Our 1st Trip: Wales for the Weekend!

We wanted to test the waters on traveling and hostels, so our friends decided that going to Wales would be a perfect way to go to a different country that wasn't far away from London. Plus, we wanted to see castles! We booked a hostel in Cardiff and train tickets for Saturday after our bus city tour was done. Once Saturday came we were super excited and made it to the Paddington train station early. 

It took about 2 hours by train to get to Cardiff and our hostel was walking distance from the train station. However, when we got there it was raining, and not just sprinkling, but downpouring. I didn't have an umbrella or a jacket with a hood, which was very smart of me so I had to buddy up with a friend under her umbrella. 

We ran to our hostel and were greeted in the foyer with a bulletin board saying there would be free apple pie and ice cream ready in the kitchen at 7pm! Needless to say we were super excited for some warm apple pie after drying off from the rain. Our hostel was so cute and comfy. They had a big flat screen television in the living room with tons of movies you could watch, a nice kitchen, a spacious dining area, and most importantly clean individual full bathrooms! 

We also reserved a private room which had bunk beds and a big bay window with a view of the canal. We dropped our bags off as quickly as possible in our room so we could find a place to get dinner in order to make it back in time for pie! 

We found a nice restaurant on the main road right around the corner from our hostel. Service in restaurants here is a little unpredictable because it is not customary/required to tip in the UK. That's why some servers will literally take your order, give you your food, and you may never see them again until you track them down for the bill. We were getting nervous because our food still hadn't come out and our waitress was nowhere to be found. We only had 45 minutes until pie! Fortunately, we made it back just in time! We had a big day planned for Sunday so we watched the Goonies, had tea, pie, and icecream, and got to bed on the earlier side. 

We woke up the next day to a huge buffet for breakfast. Cailin and I tried some Welsh cakes and they were really good! They are kind of like a soft biscuit with raisins in it. We also pigged out on croissants, chocolate croissants, toast with every kind of jam (and nutella!), fruit, yogurt, juice, and hot chocolate. Yum! I miss that breakfast already!

Also I really wanted to try welsh cakes while in Wales so I'm glad they served them at breakfast! After we ate, we went straight to Cardiff Castle. It was only a 5 minute walk from the hostel and best news of all... it was SUNNY! If you've ever been to the UK you will know that sun is a rarity here. I've only seen sun twice so far in London and we were so excited that for our full castle-seeing day ahead we would have sun! 

We decided to get a tour of the castle house, right next to the actual castle, because we had no clue what it looked like on the inside. At first we didn't even know there was an actual house there and thought there was a castle only. We chose to take the full tour with a tour guide, whereas the other tour only had audio guides. With a full tour, we were able to see rooms that were blocked off to everyone else. I was glad we did that because the blocked rooms were the nicest ones! The first one we went to was the men's smoking room. 

Our tour guide told us that at a party, or when the owners had company, all the men would go into the room to talk/smoke while no women were allowed. The room had so many interesting details with each corner of the wall having an image that represented every season, and the stained glass windows having the god that represented each day of the week.

All of the ceilings in the castle house were amazing too! They all had different patterns such as astrology signs in the men's room and celtic knots in the children's room. 

The children's room was definitely my favorite because all around the wall, different fairy tales were painted. There was Beauty and the Beast, Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel amongst others. 

The rooms also had hanging lights that each had an image from a different nursery rhyme on them. Our tour guide asked us to try to guess what each rhyme was based off of the picture and it was pretty hard! The ones I remember were the Cat and the Fiddle and Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. 

After, we went to the two dining rooms, one was for large parties and the other for a small group or just the family. The large dining area was elaborately decorated to no surprise, with vaulted ceilings and the walls painted with different scenes and people, while the small dining room was more simple with wallpaper covered in fruit. There was a large hole in the center of the table in the smaller dining room and our guide asked us to guess what it was used for. After no one came up with the answer successfully, she told us it was for a grape plant. With these grape vines in the center of the table, guests and family members could eat right off of the branch! 

We went to the library and the bedrooms after which of course were decorated beautifully as well, and then went to the actual castle. The castle was really cool since it sits on top of this large hill and has different levels or floors. 

We wanted to see every floor and eventually make it all the way to the top because that way we could get a great view of all of Cardiff. To get there though, you had to take the steepest, tiniest staircase ever, but it was worth it! Seeing Cardiff with the Welsh flag flying from the castle was beautiful. 

The castle also had a little museum that we checked out. All of the information in the museum was written in both English and Welsh which was cool to see. They had a lot of traditional Welsh items and our favorite section... The dress-up area! We tried on a lot of hats and soldier's jackets just for fun.

I didn't expect Cardiff Castle to have so much to see aside from the castle so I'm glad we took advantage of everything they had there. The castle itself was so scenic but the history behind the castle was really interesting also!

Since we all love castles, we then took a 20 minute train ride to Caerphilly Castle, the second largest castle in all of the UK. We decided not to take a tour and just explore the castle for ourselves. 

The town of Caerphilly looked just as I imagined Wales with cute houses and green hills. Since Cardiff is Wales' capital and a larger city it didn't have the same country feel as Caerphilly.

Not only was the scenery so green and pretty but the castle was amazing! It had a moat going all around it, so it had the classic castle feel, and was humongous. 

We didn't even see the whole thing because it went across 33 acres and we couldn't walk around it all or it would have taken forever! Cardiff Castle and Caerphilly Castle were pretty different but equally impressive, so I'm really happy we had the chance to see both. 

After, we went to a cafe across the street with a great view of the castle and had hot chocolates while waiting for the train back to Cardiff. We ended the day by scouring Cardiff for a place to eat, since everything closes so early in the UK, and eventually found a restaurant that was open! 

We did a ton in just one day and by the time we got on our train back to London, we ended up sleeping the whole way since we were so tired. I would've loved more time in Wales but we got a nice glimpse of it and lots of pictures with castles!

City Bus Tour

For our second Saturday in London, our program scheduled a free city bus tour to allow us to see London's most famous sights. The tour was pretty early in the morning and since we were meeting in Central London, us Southeast Londoners had to get up even earlier to make it there on time... except we didn't. We had to wait 20 minutes for a train to Central London and once we made it to the tube it was already time for us to be at the tour's meeting point. Everyone here stresses punctuality, because if a tour is supposed to leave at 10am, it's going to be gone by 10am. In America, we always wait for everyone to arrive even if they're really late! We were so nervous that the tour bus was going to leave without us. When we got to the road where we were meeting, only 3 minutes late, we saw a tour bus drive past us. Thinking we had missed it, we all started panicking until we saw a group of students getting onto a different bus farther down the street. Although we were a little late and had to run as fast as we could through the tube station to get there, we made it just in time! Oh, and I forgot to mention, after the bus tour we were leaving for a weekend trip to Wales, so our friends had huge suitcases that they had to run with. Now our lesson is definitely learned. Never be late in the UK! After hurriedly getting on the double decker bus we drove past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Harrods, and several of London's museums. 

We even got to ride across Tower Bridge and since being here I've wanted to cross it! The bus also made a few stops. Our first stop was at the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens. The memorial was Queen Victoria's tribute to her husband who had died 11 years before.

After taking a few pictures we got back on the bus for our next stop: Buckingham Palace. Tara and I hadn't seen Buckingham Palace yet so we were really excited. What was even better was that once we got there our tour guide told us in a few minutes the changing of the guard ceremony would take place!

It was just by chance that we arrived right in time to see the ceremony. Seeing the changing of the guard was definitely something I had wanted to do, but it doesn't occur every day at the palace, and if it does, it only happens at 11am. Before coming to London, I was also told that the palace grounds get extremely crowded at that time and it would be hard to see much of anything. However, our tour guide knew exactly where we should stand to have the best view of the guards walking by, whereas most tourists stand at Buckingham Palace's front. She instead led us to a road a little farther from the palace and we were all a little confused as to why we were walking away from the crowd. She knew what she was doing though! A few minutes later, the current guards started leaving the palace and were marching right in front of our eyes. If I had reached my hand out, I would have been able to touch them we were that close!

After the changing of the old guard, the new guards start marching from the opposite direction to intersect with the old guards in front of Buckingham Palace. They then do exactly what the name implies and change guards so that the old ones get a break and the new ones begin their shift. 

It was really cool to see something that is such a huge tradition in London. After a fun day seeing most of London, we had to quickly catch a train to Cardiff, Wales! More on that trip next!

First Week of Classes

Only after a few days and a weekend here, classes started. I was pretty excited for them to start because I'm taking courses called Social Enterprise, Creative London (site visits!), Shakespeare's London (plays!), and The Making of Modernity (which at first I was dreading, but the material is actually pretty interesting since we mostly study modern literature). The first class Cailin and I had was Shakespeare's London. It took awhile for us to find the class room so we arrived out of breath and ready to sit down, but the second we walked into the room our lecturer said that we would be leaving in  30 minutes. We thought this was because we would only be covering the syllabus, but instead she said we were going to The Globe, which is the recreation of Shakespeare's original theater in London. We were kind of in shock so we just nodded our heads as if that was something that happened in every class! Before we knew it we were on the tube with our class on our way to The Globe. 

Once we got there, we met one of the actors at The Globe who gave us a tour of the theater. He discussed how everything in the theater is almost identical to what the theater would have looked like in Shakespeare's time. It is completely made out of wood with wood pegs holding the beams up (which is also the reason the original building isn't standing as it met its inevitable fate when a fire broke out). The Globe is the only building in London that is allowed to have a thatched roof which is made entirely out of straw. The best part of the trip though was being able to actually step foot on The Globe stage and go backstage as well. On the normal tours you don't get to do that, but since we were with one of the actors he led us on the stage to let us get the experience of what it might be like to act on that stage. There are two imposing columns on either side of the stage so actors always have to be mindful of the position where the most audience members can see them. 

He also talked about the sets of seating that were behind the stage which house the musicians now, but in Shakespeare's time would house the wealthier important guests who not only went to the theater to see the show, but to be seen themselves. We then took a look at all of the stage's decorations. The ceiling is painted to depict heaven, while the trap door on the floor represents hell. There was a lot of fine molding and the columns on the stage's sides were painted to look like marble. 

An exhibition at the Globe

In Shakespeare's time there were no elaborate scene displays so the actual stage and costumes were used to set the tone of the play. Afterwards, we did a few exercises with the actor, pertaining to Twelfth Night, the play we were studying in our class first. He also told us his insights into the play and what it was like to be a modern day actor for Shakespearian plays. It was very interesting to get this inside view of Elizabethan productions and on the very first day of class it was kind of overwhelming! We still are coming to grasps with the fact that we stood on the stage at The Globe!

After our tour of the Globe, we went to the exhibition in the Globe Museum. They had original costumes on display and also had a lot of information about the Globe's re-creation. 

Since the Globe is located in London's South Bank, we took the opportunity to walk by Big Ben and the London Eye again and take a few pictures. We definitely didn't expect our first day of class to be so eventful and allow us to see the Globe right away!

Besides the Shakespeare class, I'm in Creative London with Tara, but am also in two regular classes, The Crusades and Sensibility and Romanticism. I decided that taking two study abroad classes with site visits and two normal classes would be a good idea so that I could really see what school is like for a British student. What I've learned so far is that school is so different here! For my first class, Sensibility and Romanticism, I walked into the lecture and after an hour we broke up into seminar groups. Since a lecture has about 50 students, each seminar has 15 students that each have a different seminar leader for a small group discussion. After the lecture, the seminars last for another hour. Plus, in this class, the lecturers change every single week which is really strange for me! I'm used to having one professor the whole time. My first day of class was confusing and it seemed like everyone knew what was going on. Little did I know, the class had already started in September! Later I found out that for regular classes, the study abroad students get put into a class that is halfway in session. Needless to say, I have a lot of catching up to do. The same goes for my Crusades class. After missing 100 years of the Crusades, I'm far behind in the material but I'll only be assessed on what I've learned this semester.

I was really excited for both of these classes, despite their difficulty, because I would get to meet British students. One girl I met from my Romanticism seminar asked me a lot of questions about America. She was really funny and said she had never heard the name "Cailin" before and didn't know what a Communications major was. That definitely showed how different schooling is here, since Communications is a really popular major in the US. However, she knew a lot about American pop culture, and told me her favorite shows were Jersey Shore and Keeping up with the Kardashians. It was funny to hear that she preferred American television to British shows, because while Tara and I have been here we've started watching "Made in Chelsea" which is a British show based in London. So far, classes have been good and we are looking forward to all of our site visits and being able to learn more about what being a British student is like!

Sunday Roast, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, and more Covent Garden

For our first Sunday in London we had an orientation for the study abroad program we went through. Our program's job is to communicate between our school in the US and our school in the UK. Although it is based in the US, they have workers in London who are here to help us with everything. The program also sets up events and excursions and this semester we have trips to Stonehenge, Bath, York, Oxford, and Scotland planned. After hearing about these trips at orientation along with information about how to travel, get food, sightsee, and go shopping, we went on a walking tour of central London. This was the first time we got to see Trafalgar Square which has the National Gallery, fountains, sculptures, entertainers/performers in the streets, and a great view of Big Ben.

After taking a few pictures, we walked through Piccadilly Circus which is like the Times Square of London. It's definitely not as flashy as Times Square, but it is similar in that it has several glowing light-up advertisements plastered across buildings, whereas most of London is very different in appearance. The area was just as entertaining as Times Square is though, with crowds of people, numerous stores, restaurants, theaters, and even a man walking around dressed up as Alan from "The Hangover" (and he looked scarily identical to him).

After our walking tour we went to a restaurant in Covent Garden for a traditional British Sunday Roast. The roast included slices of roast beef, potatoes, vegetables, and yorkshire pudding. We all scarfed it down since we didn't know when we would be eating this well again, because going out to eat and groceries are so expensive. 

Then it was time for dessert. Our program liaison came over to our table and told us that she thought we were having mince pie. I knew at its origin it had some type of meat in it, but our friends quickly whipped out their iPhones to see what the ingredients were. They found that there was meat in it, minced meat as the name jests at, which is like ground beef. However, a lot of modern recipes take out the meat and just add vegetable oil instead. In today's version of mince pie, there is usually only dried fruit and spices such as cinnamon in it. We were all a little weary that we would be eating meat for dessert, but were still willing to try it. However, when dessert came around it was a mini apple pie in custard! We were a little relieved. The apple pie and custard were really delicious. Cailin and I never really ate too much custard before, but it is a common dessert here.

Later, we walked around central London to find a cafe to sit in and relax. Also, we needed free WiFi since our dorms don't have it. Central London is just buzzing with things to do...we haven't even stepped into ONE store yet since there is so much going on! I guess shopping will have to wait a little! ;)

Since we were already in Covent Garden we mostly walked around that area... and then I saw Ladurée.  My macaron obsession forced me to go in to the store to buy one. If you've never had a Parisian macaron before, please try one ASAP. Not to be confused with a coconut 'macaroon' that is common in America, Parisian macarons are completely different. They're crunchy like a cookie but also have a chewy and soft center filled with cream that can be a variety of flavors. Since there is a great place to get macarons in my hometown, I've tried many flavors and every single one has been amazing. 

However I've never gotten macarons from Ladurée before, so I wanted to try a unique flavor that my hometown bakery doesn't have. I love all things chocolate so I decided to get the pure origin Venezuelan chocolate macaron. It was by far the best macaron I've ever had. 

We also introduced our friend to macarons and she loved her first one! She tried vanilla while Tara had salted caramel, her favorite. I could go on and on about how great macarons are, but I'll end this post by saying: Find the closest bakery to you that makes macarons and try one!