Tour of the English Countryside

This morning on our free day in London, a large group of us had booked in advance a tour from Evans Evans Tour Company in which they would drive us via coach up to Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge all in one day. They even came and picked us up at our hotel in the morning!
Windsor Castle was our first stop of the tour. It lies about 30 minutes outside of London and is used as the Queen primary residence when she is not at Buckingham Palace. We couldn’t see as much as I was expecting since we were only there for an hour and a half. It was just enough time to get a few pictures, walk around, see everything, but there was no time to linger around one sight. This was probably the biggest downfall of the tour as a whole, but it was still nice to be exposed to all of these landmarks that are outside of London that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The castle was so big, and the view was incredible. I wish I could have seen the front of the castle because all I saw was the side and the back.


Our next stop was 2 whole hours later in Bath, England. Bath was such a cute English town. All of the streets were extremely narrow and it was excessively hilly. I know our coach driver does this all the time, but I still don’t understand how he maneuvered some of those streets with the giant coach we were in. We went into the Roman Baths and saw those. It was cool, but I feel like I needed to know more about them to really have a full appreciation for it. I plan on learning more about them when I get back into the States. It’d be a shame to have visited some place so rich with ancient history and to not fully appreciate what occurred there thousands of year ago.


The last stop on our tour was Stonehenge, which was another hour’s drive. It was smaller than I was expecting, and the stones weren’t as white as I feel like I had seen in pictures. Our group took a lot of pictures as we always do, complete with jumping pictures. Everyone MUST have a jumping picture when they go to Stonehenge! We were only there for about 45 minutes before we boarded the bus and headed back to London. 45 minutes was a little too short, but about right considering there really wasn’t anything to see at Stonehenge besides the stones themselves. I just don’t understand how people from thousands of years ago, before the wheel was invented, managed to move some of these rocks over 200 miles over hundreds of years to form some sort of prehistoric observatory (at least that’s the leading theory right now). It boggles the mind!!


We got back into the city at about 8pm and had dinner at the restaurant, Ask, which we had eaten at a few days before. It’s located on the block behind our hotel, and has some of the best rose wine I’ve ever tasted! They let me take the bottle home, which is something they normally don’t do.
When we got back to the hotel, we made reservations to go to the Absolut Ice Bar near Piccadilly Circus. It was so cool… literally and figuratively! When we got there it was -7 degrees celcius inside the bar, so they provide your with a parka and attached gloves that you have to wear while inside the bar because everything is ice! The glasses our drinks come in are ice, the bar is ice, the tables, the walls, the floor, everything! My drink was actually really good. I ordered the Absolut Vertigo. Some other people’s drinks actually glowed a little which was a little strange for me, but they seemed to enjoy them. The ice bar sessions are only 45 minutes to prevent anyone from getting too cold, which is fine because we were ready to go right about then anyways.


We headed back to the hotel to finish packing, because in the morning we leave for Paris! Goodbye London, it’s been real! Now onto the rest of the trip!

Parliament, London Eye, Exploring London

Rise and shine! Early mornings are going to becoming commonplace on this trip unfortunately, so I might as well start getting used to it. I don’t mind completely though because getting up early allows you to make the most of your day, and when your time in a city is limited, you might as well see all you can as quick as you can! This morning we headed down to another interesting English style breakfast at the Holiday Inn. A signature item that was found on the breakfast buffet everyday was baked beans. I don’t think I would normally be ready for beans at 7:30am but more power to those who are.
We departed from our hotel via tube for the Westminster stop and our Parliament day. I was very excited for this day, especially because the weather was starting out wonderfully for London; sunny, slightly brisk, and NO RAIN! When we got to the Houses of Parliament, we took many group photos because it was such a picturesque area!



Then we headed off for our LONG walking tour of Westminster Abbey and the area surrounding Parliament. We had originally scheduled a tour of Parliament but because of the recent elections in Great Britain, they weren’t allowing tours at the moment. The tour was a great way to see everything, take pictures, and learn a lot about the British style of government, which is very different than the United States. Our guide was very knowledgeable as well. He said he had to take a course to become a certified London tour guide that took over 2 years to complete! He had written exams, papers, and everything! We saw 10 Downing St. where the Prime Minister lives, many important government offices, and buildings of historical significance. So much information has been entering my mind these past few days I wish I could remember it all for this journal, but it would be nearly impossible!
Westminster Abbey was beautiful as well! It’s currently still a working church with services everyday at 5pm and additional services on Sundays. A few of my friends and I considered coming back that evening for the service, however we found we just didn’t have time. The Abbey is also still houses a very elite school for boys, with tuition somewhere around 30,000 pounds a year! The inside of the Abbey houses many graves and memorials for important people in British history such as John Keats, Isaac Newton, and many descendents of royal blood.



By the end of the tour my feet were absolutely killing me, having been walking on them for almost 4 hours. We ended our tour at our meeting with Sir Peter Viggers, a member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons, which is the elected house. He was very interesting to me, and I actually asked a question at the end of his speech! I was very proud of myself, being that I was quite nervous.
Backpack in hand, we rushed to the bathroom after the meeting was over to change into our casual clothes for the day and headed off for the London Eye. I had heard previously that you want to allow plenty of time there because you never know what the lines would be like. Fortunately for us, they were very short when we went. We only had to wait about 10 minutes once we got our ticket to boarding our Eye capsule. The views were awesome! We had seen the Eye and Parliament the night before all lit up, but this view was completely different. We were able to see all of London! I bet the other people in the capsule got tired of the annoying girls from America taking pictures constantly and video recording, haha. It’s ok, I promise we weren’t too obnoxious; it is a big tourist attraction after all.



After we checked doing the London Eye off our to-do list for the day, we headed back to the hotel to drop off our heavy bags, freshen up, and then scurried off to the Victoria and Albert Museum. We didn’t have a ton of time in there because we got there 45 minutes before it was about to close, so we saw as much as we could as quickly as possible. The museum is giant, so I doubt I could’ve spent an entire day in there an seen it all! We were anticipating going to the Grace Kelly exhibit in the museum, however it was sold out for the day.
Once the museum closed, we set off to look at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The inside hours for visitation closed at 4pm, so we just walked around the outside. It was massive! I still think that Westminster Abbey was prettier because I am a fan of the gothic architecture style, but St. Paul’s was pretty nonetheless. From St. Paul’s it was just a short walk to the millennium bridge and across to the other side to see the Globe Theater, a monument dedicated to Shakespeare and his life’s works.



CJ, Kinsey, and I had walked so far for so long that we didn’t even realize that it was almost 8 o’clock, so we headed off to find some place to eat. The Texas Embassy sounded like a good choice. It was a great Texas atmosphere with Texas license plates, country music, tex-mex, margaritas, and Dr. Pepper!! The best part of the restuarant was up the stairs, there was a wall where people from Texas could write in where they were from. We started a whole Texas A&M Marketing Study Abroad 2010 section and so far about 30 of us had eaten at this restaurant! It was a super long day, but so productive.