London Calling

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This is my first posting on this site in two years. How I missed Travelblog!

As you may or may not know (you're either reading this because you know me or because you're a random person looking up England travelblogs) I'm going to London and Cambridge in 4 days. I will be traveling with my London history class of about 30 students, my fellow grad student and friend Adam, and Dr. PG (as I will refer to him on here) to London on Friday, March 9th for our school's spring break. We will be coming back stateside on Monday, March 19th--which sucks. I've always loved traveling...just not the coming back part.

As is my wont, I'm obscenely excited to leave the country. I even already have my suitcase packed, and I'm not leaving for 4 more days. I'm especially excited to go because I study early modern British history, and I'm a self declared "Anglophile." The accent, the music, British comedy, British movies...it's all the greatest. I'm also especially excited to go because this is my first ever trip to Europe. I've been all over Asia so far, so this is a nice change. The only thing I'm not looking forward too is spending more money. I've been pretty spoiled by traveling to countries poorer than the US, so I'm not looking forward to seeing my dollars devalued and turned into British pounds (as I'm writing this the current exchange rate from dollars to pounds is roughly $2 for every pound). Everything is more expensive in London because both it's a city and because the British are paid better than we are. For example, the average cost of a CD in London is around 15 to 16 British pounds--which is around $28-$30!! So, I'm going to be the classic tight wad.

Our hotel looks nice. We will be staying in the St. Giles Hotel--it's by Charing Cross Road and about 10 minutes walk north of Westminster and the houses of Parliament. Here's the website for it: http://www.stgiles.com/londonhotel/

I can't tell you all what for certain we're doing yet. As a class, we're only meeting 4 times in the 10 days we'll be there, and a lot of us are going our seperate ways. We're going to have tons of free time. I do know that we will be seeing the play, "The History Boys" as a group, and going on a cruise on the Thames River to Greenwich, and seeing some of the city archives. We're also seeing all the normal touristy things like Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey (which I'm REALLY excited about), and so forth, but I also plan to do a lot of walking around the city. Adam and I are also accompanying PG to Cambridge on the Wednesday we're there, so that will be interesting. It will be nice to leave the city for a while. Some of the students are even going to Paris for the day, but I'm coming back to Europe in May to visit my childhood friend, Angie, who is in the army in Germany. I can always see that when I come back.

Well, that's all for now. My next entry will be posted in London! I will also include pictures!

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