the art class! It's all going to be a ton of fun but I think its going to make the time fly by!

I will try to update about where we are going after Paris once it gets decided and booked!

Tchao!

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