Les Miserables and Billy Elliot

Cailin and I love Broadway musicals so undoubtedly we also loved all of the West End shows we got the chance to see. One of which, we really did get to see by chance. Our program hosted activities for us every week and one of them was a scavenger hunt around London. It involved going around Central London finding answers to trivia questions that could be found by discovering more about our surroundings. For example, one of the questions was to find the Lord Nelson statue in Trafalgar Square and write down what body part he was missing. Lord Nelson lost his arm in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1797 which was depicted in his statue. Westminster University had their reading week (no classes) when the scavenger hunt was planned, so a lot of people were traveling. This ended up working to our advantage since there were only two other teams besides ours. After running all over Central London, Cailin, our friend, and I rushed back to the pub, our designated meeting place, to hand in our answers to our event coordinator before the time limit ran out. We found the pub just in time! The event coordinator tallied up all the scores and we ended up winning! 

Our prize was three tickets to any West End show that we wanted! Since Les Mis was so popular this year because of the movie release, it was the hardest show to get tickets to, so we choose it as our prize! I had already seen the production and read the play in 6th grade through a club I was in, but Cailin had never seen it. However, she did read Victor Hugo's novel so we both had some idea of what the performance was going to be like and were extremely excited! The show didn't disappoint! When the actor who played Jean Valjean sung, "Bring Him Home," we were all teary eyed. It is one of the few musicals that almost every line is sung and the singing was just beautiful. 

Although I should probably stop writing now and let Cailin share her thoughts, I just have to comment a little on my favorite musical of all time; Billy Elliot! Cailin and I first saw it on Broadway and it instantly became my favorite. The boys that play Billy are usually no older than 13 and as young as 7. They have to dance tap, contemporary, and classical ballet styles while singing and acting. All the while speaking in a Geordie accent. I think I really enjoy this show because I danced ballet for 8 years and therefore understand how truly talented these young kids are. I never would have dreamed of doing more than two or three pirouettes at a time and Billy has to do several in a row. I also have always admired young talent as it often goes overlooked by the achievements of adults. In turn, I just had to see the show in London as it is no longer running in NY. Luckily, West End shows sell inexpensive tickets for seats that might have obstructed views. So, we got third row seats for 10 pounds since the dancer's feet were hard to see when they were further back stage. 

Since we had already seen the show we thought the seats would be perfect. They ended up being even better than we expected because it gave a completely different perspective to the show. It felt like the actors were performing just for us since they were close enough to make direct eye contact with! Being so close also made me realize that the boy playing Billy looked oddly familiar. I brushed it off since I was in London. I don't know anyone form London haha! But surely enough, the boy who played Billy that night also played one of the Billy's from the NY production and I remembered him from the playbill. It's a small world. Well needless to say, I left the show smiling from ear to ear! Oops, I wrote a lot more than a little. Sorry Cai! 

Day trip to Oxford

For our last trip of the semester with our program, we went to Oxford for the day. We were both really sad that it would be our last excursion of the semester, but at the same time were excited to see the city of Oxford and the university! We headed to Oxford early in the morning accompanied by a tour guide that studied abroad at Oxford herself. Oxford is only about an hour from London so it was a pretty short ride and when we got there we went straight to the campus. 

Our guide told us about how Oxford is made up of different schools based on the program of study, and some are harder to get accepted into than others. She also told us about the way their courses are conducted, with a lot of instruction being with a course tutor one-on-one. 

The campus itself is beautiful with a lot of green areas and huge historic buildings. I loved their library building which was shaped like a circle! 

After walking past the library and several different school buildings, we went to Christ's Church Cathedral, which is Oxford's on-campus church.

We were given free time to look through the cathedral at our own pace and I loved that it was filled with beautiful stained glass windows. I thought it was pretty impressive for being on a university's campus.

After the rest of our tour of the University of Oxford, we were given free time to eat lunch and explore the rest of the city. Our guide told us about a food and shopping market that would be a good place to get lunch, so we decided to go there. After eating some delicious paninis, we saw a milkshake place that had every flavor you could ever imagine.

They had milkshakes that were different flavored candies, chocolates, cookies, and even cakes! The most interesting milkshake flavors definitely had to be Cadbury Creme Egg, Jelly Beans, Apple Pie, Tic Tacs, and Special K. I chose to get Nutella flavored because I have a Nutella obsession and it was delicious! 

We then went around looking in the shops searching for some classic Oxford Apparel. Everyone in our program must have had the same idea because we all ended up in the College Store which seemed to have the least touristy and most authentic clothing. We ended up getting an Oxford University T-shirt in their school colors of blue and white. 

We then explored some of the areas around the campus a little more. One of the gardens, Cathedral Garden, is where Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson, who we know as Lewis Carroll, got his inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. At that time Carroll was a mathematics student at Oxford's Christ Church College where he befriended Alice Liddell. She was one of the Christ Church Dean's daughters and became the inspiration behind Carroll's stories. Like almost all the grass on the University Campuses you can not actually step on it. Most of the quads are kept in pristine shape (greenest and most groomed lawns I've ever seen) and kept watch over by porters. So we looked at the garden through the gate. It was really cool to imagine it being Wonderland. There were flowers and a large tree that looked like the tree in which Alice tumbles into the rabbit hole. 

Next, we gathered together after lunch and went inside Christ Church College for a look at the Great Hall, which was where JK Rowling got her inspiration for the dining hall in Harry Potter. Needless to say there were flocks of Harry Potter fans eager to see the dining hall so we shuffled into the crowd and were guided into line to enter the Great Hall. 

There were a lot of similarities to the dining hall in the movie. It had the large window in the back, portraits of influential people hung everywhere, long wooden tables with candles and tin table settings, high arched cathedral ceilings, and a long horizontal table at the end of the room. We snapped a few photos quickly since we were hurried through the line so other people would be able to see the Great Hall. 

We then headed to New College, where a scene from Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire was filmed. We went to the south cloisters were the other wizards walked around wearing the Potter Stinks badges in the movie. 

In the corner of the south cloisters quad there is also the large oak tree in which Mad-Eye Moody turns Malfoy into a ferret. 

After that we took our last looks of the city while we walked back to the bus. We had a lot of fun acting like Oxford students for the day. We were sad that the day was over, since it would be our last trip around England, but we were glad it ended with such a nice one!

Weekend in Edinburgh and the Highlands

Our first big trip that was planned before the semester even started was a weekend in Scotland. This is because our study abroad program organizes one optional group trip every semester and this year they chose Scotland and the Highlands. We decided to do the group trip instead of go on our own since we thought it would be nice to not have to plan out everything. It would also be really hard to get to the Highlands without a tour guide because we wouldn't have any form of transportation to get us there. So, in early December we signed up for the trip. It seemed like that weekend would never come since it was scheduled towards the end of our program, but before we knew it we were on a train with the rest of the CEA students heading to Scotland. The train to Edinburgh was about 5 and a half hours long. When we got there our tour guide met us in full-on Scottish attire; kilt and everything.

He walked us over to our hostel and told us a few street names to remember so we could find our way back once he left us. We checked into the hostel and made our way back outside for our quick walking tour of the city. Edinburgh is very pretty and we were able to see a lot of it through our tour on the Royal Mile, which is made up of various streets in Edinburgh's Old Town. It has many beautiful buildings, castles, restaurants, and memorials.

It just looks like a city that contains a lot of history within it. Our tour guide told us a story about some of the history surrounding the city's grass market pubs, one of which was called the Last Drop. It was at this pub that people who were going to be executed in the public square would go for their literal last drop of something to drink. 

We continued our walk up to Edinburgh Castle and took a lot of photos since it was sunset and the castle looked amazing against the fading sun and the rest of the city. 

After our walking tour, our guide left us until the next day and we had some free time to get dinner, and explore the rest of the city ourselves. We ate dinner at a pub and then walked around looking at all the shops. We got a few postcards, tried on some Scottish hats, went to the Last Drop, and finally back to our hostel for the night.

The next day, we headed for our two day trip to the Highlands. We got on a tour bus and made a few stops, with our first one being at Stirling Castle. It was only about 30 minutes away from Edinburgh and we were given most of the morning to explore the castle. 

The castle had a lot of different rooms and we got to see The Great Kitchens that had replications of what food the castle-dwellers would cook. 

After that we saw The Palace, where James V lived, and inside were several bedrooms decorated elaborately and containing unicorn tapestries everywhere. The castle was not only a castle, but was a learning center as well and we got to go through rooms that described what people of the Renaissance time would wear and what music they played. 

There was also a room called the Stirling Heads Gallery which contained carvings of the heads of other monarchs, James V's family members, and notable figures such as Hercules. These heads used to be a part of the ceiling of the King's Inner Hall.

After looking at all of the exhibits, we walked around the walls of the castle to see the great views of towns in the distance, an ancient cemetery, and cannons. 

After this little detour, we got back on the road in route to the Highlands. As we approached Glencoe, we were surrounded by huge mountains which were topped with snow!

Our tour guide told us a lot of movies were filmed in that area including "The Highlander", the James Bond film "Skyfall", and the Harry Potter series. If you're a Harry Potter fan, you'll be familiar with Hagrid's hut, and we were able to see the exact location where his hut used to be (in the circle of trees in the picture below)! However the hut wasn't there anymore because the area is preserved and has to be kept in it's natural form. This is why the Scottish Highlands are so beautiful! 

We were given a lot of time to take pictures with the huge mountains in the distance, and stopped again in various other Scottish towns such as Killin and Tyndrum to see gorgeous waterfall views and more mountains. 

Our final stop of the day was at Fort Augustus, and before we headed to the lodge we were staying at, we were taken to the Clansman Center. We had no idea what the Clansman Center was, but when we got there we were greeted by a man dressed in traditional Scottish attire who took the group of us into a hut-like home. He told us that this home was a typical dwelling for Scottish Highlanders in the past and in the small hut they would often fit ten family members as well as animals! Their living situation was pretty unpleasant in the way that he described the smells of the home and the fact that families would rarely change clothing. He then talked about the clothes worn by Highlanders and chose two students that were in our group to try on Scottish clothes, as he taught all of us how to create a kilt out of a large piece of fabric. It was really cool to see authentic Scottish clothes, tools, weapons, and hear all about it from a real Highlander as well! It was great to learn about Scottish culture while actually in Scotland. 

Our next and final day in Scotland, we drove further north and headed to Loch Ness. As many know, this is the home to the infamous Lochness Monster, Nessie. Although we stopped at various parts of the  loch (lake), including Urquhart Castle, we didn't spot Nessie anywhere! As a memento though, I made sure to buy a Nessie stuffed animal which I love!

After our unfortunately unsuccessful Nessie hunt, we headed to Culloden Battlefield and our tour guide told as about the large battle that took place there in the mid 1700s.

Finally, we headed back to Edinburgh to catch our train to London, but on the way made a few more scenic stops in which we saw Highland cows that were really funny looking and a staple of the Scottish Highlands. 

We definitely learned a lot that weekend thanks to our knowledgable Scottish tour guide and were happy we decided to go on the trip because it gave us the chance to see so many different parts of Scotland.