rickr

I'm back now, and I have finished uploading all of the pictures I wanted to put online, including my photos from Paris, London, Wales, and Scotland (I put all the UK pictures in a seperate album). The website is: http://community.webshots.com/user/rickrainy Since I am home, this will be the last entry in the travel blog. It was a great trip, and its hard to believe all the things I saw and experienced, and I can't wait to go again, except I think if I get the chance to travel internationally again, I am going to try to go for somewhere other than Europe, but there is still enough there for me to go back, even to the same cities I have already been too.... read more

Judd and I took a horrible night bus to Edinburgh at 11 pm Tuesday night, and got into Edinburgh around 7 or 8 am. It was rough. We took the shuttle to our hostel (15 minutes away, on the coast), where we couldn't check in yet, so we dropped off our stuff and headed back to the city. We walked along the Royal Mile up to Edinburgh Castle and walked around the castle for a while. Then we walked around the city a bunch, climbing up a rather large hill (Calton Hill) with an astronomy observatory and some other building on the top, and then climbed up the crags to Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park that formed from the volcano Edinburgh is built upon. After that we called it a day and headed back to the ... read more

Tonight we are catching a night bus (9 hours) to Edinburgh since my paper is done for the women's studies/history class, and we are going to see the British Open on Thursday, before taking a day bus back all day Friday to catch the Harry Potter book release Queue Party on Friday night in central London and go home on Saturday. So I might not be updating this again until I'm back home, although the hostel we are staying at in Edinburgh should have internet access - if its anything like the one in Dover (£5 an hour) we won't be using the internet much.... read more

Today ISU paid for us to go to Bath and get in to see the Roman Baths there. It was pretty cool, i finally got to see all of the parts of a classic roman bath that I learned about a long time ago in Latin in high school - I have seem some baths before, but none as extensive as this one. The baths are right over a source of natural hot spring water, so the Romans thought they were a gift from the gods and built an extensive complex for a temple, as well as the monstruous bath house with its many different kinds of pools and rooms, some heated by vents under a raised floor. At the end you got to try a drink of it for 50 pence, although it was a ... read more

Today we went into London to see the World War II Cemmemoration that was being held on the Mall and at Buckingham Palace. We first went over to the Tower London and Tower Bridge just to see those (since we hadn't yet) before getting to Buckingham Palace around 2:30. The Queen went down the Mall accompanied by several special gaurdsmen on horseback to where they held the ceremonies for an hour, which we only saw parts of on a big screen. They then had a parade of the colors of all the military groups that fought or supported the soldiers during the war, along with the Queen again and several military bands. Then everyone gathered in front of the Palace, in front of the gates, filling up the entire square after emptying out of the sidewalks, ... read more

Fortunately for us, no one was hurt in any of the attacks that happened, and we were no where near central London at the time. We had left at 8 am for a tour of a Rolls-Royce jet engine assembley plant in Derby (3 hours away), and we heard off and on accounts of what was going on in London over the radio, from there being a train collision near Aldgate, possibly due to signal failure, to there being 4 bombings to even 7 seperate incidents, including a bus explosion, even though we now know that there were only 4. There is a slight chance that we could be sent home early since there is a slight threat that still prevails, and that American tourists could be even more of a target, and since it is ... read more

We went to our professor's house in Woking on the 4th to celebrate Independence Day, since she is also an American. She had sausages and cakes and some other British food to celebrate, which were really really good (especially the cakes), as well as beer and Pimm's (its like sangria, I think) to drink. Here garden is enormous, and she let us swim in her covered swimming pool. Thankfully it was covered because in the few hours we were there it had changed weather about 20 times, from sunny to rain to hail back to rain and then back again to sunny to start all over again. We still had a great time, and talking to some of their family friends, it gave us an interesting view of America, since thats all it seems they talk ... read more

Greatest. Concert. Ever. I don't think it is possible to see anything of such magnitude ever again. Even though they said something like that in 1985, Live 8 was easily the greatest live event ever, and it will probably never be able to matched up to again. It's really hard to write about how awesome it was to experience it. I wasn't in Hyde Park itself, since it was impossible to get tickets, but after trying really hard to see through the trees to get a glimpse of the big screens (imagine that, trees in a park), or trying to peak around or over fences, or just hear the music over the busy streets sorrounding the park, we then headed over to Regent's Park nearby, where they had set up a big screen to watch the ... read more

Today we got up, checked out of the hostel (which turned out to have really crappy beds, besides the really slow internet that cost £5/$10 an hour, which is ridiculous, and they charged us an extra £3 since we weren't HI members, which was really lame) and started walking to the White Cliffs park. We walked for about 35 minutes around the castle from the city along a really sketchy road with no sidewalks (a little dangerous for a road with tight turns and what seemed to be little enforcement of speeding laws), and then wound up at the cliffs above the harbor (turned out it wasn't even close to 4 miles away, it pretty much starts right outside the city of Dover). We walked along those cliffs for a while before stumbling upon a stairway ... read more

Since we don't have class today or tomorrow, we decided to take a short 2 day trip to Dover; see the city's castle and explore the White Cliffs park. We saw the castle today, which was pretty good, but I liked Caerphilly in Wales a lot more, since it was a lot more open and you had a lot more freedom to do as you wished. The park to see the White Cliffs is supposed to be 4 miles away, and since we don't have anything better to do, we are going to walk there and back, make a day of it. Saturday we are going to try to see some Live 8, but I doubt we will see anything. It will be worth a try at least.... read more