Well another successful trip is in the books, both historically and my checkbook! Overall we had a fabulous weekend and saw much more than I think any of us thought we would. London is a beautiful, but very expensive, city even with student discounts.
We started our trip early Friday morning, since my normal Friday class was canceled, on a bus ride to London. For the first time since I have been here, I had a comfortable bus ride, the seats had extra leg room reclined to an almost flat position! After about a four hour journey, we arrived at Victoria Station in London. We were quickly confronted with a bus/train station about as big and busy as Grand Central Station in NYC. We made our way through the crowd following the signs to the Underground, or Tube as it known. Let me take this moment to just say that this is one thing England cities do fairly well, although they may not have adopted the idea of obvious street signs, on every corner it seems there is post with arrows pointing to every possible point of interest with in a 3 mile radius. This makes a stressed, confused, and lost traveler (ME!) very at ease when you are fumbling with your map that does not show a single street near you, if you are lucky enough to find the name of it. Anyway, we made it to the tube station and were greeted by 300 tourist/travelers, in a space made for 50, all trying to buy tube passes, lovely right? We finally got through the queue and bought our 3 day rail pass so would not have to go through this mess again. At last we were on the tube headed in the general direction of our hotel. When we emerged from the station I realized I had no idea where our hotel was and every map we had did not have a close up of this region...so we began to walk in the general direction arriving about 15 minutes later. (We later found out that we were only maybe 5 minutes away and just walked in a giant circle!) Upon arriving at the hotel, we found out that check-in was not until 2, which they conveniently failed to mention to me, so we dropped our bags and found some lunch at the local KFC. (If you are following my posts, you are beginning to see a trend) By the time we ate it was about 2 and headed back to the hotel to check-in. The room was perfect...4 beds for 4 people and a 13 inch TV hooked up to the gutters outside if I were to guess. We quickly dropped our stuff to head back to the tube, the quick this time, and start checking off the tourist sites while we had some time. It was really one of the most breath taking things, to walk out of the tube and see the London Eye and Big Ben right in your face. I don't know what I was expecting, but let just say that Big Ben is really big! We quickly snapped some pictures and headed to Westminster Abbey. It was unreal to be standing in the same room where hundreds of Kings and Queens have been crowned and buried. I am talking about things that are older than the discovery of the Americas. It was hard to process how important that place is to English history. Unfortunately, they do not allow pictures of the inside, so I guess you will have to just check it out yourself. After walking through the crowded rooms of the huge, beautiful abbey, we made our way to Buckingham Palace through one of the many beautiful parks of London. You think at this time of year, that the parks would be dead and quite, but quite the opposite was found. Flowers and people were everywhere along with tons of wildlife! But we finally arrived at the most popular of the Queen's homes. I must say, I was expecting more than there was, but it was beautiful none the less. It was more of a let down to find out that she only spends about 2 days/week there, she is old and it is loud in the city, so I guess it makes sense. Once we had taken several pictures of the palace and the guards (not dressed in red!) we moved on the Piccadilly Circus, which is not a circus with elephants or anything, but rather a large shopping area similar to Times Square in NYC, but not nearly as big and flashy. We did not stay long and jumped back on the tube to Bloomsbury, the borough which hotel was, and met up with Dan, a friend from high school, who was studying in London. We walked around the city awhile with him looking for a place to eat and found our selves in Chinatown, thinking we could get some good and affordable chinese food...oh we were WRONG! Possibly the worst attempt at chinese food I have ever had and at £10 it was not cheap! But lesson learned and we headed back to Dan's flat to chill out and spend the night catching up and comparing stories.
The next day we woke up early to catch breakfast, which was a major plus to our hotel. They served a full English breakfast, which we had not experienced although seen advertised in every window. A full English Breakfast is fairly standard in that it has some form of eggs (we had a choice of fried, scrambled or boiled), bacon, sausage, baked beans, a fried tomato, toast and tea/coffee. I must say I really enjoyed it. I would have never imagined eating baked beans for breakfast, but it complimented the eggs and meat very well, not to mention the benefits on a cold day or crowded train ;) After breakfast we headed took the tube to the Tower of London, which I thought was a tower...nope...its fortress/castle. It is famous as being a prison and where many kings, queens and other traitors were housed before being tortured and/or being executed. We took an hour long "Beefeater" tour, which was quite fun and interactive as well as gave us a great history into the tower. After the tour we wandered around the grounds and saw the Crown Jewel of England, which was amazing! They are kept in a vault on the grounds that you can walk through. They have the worlds largest and most perfect diamond, as well as hundreds of other gem encrusted crowns, swords, rings, and any other thing your could imagine covering in gold and jewels. They look fake because they sparkled in the light so brilliantly. Once we had sufficiently walk the grounds we walk along the river for what seemed like days till our feet hurt so bad we had to find a tube station. We then made our way to the Globe Theater, the same one that Shakespeare preformed. It was beautiful with its thatched open roof. I would have loved to seen a play, but tickets tend to be at a premium. At this point everybody was about to fall over, so we walked some more to what we thought was the closest tube station, it was not, and headed back to the hotel to rest before dinner. It was a much needed break, especially since I got to watch the rugby game, even though England got slaughtered by Ireland. After the game we headed back over to the Tower Bridge area to meet some friends, from Wolverhampton who were in the city as well, for dinner. We wandered up and down the same street for at least 45 min being turned away by the extreme prices, till we finally settled on a small Italian restaurant that we first looked at. We all ordered pizza, which was very good, and relaxed for awhile till we headed back to the hotel for the night.
Sunday, our last day in the city, was reserved for checking out some of the museums in the city that we had heard good things about (not to mention they are free!). We started at the Imperial War Museum, which was maybe the best museum I have ever been in. It had all sorts of British, German, and American tanks, planes, bombs, missiles and everything else, and this was just the lobby. Once you enter the exhibits, organized by conflicts, you were over whelmed with all the different items they had on display. My favorite exhibit was called "The Children's War", which was an exhibit dedicated to the life of British children and families during WWII and the way they had to live. It offered a completely new perspective to me on life during WWII and really humbled me to see what families had to go through. It is something as Americans we don't learn about, because we did not see it on our homeland. I could not imagine the feeling of have your entire country bombed and fearing more could come at any time and living through that. After walking through all the major exhibits for about 3 hours, my feet were hurting worst than they ever have. So we decided to head back to Bloomsbury to grab some lunch and meet up with Dan to see the British Museum. This is the biggest museum I have ever seen! You could spend 3 full days inside and not see it all, luckily after about 2 hours it all starts to look the same. It is a museum filled with artifacts and relics from all over the world that Britain has taken during conquests and other trips to these countries, some of which is still very controversial. The coolest thing we saw, which I did not even know was there, was the Rosetta Stone. It is unreal to see the one thing that allowed us to understand ancient Egyptian writing as well as other languages. After about 2 hours we could hardly stay on our feet so we parted ways with Dan and found a place for dinner to relax until our bus home.
Overall this weekend was a great taste of London, but I was ready to get back without question. I must say that my feet have never hurt so bad and I did not know a city could have so many stairs, sometimes we took stairs down to go up. I think they just thought that would be funny. Anyways, although it was expensive, it was worth every dime we spent. Please check out at my pictures, but I am sorry to say that they are in no particular order, because that is how they got uploaded. As of right now we have no plans for next weekend, but that does not mean we won't through in a day trip, but we are trying to save a bit of money for when our friends from Keene visit in two weeks and we go to Edinburgh, Scotland. Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope all is well!
Cheers,
Justin
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
Liverpool...
Well, I made my second trip through the International Office on Saturday to Liverpool, England...home of the Beatles! Overall it was a cool city, but we did not have nearly enough time to explore and/or see everything. We started the day by going to "The Beatles Story" which was a audio guided (like everything in Britain) tour of recreations of the life and legacy of the group. It took you through narrow crowed hallways lined with documents and pictures while playing every song you can think of by the group. It was quite cheesy and corny at times, but some things were interesting. I think much of my problem with it was that it did not have a lot of real artifacts and it was much to crowed for the space. I guess I was expecting something along the lines of Graceland, and found that it was nothing even close! However, it was the only Beatles experience we had time for, so at least I could say I was there.
After we left the cave (the Beatles Story), we made our way towards the city center for some lunch at a place I had read about. After a long and confusing walk, we arrived at the sandwich/coffee shop. The prices were very reasonable and the sandwiches were excellent, but that was all quickly over shadowed by the crappy service and extremely smoky room. After spending much more time than we would have liked at lunch we moved on to the Liverpool Cathedral, which turned out to be the best part of the day by far! The cathedral is very new (for European standards), started in 1902 and not finished until 1978, but it was breath taking never the less. It has the highest arches and the largest/heaviest bells in the world! It was with out a doubt the biggest open space I have ever been in! After wandering the vast open space, we made our way up to the top of the main tower. It was unreal! There was not a cloud in the sky and we could see for miles! It was really amazing to be able see Liverpool from such a great view point! Once we took our pictures from every angle of the top, we made our way down and to the park/graveyard the surrounded the cathedral. It was a very cool looking park, because the walls were lined with old headstones like it was once a graveyard, but the cathedral forced the headstones to be moved.
After the cathedral we made our way towards our last stop before heading back to the bus, the Tate Liverpool modern art museum. I was really looking forward to this stop, because I had read that it held several Warhol and Picasso works as well as being free admission. Well, that was a lie! Luckily, the admission was free, because I think I might have demanded my money back other wise! It is unreal what some people consider art! The first exhibit we went to was nothing more than a pile of rocks, wood and coal. Then another was a pile of small dead Christmas trees with a TV playing random clips of naked people and another just flash nothing! Ahh it was awful! So we quickly made our way up stairs to what we thought would be the artists we would recognize...nope! Just more wacky paintings are "art". I did finally find ONE Andy Warhol painting, but nothing like I thought and defiantly no Picasso. But at least it was free!
Overall it was a good trip and a very cool city, but I really would have liked to seen more of the Beatles sites, ie. Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and the Cavern Club. However time just did not allow. Maybe at some point I will go back and explore some more. This weekend we are making our first trip to London! It should be a great weekend! Thank you for reading and I hope all is well!
Cheers,
Justin
After we left the cave (the Beatles Story), we made our way towards the city center for some lunch at a place I had read about. After a long and confusing walk, we arrived at the sandwich/coffee shop. The prices were very reasonable and the sandwiches were excellent, but that was all quickly over shadowed by the crappy service and extremely smoky room. After spending much more time than we would have liked at lunch we moved on to the Liverpool Cathedral, which turned out to be the best part of the day by far! The cathedral is very new (for European standards), started in 1902 and not finished until 1978, but it was breath taking never the less. It has the highest arches and the largest/heaviest bells in the world! It was with out a doubt the biggest open space I have ever been in! After wandering the vast open space, we made our way up to the top of the main tower. It was unreal! There was not a cloud in the sky and we could see for miles! It was really amazing to be able see Liverpool from such a great view point! Once we took our pictures from every angle of the top, we made our way down and to the park/graveyard the surrounded the cathedral. It was a very cool looking park, because the walls were lined with old headstones like it was once a graveyard, but the cathedral forced the headstones to be moved.
After the cathedral we made our way towards our last stop before heading back to the bus, the Tate Liverpool modern art museum. I was really looking forward to this stop, because I had read that it held several Warhol and Picasso works as well as being free admission. Well, that was a lie! Luckily, the admission was free, because I think I might have demanded my money back other wise! It is unreal what some people consider art! The first exhibit we went to was nothing more than a pile of rocks, wood and coal. Then another was a pile of small dead Christmas trees with a TV playing random clips of naked people and another just flash nothing! Ahh it was awful! So we quickly made our way up stairs to what we thought would be the artists we would recognize...nope! Just more wacky paintings are "art". I did finally find ONE Andy Warhol painting, but nothing like I thought and defiantly no Picasso. But at least it was free!
Overall it was a good trip and a very cool city, but I really would have liked to seen more of the Beatles sites, ie. Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields and the Cavern Club. However time just did not allow. Maybe at some point I will go back and explore some more. This weekend we are making our first trip to London! It should be a great weekend! Thank you for reading and I hope all is well!
Cheers,
Justin
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Bath & Stonehenge...
Well, as many of you may have known, I made my first weekend trip out of Wolverhampton this weekend to Bath and Stonehenge. Overall it was a very successful trip and a much needed get away, but it defiantly had its fair share of interesting moments.
On Saturday morning we began our journey by trekking to the bus station on through the wet, sloppy, snow covered streets of Wolverhampton. It is really remarkable how they can get a considerable snowfall and not even touch the roads or sidewalks. You can go to the store and buy a £5 sled, but not a show shovel within a hundred miles! Anyways, the bus was on time (except a short delay in Birmingham) and we made it to Bath without a problem. Our first mission was to find the hostel and dump our bags. When we arrived at the hostel it was a little confusing where to check in, seeing that the open door was to the PACKED bar down stairs, till we finally saw the sign "check in at the bar". It was the second round of the rugby tournament, and to our welcome was a bar FULL of people watching the game, which we had to fight through to get checked in. Once we got checked, we found our 12 person dorm room and dumped our stuff to go get some food and check out the town. At this point it was raining a considerable amount, which we have not experienced since being in England! We all were all little road weary and very hungry, so we found the best thing to easy our minds...Pizza Hut! I have been making a conscious effort to avoid any American fast food, because I knew there would come a time when it would just sound soooooo good to have something familiar, that time was now! We took our time eating and drying off before we continued to wander the streets, which we lasted only an hour or two before we were ready to stay inside. We made our way to the pub below our hostel relaxed for a bit then retired upstairs to watch a couple of movies and hit the sack. I must say though that living in a hostel made my small and crappy room here feel like a mansion! If it were not for my iPod (which saved my sanity on more than on occasion this weekend), I am not sure I would have slept at all, but I guess it is all part of the experience (at least that is what I keep telling my self!).
On Sunday we began the day about 9am with a free continental breakfast (ie. toast, cereal, tea and something they called coffee) and headed off to see the sights...in the rain. We started our day off with a tour of the Roman Baths (pretty creative in naming towns) which are spas built by the Romans around natural hot springs located in the town. It was really unbelievable to see how huge the complex was and the importance of these springs to people of Bath throughout history. The complex is filled with the artifacts found in the baths and pieces of the original structure. What amazed me the most was that during Roman times the floors were heated! The floor was raised so the springs could flow under them, they said that it would get so warm that could not walk bare foot on them! We also got to taste the water, which is supposed to bring good health, but it tasted like crap and Sarah ended up sick all weekend with a cold, so it is debatable how "good" it really is. After the baths, we wandered the streets and got some lunch for a bit before our next tour. After lunch we met up with Mad Maxx Tours, which does tours around the area and to Stonehenge. Bath is not the closest town to the rocks, but it is about only one worth making a weekend out of. We choose a half day tour which took us first to Lacock. I am still not completely sure why they brought us to this town, but it was cute none the less. It was a very very small town in the rolling hills of the English country side known as the Cotswolds famous for woolen goods. Once we took some pictures and wandered around a bit then continued on to Stonehenge. After about a 40 minutes drive through the country side we arrived to the rocks. Let me first say that I was expecting something much similar to the excitement of Plymouth Rock, which is nothing more than a large pebble, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the size of it. It is situated in the middle of a field with nothing more than a tourist center, a major highway and a flock of sheep around it. Like everything in England it was not free to walk (about 35 feet) around it and receive a free audio tour that I managed to listen to for no more than 2 minutes. I must say though it is quiet unbelievable that this was built before the invention of the wheel in England and many of the stones were brought from hundreds of miles away! Once we took pictures from about every angle and stone we made our way to the gift shop to thaw out, which turned out to be quite comical. You can by almost anything with a picture, model or name of Stonehenge on it! Once we circled the gift shop a couple hundred times we made our way back to the bus and back to Bath. That night we dinner in pub down stairs and wandered the streets for a bit, till we retired to watching a movie and going to bed.
Monday was our last day in Bath and was reserved for seeing some sites and doing some shopping. We got up early to eat before we had to check-out and catch a free walking tour of the city by 10:30. The tour lasted about 2 hours took us past many of the popular sites that we had not seen and gave us some of the interesting history of Bath. Once our tour finished we made our way to the Bath Abbey which is in the center of the city and where most believe the first King of England was crowned! We got in for free, because the man collecting "donations" felt bad for us poor college students and we wandered the church for awhile. After the brief tour of the abbey we grabbed some lunch at Burger King (yes, two American fast-food joints in one weekend!) and hit up some of the shops which turned out to be much to expensive for our taste! By 3:00 we were completely bored and very tired, so we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the supermarket for later and headed to the bus station to catch and early bus back to Bristol (which has a brand new station) to wait for our bus back to Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Once the bus finally arrived and loaded at Bristol, about 30 minutes late, the 2.5 hour bus ride from hell began! Lets just go through the list:
- switching seats with a couple with a baby
- kids screaming and jumping over the seats
- a group of people (who made the bus late to begin with) yelling across the bus at each other
- after be so nice to switch seats, the drunk Scottish ex-con woke up and talked the whole way (even with headphones on!)
- 20 min smoke break after being on the road only an hour
- not getting to Birmingham to catch another bus till 10:30pm
But, we finally made it home safe and sound to our beds which could never have looked sooooo good!
Overall, I could not have been happier with our trip, but such as many things here and in life, it was a true learning experience! I am going to be doing this a lot more in the next few months, so I might as well get use to it now and learn to enjoy it! It is all part of this once in a life time experience! Thank you for taking the time to read all this, I know it was long, but it was a long weekend! Please check out my pictures. They do not all have titles yet, because I took almost 200 pictures this weekend and it is very time consuming to label them all, but enjoy! Happy Valentines Day!!!
Cheers,
Justin
On Saturday morning we began our journey by trekking to the bus station on through the wet, sloppy, snow covered streets of Wolverhampton. It is really remarkable how they can get a considerable snowfall and not even touch the roads or sidewalks. You can go to the store and buy a £5 sled, but not a show shovel within a hundred miles! Anyways, the bus was on time (except a short delay in Birmingham) and we made it to Bath without a problem. Our first mission was to find the hostel and dump our bags. When we arrived at the hostel it was a little confusing where to check in, seeing that the open door was to the PACKED bar down stairs, till we finally saw the sign "check in at the bar". It was the second round of the rugby tournament, and to our welcome was a bar FULL of people watching the game, which we had to fight through to get checked in. Once we got checked, we found our 12 person dorm room and dumped our stuff to go get some food and check out the town. At this point it was raining a considerable amount, which we have not experienced since being in England! We all were all little road weary and very hungry, so we found the best thing to easy our minds...Pizza Hut! I have been making a conscious effort to avoid any American fast food, because I knew there would come a time when it would just sound soooooo good to have something familiar, that time was now! We took our time eating and drying off before we continued to wander the streets, which we lasted only an hour or two before we were ready to stay inside. We made our way to the pub below our hostel relaxed for a bit then retired upstairs to watch a couple of movies and hit the sack. I must say though that living in a hostel made my small and crappy room here feel like a mansion! If it were not for my iPod (which saved my sanity on more than on occasion this weekend), I am not sure I would have slept at all, but I guess it is all part of the experience (at least that is what I keep telling my self!).
On Sunday we began the day about 9am with a free continental breakfast (ie. toast, cereal, tea and something they called coffee) and headed off to see the sights...in the rain. We started our day off with a tour of the Roman Baths (pretty creative in naming towns) which are spas built by the Romans around natural hot springs located in the town. It was really unbelievable to see how huge the complex was and the importance of these springs to people of Bath throughout history. The complex is filled with the artifacts found in the baths and pieces of the original structure. What amazed me the most was that during Roman times the floors were heated! The floor was raised so the springs could flow under them, they said that it would get so warm that could not walk bare foot on them! We also got to taste the water, which is supposed to bring good health, but it tasted like crap and Sarah ended up sick all weekend with a cold, so it is debatable how "good" it really is. After the baths, we wandered the streets and got some lunch for a bit before our next tour. After lunch we met up with Mad Maxx Tours, which does tours around the area and to Stonehenge. Bath is not the closest town to the rocks, but it is about only one worth making a weekend out of. We choose a half day tour which took us first to Lacock. I am still not completely sure why they brought us to this town, but it was cute none the less. It was a very very small town in the rolling hills of the English country side known as the Cotswolds famous for woolen goods. Once we took some pictures and wandered around a bit then continued on to Stonehenge. After about a 40 minutes drive through the country side we arrived to the rocks. Let me first say that I was expecting something much similar to the excitement of Plymouth Rock, which is nothing more than a large pebble, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the size of it. It is situated in the middle of a field with nothing more than a tourist center, a major highway and a flock of sheep around it. Like everything in England it was not free to walk (about 35 feet) around it and receive a free audio tour that I managed to listen to for no more than 2 minutes. I must say though it is quiet unbelievable that this was built before the invention of the wheel in England and many of the stones were brought from hundreds of miles away! Once we took pictures from about every angle and stone we made our way to the gift shop to thaw out, which turned out to be quite comical. You can by almost anything with a picture, model or name of Stonehenge on it! Once we circled the gift shop a couple hundred times we made our way back to the bus and back to Bath. That night we dinner in pub down stairs and wandered the streets for a bit, till we retired to watching a movie and going to bed.
Monday was our last day in Bath and was reserved for seeing some sites and doing some shopping. We got up early to eat before we had to check-out and catch a free walking tour of the city by 10:30. The tour lasted about 2 hours took us past many of the popular sites that we had not seen and gave us some of the interesting history of Bath. Once our tour finished we made our way to the Bath Abbey which is in the center of the city and where most believe the first King of England was crowned! We got in for free, because the man collecting "donations" felt bad for us poor college students and we wandered the church for awhile. After the brief tour of the abbey we grabbed some lunch at Burger King (yes, two American fast-food joints in one weekend!) and hit up some of the shops which turned out to be much to expensive for our taste! By 3:00 we were completely bored and very tired, so we grabbed some pre-made sandwiches from the supermarket for later and headed to the bus station to catch and early bus back to Bristol (which has a brand new station) to wait for our bus back to Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Once the bus finally arrived and loaded at Bristol, about 30 minutes late, the 2.5 hour bus ride from hell began! Lets just go through the list:
- switching seats with a couple with a baby
- kids screaming and jumping over the seats
- a group of people (who made the bus late to begin with) yelling across the bus at each other
- after be so nice to switch seats, the drunk Scottish ex-con woke up and talked the whole way (even with headphones on!)
- 20 min smoke break after being on the road only an hour
- not getting to Birmingham to catch another bus till 10:30pm
But, we finally made it home safe and sound to our beds which could never have looked sooooo good!
Overall, I could not have been happier with our trip, but such as many things here and in life, it was a true learning experience! I am going to be doing this a lot more in the next few months, so I might as well get use to it now and learn to enjoy it! It is all part of this once in a life time experience! Thank you for taking the time to read all this, I know it was long, but it was a long weekend! Please check out my pictures. They do not all have titles yet, because I took almost 200 pictures this weekend and it is very time consuming to label them all, but enjoy! Happy Valentines Day!!!
Cheers,
Justin
Monday, February 05, 2007
Birmingham...
Well another weekend is sadly over, but it was quite a good weekend overall. On Saturday we made our first trip to Birmingham, which is about 20-40 minutes (depending on your mode of transportation) to the south-east of Wolverhampton. It is the second largest city in England, second only to London. It is a very industrial city, much like Wolverhampton, but is great place to make day trip to. We left Wolverhampton about 2:30 by the tram that runs directly into Birmingham every 8 minutes for only £3.80 round-trip. Although Birmingham is mostly a industrial city, it has more shopping than any place I have every been. Its main attraction is the Bullring Market, which is an ultra-modern 3 part shopping mall. I personally was not so intrigued by the shopping as I was the fact that it had a KRISPY KREME!!! Talk about feeling like you are home! It also had a shop that sold every American food that we can't get in the local supermarkets, such as Fluff, Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup, Jelly Belly's and much more! However, we refrained from purchasing any of these indulgences, because they came for a price! They wanted £2.80 for the small jar of Fluff, which that is about $5.50! Anyways, it was nice to know it was there in case I come down with a sudden/dying urge for Fluff. They also had several Starbucks which is always nice to see. After we finished in the mall, it was sadly dark, but we continued our journey towards the heart of the city. We found Victoria Square which was beautiful at night, so I can't wait to go back during the day and take some more pictures. However, the highlight of my trip was when we found a giant TV in the square that was showing the England v. Scotland rugby game! People were gathered to watch it everywhere! It is really nice to be able to finally watch a sport that I love so much without having to pay for it. We then continued on to find some place reasonable to eat dinner, but the problem we kept running into was that most of the places had stopped serving food in order to get ready for the busy night life. We finally found a place we had eaten before in Wolverhampton and knew we could get a decent inexpensive meal. After taking our time eating and having a drink, we made our way back to the train/tram station to head back. It was a good first visit, and I am sure I will be back again soon.
On Sunday, Sarah and I made our way to a local sports bar to watch the Ireland v. Wales rugby game (Which I had heard about during the game we saw in Birmingham). I was very cool to see how passionate people were for a sport that most in the US don't even understand, which I really enjoyed. Last night I also made an attempt to stay up and watch the Superbowl on my computer (keep in mind the game did not start till 11:30 here!). I made it till the end of 3rd quarter and began to doze off, I woke to the celebration of the Colts. Oh well, there is always next year to watch it start to finish.
Well, that's about all I got this time. I posted some more pictures, which I have labeled by the day I updated them. Thanks for all your comments and support!
Cheers,
Justin
On Sunday, Sarah and I made our way to a local sports bar to watch the Ireland v. Wales rugby game (Which I had heard about during the game we saw in Birmingham). I was very cool to see how passionate people were for a sport that most in the US don't even understand, which I really enjoyed. Last night I also made an attempt to stay up and watch the Superbowl on my computer (keep in mind the game did not start till 11:30 here!). I made it till the end of 3rd quarter and began to doze off, I woke to the celebration of the Colts. Oh well, there is always next year to watch it start to finish.
Well, that's about all I got this time. I posted some more pictures, which I have labeled by the day I updated them. Thanks for all your comments and support!
Cheers,
Justin
Friday, February 02, 2007
First week of classes...
Well, the first week of classes is officially over and I think I will survive! I am taking three classes which I have on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday so that means I have Mondays and Wednesdays off! The way classes work here is much different than what I am used to, because each class only meets once a week for three hours and your grade is typically based off only two assignments. My math and engineering class should be very easy for me, but my American Literature class will be a different story. I am not used to having to read a novel a week in my math classes and to make it worse, I did not recognize a single book title in the course! I must say though that this professor is the most energetic/crazy/drug induced one I have ever had. At the first class he proceeded to read the module guide by screaming every other word and then continuing to lecture while giggling at himself the whole time as well as making a farting noise with his hands as he paced the room! Luckily, there is a girl from Northern Arizona University in the class with me, so hopefully we can brave the madness together! On Fridays mornings I have to the Telford Campus (a couple of towns over, about an hour by bus) for my engineering class. Well today I managed to spend more time on the bus than in a class room! When I arrive to the class, the professor was running late and proceeded to only read the module guide and excuse us. In any other place I would have been thrilled, but not when it takes you an hour to get there and you have to wait an hour for the next bus! Anyways, after the first week of classes I am feeling optimistic.
As far as the rest of my life goes, I am doing very well. Mom and Dad surprised me yesterday by purchasing a "Slingbox", which is a device that hooks to their cable in Memphis and allows me to watch it via the internet here in England. It really is amazing! When I arrived, I thought that there would be a place to relax and watch TV with the people on my floor, but I was sadly mistaken. With all the free time in my schedule I was finding my self watching the same DVD's over and over again, so the Slingbox is really allows me something to break up my day, which I am sooo thankful for! I will also allow me to watch the Superbowl on Sunday even though it will not start till 12:30 here! (Good thing I don't have classes on Mondays)
Tomorrow we are making a day trip to Birmingham for the first time with some of the other international students, which should be a good day. It is only about 40 minutes by train/metro and is pretty easy city to get around from what we have heard. Next weekend Sarah, Heather and I are making a trip to Nottingham to visit the home of Robin Hood! I am sure I will post again before then though.
Anyways, I need to go make some dinner for myself before we head out for the evening. Please feel free to post a comment on here (you do not need to register, just choose "other") or shoot me an email. I will try to get some new pictures up in the next week, including some of my room and dorm. Lastly, here is a nice website if you are interested in seeing what is in Wolverhampton and some information about it... http://www.wolverhamptoncity.co.uk/
Cheers,
Justin
As far as the rest of my life goes, I am doing very well. Mom and Dad surprised me yesterday by purchasing a "Slingbox", which is a device that hooks to their cable in Memphis and allows me to watch it via the internet here in England. It really is amazing! When I arrived, I thought that there would be a place to relax and watch TV with the people on my floor, but I was sadly mistaken. With all the free time in my schedule I was finding my self watching the same DVD's over and over again, so the Slingbox is really allows me something to break up my day, which I am sooo thankful for! I will also allow me to watch the Superbowl on Sunday even though it will not start till 12:30 here! (Good thing I don't have classes on Mondays)
Tomorrow we are making a day trip to Birmingham for the first time with some of the other international students, which should be a good day. It is only about 40 minutes by train/metro and is pretty easy city to get around from what we have heard. Next weekend Sarah, Heather and I are making a trip to Nottingham to visit the home of Robin Hood! I am sure I will post again before then though.
Anyways, I need to go make some dinner for myself before we head out for the evening. Please feel free to post a comment on here (you do not need to register, just choose "other") or shoot me an email. I will try to get some new pictures up in the next week, including some of my room and dorm. Lastly, here is a nice website if you are interested in seeing what is in Wolverhampton and some information about it... http://www.wolverhamptoncity.co.uk/
Cheers,
Justin
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