Gavia

I am going back to Europe!! My friend and I have been planning a trip to Europe for some time now. It has hit a bit of a road block with the Olympics in London. Hopefully we will get it resolved soon so that we can finalize our flights and hostels. Once that is done it will feel like our trip is really going to happen.... read more

Got up early this morning (UK time) to get to the airport. I was a little worried at the weight of my bags. I had crammed as much as I could into my carry-on and purse but my checked bag still weighed more than I was allowed. At least I though so since the scale I was using to weigh with it was hard to actually see the numbers when the bag was fully on it, so it was a bit of a guess at the actual weight. I did manage to get it from around 25kg to 23kg although that was still 3 kg too heavy. British Midland International (which is what I was flying to London on) has a limit of 20kg and charge £10 per kilo over 20kg. My bags weighed in at ... read more

One more day here and then I get to fly for over 9 hours but I will be home for Christmas. On the one hand it will be sad to leave all ove the people that I have gotten to know over here. On the other though it will be nice to get home and see many familiar faces that I have missed while over here. Merry Christmas!!... read more

Today was mainly a travel day. I left Cardiff and took a train to Manchester. I had only 12 minutes to swtich trains in Manchester! I got off the train, and finally found the departures board but there were two trains leaving at 2:47 and I was not sure which one was mine! My ticket said Huddersfield, but that was a stop in the middle, not the final destination, which is what the boards show. The lady who sold me the tickets on my other one that was a middle destination she wrote the end destination for me, but not for this one. I had to go ask at the information desk. Luckily they were not too busy, and as luck would have it I had gotton dropped off on platform 3 and the train I ... read more

After a bit of a restless night, not because of the accommodations, but because of my sore throat, which tends to bother me most at night. I slept in and didn’t get up until almost 10! It being the weekend things don’t really start to open until 10 anyway so it wasn’t too bad. My first stop was the information centre, but because I already had a list of things to do, and a map from the hostel, I didn’t stay there long. I went next door to The Cardiff Story Museum. It was not a very large museum but it had a lot of interesting and interactive displays about the ancient, and more modern history of Cardiff. There was a collection of items, donated by people who used to live in Cardiff and there was ... read more

As today was my only day in Canterbury I had to fit as much as possible in today. My first stop was at Canterbury Tales. Occupying the former parish church of St. Margaret is a re-creation of medieval life. You get an audio guide and follow along on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket. As you go through the different scenes from the town, to the woods to the Cathedral you hear different tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. My favorite tale was The Pardoner’s Tale, about three young men who are looking for Death. They are in an ale-house and ask an old man where Death is. The old man sends them towards a tree in the distance. Once there they find a large pile of gold. The decide to stand guard over the gold ... read more

I am finally getting used to this place and tomorrow morning I am off to a new city. I have to go through London and change trains and by tomorrow night I will be in Canterbury. This morning I went to the Castle Museum, it was an interesting museum. There was a mish-mash of items and rooms ranging from a victorian street to an exhibit of the 60’s and even a dungeon. It was very informative though which was nice and I took quite a lot of pictures, of various signs as well as the exhibitions. Unfortunately I ran out of space on my SD card so I had to start going through and deleting old pictures, which takes a while. In the afternoon I went to the Railway Museum which was also really quite interesting. ... read more