British Museum, Dover, Canterbury, and the Cotswolds

In the past two weeks, I haven’t really done anything too exciting. I’ve had a lot of papers due in my classes, so it’s probably a good thing we didn’t travel very much. I was also able to catch up on my sleep which is always good.
In the last two weeks I’ve been to the British Museum, Cirque De Soleil, Dover, Canterbury, a movie theater, and Winchcombe in the Cotswolds.

We went to the British Museum for BLC last week. I saw the Rosetta stone, Greek ruins, and Egyptian mummies. The picture below is a fully preserved body that was buried in sand.

Cirque De Soleil was amazing. I wasn’t able to get pictures because the ushers would stalk peoples’ flashes. The show was really cool, but the music made it kind of eerie. The performers twisted their bodies to the point of making mine hurt just thinking about it. The show itself is kind of hard to explain. I would just recommend seeing it to really understand.

For our BLC field trip this past week, we went to Dover and Canterbury. In Dover, we saw Dover Castle. I wasn’t too impressed. I think it would have been better if we were able to see the inside of the castle, but most of it was closed. We did explore the underground war tunnels which was kind of neat. I was able to see my first drawbridge and moat as well.

We then went to Canterbury to see a cathedral. The cathedral was beautiful. I was allowed to take pictures of the main floor of the church, but pictures of the tombs in the lower level were not allowed.

A few of us girls decided to have a girl’s night and go see Dirty Dancing the play on Friday. It was sold out when we got there, so we ended up just seeing a movie instead. It was 8 pounds, which is a little ridiculous compared to U.S. movies. We saw He’s just not that into you. It was so good. I would highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it. I cried…twice.

The next day we went to the Victoria Bus station and left for Winchcombe in the Cotswolds. The Cotswolds is a group of hills in London which are really popular to visit. We decided to visit Winchcombe, which is a town in the Cotswolds. We got to Cheltenham (another town in the Cotswolds) and were waiting for a bus to pick us up to take us to Winchcombe, but it never came. I was able to experience my first taxi ride which we split 5 ways. It was about a 15 minute drive to Winchcombe from Cheltenham. The taxi dropped us off at our inn/pub. It was adorable. Really outdated in some ways, but reminded me a lot of a country cottage. We dropped off our things in our rooms before we headed out for the day. Our rooms were clean, but the wallpaper and bedding were pretty outdated.

We got directions to Sudeley Castle and started walking. We saw a small ruin at first and thought that that was the castle. We were later happy when we realized that there was more to look at. We started walking towards the castle and passed a bridge and a playground. The Castle was closed, but we were still able to take a lot of pictures of the outside and the grounds. It was really beautiful. The garden in the back was pretty amazing as well.

We headed back down the way we came, but spotted this George of the jungle rope swing. The playground was closed, but we decided to break the rules and play for a bit. We had a blast until some man told us that we shouldn’t be on the playground. It was fun while it lasted.

We then roamed the town and stopped in little shops in the town centre. While we were wandering around, we found St. Peter’s Abbey which was beautiful. We headed back to the inn and took a nap before dinner.

Dinner was amazing. It was really expensive, but delicious. I can’t get used to the portions of food places give us. I looked at the food I ordered and automatically knew I was going to need more. Four of us ordered another side of fries and the waitress looked at us like we were crazy. She kept telling us we still had our vegetables to eat. Ryan Welch decided he needed dessert, so after I saw his, I had to order one as well. It was an apple, rhubarb crumble and it was delicious. Sam and I decided to give up sweets for lent which is probably a good thing because I’m going to be with Ryan all next week during spring break. He eats sweets with every meal. After dinner we all took showers and went to bed. I got a good night’s sleep for once. The next day we had a big breakfast and took a taxi to Cheltenham. We then shopped for a while and ate while we waited for the bus to come pick us up.

This past weekend was very relaxing. I probably needed it since spring break starts Friday. We are going to Venice, Florence, Rome, and Athens. I’ll be gone for a total of 8 days, so I’m sure I’ll be exhausted when I get back. I hope everyone is doing well, and hopefully I can write another entry when I get back from Italy and Greece.