Time has passed quickly these last weeks in London. Tuesday is our last day of class! There isn't time to do much more while here, on the other hand we have done quite a lot. It's been an incredible trip, though in many ways I feel like I've been here long enough that London is just London - sure, there's plenty to do, like in any major city, but that sense of grandeur is wearing off some. When I walk outside the sites are an expectation instead of something new and while they are enjoyed they are also taken for granted.
Let me revisit the past few days and remember some of the things I have done:
Bath. Visiting Bath was one of the day trips I was most looking forward to. Like most things, I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew it was the site of ancient Roman baths and that just sounded pretty interesting to me. Bath is filled with the characteristic small streets and tall houses I always imagined fancy neighborhoods in cities to look like one or three hundred years ago. The buildings are all three floor above ground, made from locally quarried limestone, and pretty much look the same. Front yards and back yards pretty much don't exist in the old part of town - the part of the town that falls within the city limits of Roman times. Speaking of Roman times, the whole city is elevated 20 ft off the ground with everything raised to accommodate for flooding. Over the years buildings just got built on top of each other and the street level gradually went higher and higher.
Now Bath was built at the site of some naturally occurring hot springs. As you walk the streets some of the manholes go over streams that are fed by the hot springs and you can feel the warmth of the water rising from the man hole. The town was small over the years - supposedly about 3,000 people - but in the 17th century one of the monarchs of England was prescribed to drink water from the Roman baths where she got healthy. At this point it became fashionable for everyone to visit Bath so the town exploded in population and luxury homes were built. With a rapid expansion of the town by wealthy patrons Bath had the ability to plan its expansion in nice orderly neighborhoods and a lot of open space. I'm used to looking at the rambling ramshackle expansion of towns with little additions here and there and streets that wobble and curve. The old part of Bath looks like that, but the newer sections are organized quite nicely. With the old architecture the organization of the buildings is quite stunning. I think I got a few pictures and will get them up on facebook eventually. Hopefully you can get a look :-)
Also, Jane Austen lived in Bath for a while and the town was an inspiration for a lot of her writing. Apparently she didn't write anything while living in Bath and the town was too crowded to her liking, but there was a Jane Austen house commemorating her work. Also we walked up some gravel walkway that is apparently a big walkway in one of Austen's books. All said, I could definitely see how Bath could be the inspiration for some of her works. (Yes, I've read a few of her novels)
The old baths are now closed and you can't go in them anymore. The roman baths used to be covered, but now they are open to the air and algae grows thick in them making them unsuitable to use. I think bath may have been using different bath houses than the roman ones for quite a while, but then they closed in 1970 or so because someone died and it was linked to a bug in the bath water. Since then a bath house was opened in the last few years that you can go into. I was tempted to try it out, but it was 25 pounds, so like $43 for two hours. It didn't work out for me anyway because I wanted to catch the train home for the evening. After our tour guide and lunch I spent the rest of my time in the roman bath house structure so I didn't have an opportunity to go bathing in the water.
The bath house was incredibly interesting. The most interesting aspect of everything to me is that a lot of the structure hasn't been dug up! The last excavation was in '83 I think? But they think there are vast ruins from the roman days, and the tunnels you can see underground while touring the bath houses give clear credence to the theory. Bath is a world heritage site though, so all the buildings are protected structures which means that it is really hard to dig around because you have to be super careful with everything and you can't remove the above ground structures. The finding of the bath house was a complete accident anyway as a city engineer was exploring in a citizens basement for normal operating reasons and stumbled upon the roman baths.
The preparation for bathing was pretty intense. From reasonably intricately designed saunas, to cold baths, massage and oil rooms, then of course the structure of the main bath itself: the roman baths were really pretty unbelievable. The whole site was very fascinating. A lot of excavation was done quite a while ago though, and a lot of information wasn't preserved during that excavation so there are a lot more unknowns about the place than there might otherwise have been. For instance, it's believed that the floor that you walk on around the main bath was actually part of the foundation, and not part of the original floor. The care placed in excavating just wasn't the same back in the day. I ended up spending a lot of time in the roman baths and I wish I could have explored more. They have areas completely walled off, or barred so that you can only look into them - taking a guided tour beneath some of the city would have been utterly fascinating. Don't think they do that though :-\ Anyway, I'll try to post reasonably detailed comments on the pictures I post on facebook :-)
A friend from UP is working at Nike London as an intern and she knows almost everyone in the London study abroad program so she's tried to join us for a number of events. She can't come with us for a lot of stuff, but she joins in occasionally and hangs out with us in the evenings. It's been fun to have another friend around. I worked with Katrina in a couple of my classes and she was pretty much an invaluable partner for a number of my projects. It's nice to have her around but I think it's silly that the school doesn't really want her to join us for more of the activities that we do. I suppose they have to make their money :-\
Edinburgh. My flat, Chris O'Dell, and two of the girls went to Edinburgh this past weekend. We had a long weekend (no class on Friday) so it was a good opportunity to travel somewhere. Two guys went to Croatia, and the other girls went to Spain. Only one person didn't go anywhere, but he had a nice quiet weekend to himself.
In short, Edinburgh was awesome. I don't think anything else on the trip really compares. The bus ride up was brutal - 8 hours, cramped seats, bouncy bus, absolutely no head rests, and we left at 11:00 p.m. In theory we were supposed to sleep on the bus. As we filed onto the bus the rest of the guys went straight to the back and the seats filled up so I sat forward on the bus a bit more next to the girls. The guys went through a lot of alcohol - they didn't sleep much. I got in a few zzz's but golly gee we all had terrible kinks in our neck when we got off the bus Friday morning. First thing was to check in at our hostel, which was pretty much awesome. The host that met us might have been the most chill person I have ever met. He was warm, friendly, informative, engaging, humorous - the list goes on. He gave us four bits of information that were quite good: where to eat breakfast, which walking tour to go on, a tour of Scotland to go on, and that I should go ceilidh (kay-lee) dancing.
So immediately after checking in we headed over to Snax, what seems to be a local breakfast (and lunch) chain in Edinburgh. The food was cheap, the food was large, the food was greasy - most importantly it was really cheap. There we were, having got off the bus at 7:40, and by 8:20 we had ordered our first haggis.
Within an hour of getting off the bus in Scotland I had tried their national dish. By the time I left Scotland on Sunday morning I had consumed haggis for every single meal - 6 consecutive meals in a row contained haggis in one form or another. As it turned out, I really like haggis. The first three meals were great! Haggis at Snax was pretty cheap, but then for lunch we got Chicken Balmoral, which is half a chicken breast with haggis inside smothered with whiskey sauce. Oh. My. Goodness. That whiskey sauce was good. The haggis and chicken were good too. For dinner we went to a place called the Advocate, a pub a block or two off the main street recommended by our tour guide from earlier in the day. I got the traditional haggis, taters, and neeps (haggis, mashed potatoes, and turnips) which was really good. Taylor ordered haggis nacho's (he also got dinner) and those were some of the best nachos I've ever had, if not the best. The next morning I ate some food at the hostel because it was cheap and I didn't know when we'd make our first stop on the bus tour. As it turned out, we stopped fairly quickly in (the tour guide was sensitive to the fact that for all of us an 8:00 a.m. departure time was really early) so we picked up some breakfast where I got a haggis roll. See, the challenge was on at this point. After three meals of haggis, I figured I could haggis strong and complete my journey. When we pulled up to loch ness for lunch a number of the guys were still with me: 4 for 4 meals of haggis. But this is where all my hombres fell to the wayside. They succumbed to the smell of fresh cut, locally grown lamb. I was the only one standing. It was just me and haggis between the finish line. Dinner came and went - I had no time to eat, but really, I had had a lot of haggis so I wasn't hungry. By morning that was no longer the case and I knew I had a long bus ride ahead. The stores you stop at on the way back are primarily for coaches to stop at so they jack the prices up pretty good and I didn't want to order a lot of food. Figured I'd just order a big breakfast.
Back to Snax we went where I ordered "the biggest breakfast." Now, Snax sells a number of meals from individual rolls to combination orders such as the all day breakfast, which you can upgrade to the big breakfast, which you can upgrade to the biggest breakfast. I had a hash brown, a potato scone, a slice of ham, a piece of bacon, two blood sausages, an egg, a butter roll, a sausage patty, black pudding, and of course, haggis. There was a food baby to be had as I staggered several pounds heavier out of Snax and rolled myself into the bus station. Actually, the plan worked pretty well - I really wasn't that hungry for the rest of the day and the food sat pretty good too. In the end, I ate six meals and with every one of them, haggis went with me. Of course, haggis came with us for a little bit after we left Scotland, but that's a different type of story. Now, what is this haggis you might ask? For those of you who don't know, haggis is a traditional Scottish meal made slightly different today, but was originally all of the innards of a sheep chopped up and boiled its stomach with some herbs thrown in. For regulatory reasons it's not made in quite the same manner anymore and it has more meat content in it and such, but still, it's the sheep innards. Haggis can be served as a burger, but it really doesn't make a hard patty, it's a bit mushy. It's also fabulously tasty, you just have to get over the "what's it made from" part :-)
Okay, so we did other things in Scotland aside from eat haggis (not that you'd know from the novel I just wrote about haggis). We drank whiskey. Well, I had more whiskey than everyone else, so that means we didn't drink much whiskey. But I did go to "The Whiskey Experience" where they go through the history of Scotch and give you a basic rundown of the different types of Scotch that are out there. There's four main types, I can now identify them all, and know which ones I generally appreciate more than the others. While not necessarily the most useful knowledge in the world, it is knowledge of a different flavor, or zing, if you will. Some of you might snub your noses at me, but don't get all up in a huff because your mouth is on fire. It's just whiskey after all - sometimes it burns when it goes down.
We also went on a walking tour of Edinburgh. We got split into two groups and saw a lot of interesting stuff and heard a lot of interesting stories. After hearing so much history from the English it was surprising to hear some of that same history from the Scottish - but with different information. I got a better idea of how the UK works and what the government structure of England, Scotland, Whales, Ireland looks like. We learned interesting things, like where the term "shit-faced" came from, and saw much of the inspiration for J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. We got our fill of murder stories (one of the universities was paying for corpses in good condition to do medical studies on for a while). We saw "The Last Drop" pub, where when sentenced to death you were given your last drop of whiskey before being hanged. I asked a lot about the kilt where I learned much about where and how it has been part of Scottish culture and history. Our last walking tour story was about the Scottish stone of destiny. Stolen by the British back in the day, it was a huge piece of limestone that the Scots got crowned on for ages and ages. When the Brits stole it they made a special place in the English coronation chair to hold the Scottish stone of destiny. Now we went to Westminster Abbey. In case you don't know, that's where 48 of the last 50 English monarchs have been crowned. At the Abbey we saw the coronation chair. When the guide showed us the chair there was one little note mentioned that said, "oh, that gap you see at the bottom is where the Scottish stone used to be, but we gave it back to them a number of years ago." That definitely wasn't the whole story.
See, in the 1950's some college students were learning about the stone and decided it was a darn right shame that the Scottish stone wasn't in Scotland. Now, Scotland had been asking for the stone back for ages but the Brits would always turn the request down. These college students then took it upon themselves to break into Westminster Abbey, and steal the Scottish stone of destiny. In the process the dropped the stone and split it in two. They got the two pieces loaded in their truck eventually and headed back towards Scotland when they turned on the radio. Instead of getting some nice tunes there was a public announcement being made saying that the border between England and Scotland had been closed for the first time in centuries because the Scottish stone of destiny was found to be missing and they figured a Scot might have stolen it and been headed back toward Scotland. Not to be set aside, these college students buried the stone in a field on the way to the border and figured they'd come and pick it back up when things had cooled off. Eventually the guy comes back to pick up the stone where there's an Irishman's caravan right over where the stone was buried. He knocked on the door and asked the Irishmen to politely move the caravan. After being promptly shut down the Scotsman determined himself to get the stone out of the ground. See, it was limestone, buried in the ground and winter was approaching. Limestone is soft, would have sucked up the water in the ground, and shattered into lots of pieces if not removed so the Scot needed to get the stone out of the ground. In order to smooth things over the Scot came back later that night with nothing other than some whiskey. If there's one thing the Scots like that the Irish also know how to do, I'm told that whiskey is involved. And after a few good drinks the Scot explained that beneath the Irishman's caravan was the Scottish stone of destiny that he had stolen from the English. So the Irishman said, "look mate, why didn't you tell me earlier? If there's one thing we can agree upon it's that we all hate the English. Let's move this caravan and steal this stone from the English." The story goes on a bit longer, but eventually the stone is formally presented in Scotland after having been repaired by a stone mason. Of course, being part of the UK Scotland couldn't officially keep the stone without consent from the English so the stone was returned. A number of years later a political party was trying to gain more votes and tried to bribe the Scottish by offering to give the stone back in exchange for votes. The stone came back, but the votes didn't. In the end, the Scottish now have their stone and they seem right proud of it.
After the walking tour we went to lunch, then the guys went to sleep while I went to the Whiskey Experience. I walked the town a bit then we went out to dinner. The rest of the group went on a ghost tour, which was 7 pounds or something and didn't sound interesting to me so I didn't go, but apparently they walked up some good hills in the area and got a great view of the town. I was going to go out walking on my own a bit, but I was tired so I stayed in and went to bed earlier. All said, I think I missed out in the end.
The next day we went on a bus tour through the highlands. Scotland is a gorgeous country and has a lot of sheep. Backpacking in Scotland would be awesome. There are a vast number of areas that looked to be great for hiking. Gosh, I'd love to go sometime! We heard a lot of stories on the ride. Many we had already heard before, either on the walking tour or in England, but the stories were always told a little different. I wish we had more time in Scotland. The bus tour was 10 hours long. We did stop along the way and check things out, but most of the time was riding. The same company offers longer tours, and from the sounds of it their five day tour would have been incredible to go on. You spend a lot more time exploring different areas and a lot smaller percentage of your time driving. Edinburgh was astonishingly beautiful and the countryside was lovely. While short, going to Scotland was the highlight of the trip. After the bus tour we got back at 6:30 and I left straight-away to go ceilidh dancing which started at 7:00. Ceilidh is a traditional Scottish partner line dance. I had no idea what I was doing going in, but with my dancing background I was completely fine. I met some great people, got in some great exercise, and had an absolute blast. There was a live band playing that consisted of a banjo and a harmonica. Ah yes, it was fantastic. I danced almost every song and was pleasantly exhausted at the end.
Now, when I initially started talking about the trip to Edinburgh I said, "I don't think anything compares." I mentioned that the bus ride up to Scotland was brutal - but the bus ride back to London was far, far worse. Nothing on this trip has been as bad as that bus ride, just as nothing was quite so amazing as being in Scotland. You see, we took the express bus up to Scotland overnight. We took the regular bus (11 hours) back from Scotland during the day. The bus was mildly more comfortable, but I was generally much more more worn out (from the bus tour and the bus ride up) yet it was daytime and I wasn't sleepy (I wasn't sleepy, but I was tired). My legs started throbbing, my neck was in agony - I wasn't just uncomfortable, my whole sense of being was being squeezed out of me, and I haven't felt right sense.
We have done more since the Edinburgh trip, namely going to Hampton Court and a trip to Costco (distribution center and behind the scenes at a store). But I will write about this later as my post has already gone on for quite a while.
The last thing I'll mention for the time being is that I have gotten really, really sick since being at Edinburgh. I just felt bad after getting back from Edinburgh, and I was feeling better on Monday, but Tuesday was downhill. The thing is, I'm not just sick with a cold, this is reminiscent of being sick while at Georgia Tech. The biggest major difference is that I've been in a lot of pain. Regardless, I'm not doing good. This morning was really bad, I'm feeling better than I was then, but of course I couldn't walk for more than 30 seconds or so this morning so doing better isn't necessarily saying a lot. I'm pretty sure I know what's up, so hopefully I can take care of it. Regardless, I'll be watching my health over the next few days and not doing a whole lot else probably.
Until next time,
-Samuel
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