Shiri's Lists

Since we've been gone for over two weeks there are lots of things that I miss. Here is a list I have compiled.

Things I Miss (In no particular order):

1. My friends/family
2. My bed/knowing that I am guaranteed a bed to sleep in every night
   
3. The sun
4. My rainbows
5. Panera
6. Panda Express and Pei Wei
   
7. Jamba Juice
8. Driving on the Right side of the Road (aka streets that are not confusing)
9. Spinner (my cell phone)
10. Public restrooms that do not cost money
11. Not doubling every price I see
12. Palm trees

Things I Will Miss When I Leave England:

1. Cute old accented bus drivers who ask me "Where are you headed, love?"
2. Sports sections of newspapers that are devoted almost entirely to football and actually have detailed information about what's going on with transfers, etc.
3. The clicking sound the tube ticket makes when you pull it out of the turnstyle machine thing
4. Signs that say "Way Out" instead of "Exit"
5. Tesco
6. Good chocolate/Flake Ice Cream

Things I Never Need to See Ever Again

1. A guy wearing manpris. Seriously, they will never be in.
   

A bunch of days rolled into one post

So Michal is napping and I am forced to catch up on all the blogging we have failed to do in the last few days. Yippee!!

Let's see, where were we? Oh right. Thursday: We checked out of our hostel early and rushed to central London to catch an early bus to Canterbury. We ended up making it there just in time to catch the first bus out (after some really creative distributing of tasks between the two of us if I do say so myself). When we got to Canterbury it was pretty overcast and windy, a little drizzly, but not full on raining. good. We made our way over to the Cathedral (because that's really the only good thing to see in Canterbury) and lo and behold, we see a sign saying that the Cathedral is closed to visitors on that day because of some International Convention of Bishops. That figures because it just would not fit in with the theme of this trip if we had a full day where everything goes right.

So we couldn't go to the Cathedral so we consulted the Let's Go Britain tourbook that has seriously saved our lives this trip, and decided to head to the Museum of Canterbury instead. It was a cute little museum that told the history of the town, including the story of Thomas Becket, the martyr who became St. Thomas of Canterbury who drew all the pilgrims to Canterbury in the middle ages (including the fictional characters in Chaucer's terribly exciting story The Canterbury Tales). Since it was such a small museum there weren't really very many artifacts but it was informative nonetheless. Next we headed over to Westgate, the first sight of many of the pilgrims coming to the city. It welcomed the pilgrims but was also used as a jail in later years and a watchtower during WWII because it's so high above the city (people would stand there and watch for German planes and sound the air raid alarm if any were spotted). There was a little museum inside and since Michal and I were the only ones there, the nice man who worked there showed us around and took us way up to the top of the tower where most people don't get to go. We got a beautiful view of the city and the Cathedral--it was quite nice. The man was very knowledgeable and told us a lot of stuff we didn't know (i think he had a crush on Michal because he kept following us around. it was cute).

This was kind of all there was to do in Canterbury so we grabbed a bus over to Dover. After stopping in a grocery store to pick up the essentials (a baguette, cherry tomatoes, and carrots), we started the trek up to the Dover Castle. It was quite a climb, but the view when we got to the top was absolutely breathtaking. We found a picnic table in a spot that overlooked the ocean and ate our picnic lunch (amid the horizontal drizzle....the wind was ridiculous) then looked around the old Naval watchpoint on top of the hill. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to see France, but apparently on a clear day it's quite visible (only about 20 miles away, across the channel). From atop this tower we could also see the beautiful white cliffs that Dover is famous for. Next we walked around area, looking at the structures surrounding the castle, including the old Roman lighthouse and Saxon church and medieval tunnels. Upon entering the actual castle I once again attempted to get Michal to play along with my princess fantasy, attempting to convince her how perfectly she fits as Belle (even going so far as to tell her how each of her friends corresponds to one of the characters in the movie) but alas, she refused to join in the fun. So I had to pretend to be Aurora on my own. I was constantly humming princess tunes as we walked through the castle. Now the castle: oh man, the castle was amazing!!! There were endless corridors and passageways to wander through, it was unbelievable. We had a jolly old time exploring all the castle had to offer. When we were done with that we walked all the way around the castle atop the battlements surrounding it, before heading back down to the bus station because the castle was closing and we needed to catch our bus back to London.

When we got back to London that night we had about an hour in the bus station before taking another bus down to Brighton to see Hazel. And that's where we spent Thursday night.

Friday: After waking up quite late because we were all exhausted, the three of us (Me, Michal, and Hazel) headed down to the beachfront to get some real food. It was pretty much the first real meal Michal and I had had on this trip and Hazel really wanted real meat (after eating college food for the past 4 weeks) so we found a little pub and ate some delicious lunch. I was forced to order fish and chips, which wasn't awful, but i definitely will not be eating those ever again. After eating we walked down to the beach and just laid there relaxing for about an hour before heading back to home to the University of Sussex (where Hazel is studying for the summer). It was a pretty uneventful and relaxing day but it was definitely needed.

Saturday: Since Hazel had left the previous night for Amsterdam, Michal and I were on our own again. We headed down to the beach around noon, had a picnic on the beach (constantly terrified that the seagulls surrounding us were going to swarm, so we literally had to take a bit of our sandwhich and then hide it under our sweatshirt while we were chewing so the seagulls wouldn't see it and get any ideas). After lying on the beach for a while reading and listening to music we walked down the peir and looked at all the touristy things that they had. I was amazed at how ridiculously expensive stuff was--the tokens for the rides and games were 1 pound each and some rides required 4 tokens, so that's $8 for one ride on a little 30 second long roller coaster! Not okay! Sorry future children of mine, we're going on vacation to Yemen or somewhere where the dollar is better than the local currency so you can divide prices by 10 instead of double them.

We wandered around the beach for a while longer and then headed into a pub to watch the Liverpool vs Krakow game. The first half was SUPER dull, Liverpool was playing bad, and there were all these players we didn't know playing and the boys weren't wearing their names on their jerseys so it was kind of a sad experience. So we left after the first half, and now we're back at the dorm.

It's been a good couple of days. We definitely need to recouperate and catch up on sleep. It's been an amazing trip but we're exhausted so it's nice to have a few days to breathe before coming home on Monday.
Friday:

Two Shows that Royally Rocked

Hello friends, younger England Adventurer here (aka Shiri). I'm here to tell you about our theater experience in London. Oh boy!!

So whilst in London we saw two shows. The first was We Will Rock You, a musical written by Queen and Ben Elton that is all Queen songs. There aren't even words to describe how absolutely insanely amazing this show is. It's essentially a mix between a Broadway Musical and a Rock Show--SO cool! The lighting and effects were absolutely insane, costumes and make-up ridiculously awesome, and storyline actually really really clever. There were a lot of jokes that were references to old songs or singers or bands, so it was totally hilarious. Michal and I were all but rolling on the floor laughing at certain parts. Not only was the story and everything amazing, the performers were fantastic. Each and everyone sold their part so well--it really was an all around spectacular show. Anyone who appreciates music needs to see it.

The next night we went to a show that was completely different but just as exciting. We saw a production of King Lear at Shakespeare's Globe Theater on the bank of the Thames. We had toured this theater earlier in the trip but just walking through on the tour was nothing like the amazing experience of actually watching a play put on in the same way as it was done over 400 years ago!! There was no lighting for the first half because there was still natural light from outside (and the theater has an open roof) and when the sun went down during the second act the only lights they did have on just depicted natural daylight (because that's how it was in Shakespeare's time). So it was a very intimate show--the actors could see each and every audience member, unlike in theaters today where the audience is completely dark. Also, all the sound effects were done without modern technology. They used rainsticks for the rain, drums and a huge metal sheet for thunder, etc. There was also a little band of musicians and a singer that accompanied the show and provided dramatic effect. We had our own little soundtrack!
We could have gone for the REAL experience and paid 5 pounds for a spot in the yard, where the groundlings stand, but then we would have had to stand for all 3 hours of the show, and after all the walking we had been doing we said no thank you. So we sat in some terribly uncomfortable wooden benches instead, but the amazingness of the show totally made up for the sore bottoms we had afterwards. Once again, the talent that was on that stage blew my mind. I found myself heartbroken watching Lear go mad because the actor was so fantastic, and I felt so connected to all the characters! Oh man. I love that play. And perhaps the best part was that after the show the entire cast broke out into this lovely choral number and when that was done they all joined in with a little jig! It was fantastic!

So that was our theater experience. I loved loved loved it. And I'm pretty sure Michal felt the same way.

War, War and More War

Today was pretty much spent at the Imperial War Museum all day. This museum is totally AWESOME. It's housed in this large dome building with a huge gun in the front yard. Inside are all these old tanks and cars and planes, similar to the interior of the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. On the top floor there is a tribute to stopping genocide, focusing mainly on Rwanda and the the whole Balkans area. On the third and second floor is a very comprehensive and information Holocaust exhibit, which was mainly from a British perspective. There weren't as many artifacts like the massive amounts of shoes or glasses that other museums had but what I liked about this exhibit was how it focused on the people and the victims of the Holocaust- in every section there were at least three placards about people involved in the Holocaust including some artifacts- a piece of clothing or a letter or passport or something. It really hit upon the human side of the Holocaust.

The bottom floor is all about World War I, the Inter-War period and World War II. You walk through a long, seemingly unending maze full of stories, artifacts, clothing, guns, weapons, food, placards, information about these time periods. The exhibit is overwhelmingly full of great information about this time period. There was also a Trench experience and a Blitz Experience, the latter which we were not able to experience. After the culmination of WWII, there was a section dedicated to all the places around the world that the British have been involved in- the Cold War and Berlin, Cambodia, Ireland, the Falklands, etc., all the way up to the present day. Additionally, there was a section on the first floor that was full of artifacts- toys, clothing, letters, etc.- of children who went through WWII. Many letters were from children who had been evacuated to the country or from parents whose children had been evacuated. That was probably the most poignant of the war exhibits because it was about the children and how the innocent victims of adult arguments are truly affected.

And that was pretty much our day. We headed back up to the hostel, changed, headed back down the Bakerloo line, stopping at Maida Vale to see the area for personal reasons (one of my stories takes place in Maida Vale and I wanted to see what it was like) and the continued down to the Globe. The plan had been to go get dinner at Pizza Express but we ran out of time and had a little picnic by the Thames instead. Shiri is going to tell about the two shows so I'll let her have the blog for a bit now... :)

Another London Day

After braving our way through a crazy breakfast in the hostel and I honestly could have organized a hundred times better if they had just let me (I know, Scott, control issues....), we headed out to enjoy London. We tubed it down to London Bridge (the new one, not the one that fell down or the one that is in Arizona right now) and walked past Southwark Cathedral and the Golden Hinde (recreation of Sir Francis Drake's ship) to the Globe. There were no tickets left for today or tonight's King Lear so we got really swanky seats for tomorrow night. It will hopefully make up for not making it out to Stratford.

We then headed over to the Museum in Docklands. I had never been there before and it was actually quite fascinating, taking us through the entire history of the docklands area, from Roman times, Anglo-Saxon times, through Norman and Medieval times all the way up to the major changes that are happening right now through the shift from trade to offices in Canary Wharf. I was really impressed all the exhibits, especially a poignant one about the British slave trade because of sugar cane and one about the docks at war and how the docks were affected during the bombing of WWII.

The real reason that we went to the museum though was for the Jack the Ripper exhibit. The exhibit was incredibly revealing as to the nature of the Whitechapel area of London in the 1880s. There were many prostitutes in the area, mostly surrounding the border between the City of Westminster and the City of London, which is where all the banks were (and still are today). Whitechapel was the epitome of the slums, lots of immigrants, homeless people living on the streets, grisly markets, all only a few feet away from one of the richest areas of London. There were police on duty in the area but there were some streets that even the police would not walk down on their own- they wanted a partner with them. Usually though the crimes in Whitechapel weren't as deadly as murder- mostly it was petty theft and vagrancy.

So let me backtrack a little and talk about the information we learned on the Jack the Ripper tour. First of all, Jack had five major victims- all of them were prostitutes living in the Whitechapel area, all of them were living day to day, staying in lodging houses in the area, all in their 40s-50, losing their teeth, unhealthy, most not married but with numerous children. The only one who didn't fit this mold was the last victim. Jack's first victim was Polly Nichols who was last seen boasting about her new bonnet while going into a room with a gentlemen. When they found her body, they discovered that it had been slit from the throat all the way until it couldn't be slit anymore. Her intestines were all spilling out- it was incredibly gruesome. Now, there had been two other murders before this but they weren't really connected to Jack the Ripper. However, at the museum, there were all the witness reports and coroner's reports from these murdered women.

The next victim was Annie Chapman, who also was a mother of at least six kids. She was seen around the same pub that Polly Nichols had been found and her mutilation was quite similar to Polly's. It was around this time where the Metropolitan Police (in charge of the City of Westminster, where the East End is located) started to get letters written in red ink signed "Jack the Ripper". One of the amazing things about the exhibit was that there were a ton of first person documents, including several original "Jack" letters. Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman were both murdered within five days of each other and the police were trying to be ready for another attack but really had no way to track the murderer.

The third and fourth attacks came on the same day- September 7th, 1888. Elizabeth (Long Liz) Stride, a woman from Sweden who was forced back into prostitution upon the breakup of her marriage, was found first. The second one came a few hours later and shew as the only victim to be found in the City of London, not in the East End. This got the City Police involved, as well as the Metropolitan Police who were already involved. Catherine (Kate) Eddows was probably on her way back to Aldergate Church where most of the prostitutes hung out. She had actually been earlier that night arrested for being drunk in the streets and running around pretending to be a fire-truck. She was incredibly mutilated and bloodied- her body was still warm when she was found in Mitre Square. However, to make matters worse, a piece of her bloodied apron was found in the East End with a message. Painted in the area above where her body was found was the message "The Juwes are not the men who will not be blamed for nothing." (Spelled like it was found). There was an indication that it may have been written by a Mason and Charles Warren, the Chief of Police, was a Mason himself and immediately had the message erased.

That brings up another point about the difficulty of finding Jack the Ripper. Despite this being the era of Sherlock Holmes, the Police did not have the deductive reasoning the great (yet of course, fictional) detective used. Photographs were only taken of the body for identification purposes and usually crime scenes were cleaned up right away without searching for fingerprints (which didn't come for another 15 years or so) or any other sort of evidence. Additionally, the telegraph made it easier for news to spread and newspapers made matters worse themselves by interviewing witnesses on their own and coming up with their own theories.

The last Jack murder did not fully fit the pattern. Mary Kelly was twenty years old, had brought a friend home to stay with her and her common-law husband, got into a fight and was kicked out of the house. She was last seen with a few men saying "Seeing you in the morning" but obviously, she never was. She was the worst victim- the landlord of her lodgings looked into the window and saw a gruesome sight. Her body parts were strewn all over the room, her face was beaten, her hip bone had been taken out and put back in, it was incredibly gruesome.

And then, seemingly the Ripper murders ended. There were a few more murders in the area in the next five years but they were never really attributed to Jack. And now of course the problem becomes who was Jack? The police never found out although there were several suspects. One was the Duke of Clarence but he had syphilis and would have been too weak at the time to commit the murders. Another suspect was Dr. Neville Cream but he was hung before the last three murders. Also a man named Montague Druitt was suspected but it turned out that he was in prison in Canada at the time. New theories have arises since- some think it was a woman disguised as a man, someone thought it was artist Walter Sickert, there are plenty of theories yet we never know, which really makes the whole thing so much more interesting.

So there you have it, the Jack the Ripper story. Told from what we could remember from the tour and the museum.

After the Museum in Docklands, we went up to the Dominion Theatre to buy We Will Rock You tickets for tonight, then got ice cream and wandered around Covent Garden Market again. We're back at the hostel now and are heading out in a bit to enjoy some Queen music. It'll be great :)

A Bad Day

Also known as a Serious of Unfortunate Events....

So actually, the bad day began the night before (the end of the good day). We had stayed on Saturday night with a guy that we knew from the kibbutz in Israel (his nephew is in the same grade as me and we were best friends for like three days when I first started 1st grade) and thought that it was OK to spend the week at his place. Our dad had talked to him before we had left for Salisbury and he had seemed totally fine with it. He was having friends over on the weekend so we had arranged to stay with Hazel in Brighton on the weekend instead of during the week so we wouldn't be in the way. So Sunday night, we get to his place and when he gets back, turns out that he thought we were in Brighton for the night and that's when the awkwardness began. We started getting the weird vibes like he wasn't OK with us being there and it was just incredibly awkward.

We wake up the next morning and are planning to head down to Canterbury and Dover when he comes in and says that it's just not working out, that his place is too small and wouldn't we want to be closer to central London anyway? Why do we keep getting kicked out of where we're staying?? So I go to try and book us a hostel and can get us one for Monday-Wednesday only. So I book it and we pack up all our things and head down to Victoria. we completely change plans and decide to head into Oxford for the day and do C and D later in the week, maybe right before we head down to Brighton.

So we arrive in Oxford just fine, can make our way around the city pretty well and get excited to go to the Ashmoleon and the Oxford Museum. Oh, wait,, every museum (except for the Oxford Story and we were not going on that ride because it was literally, a ride) is closed on Monday. Fan-frickin-tastic. On the upside, we saw a lot of cool colleges, including Christ Church, Trinity, St. Edmunds, and walked through St. Mary's and the Bodelian and of course, popped into the Eagle and the Child (also called the Bird and the Babe) where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and the other Inklings hung out. We sat in Blackwell for awhile and wandered through some lovely gardens so it wasn't a total loss. No internet where we thought we'd get it though and we couldn't find an ice cream place or a phone that worked for the life of us but despite some of the disappointments, Oxford was a lovely place. Slightly chilly but no rain.

We arrive back in London, pick up our bags and head up to the hostel. It's in a decent area, off the Kensal Green tube stop and we find the hostel no problem. Oh wait, except they only take cash. Which I have about 15 pounds of. And of course, why on earth would the two cashpoints that we walk to work? We wandered around the area for literally 35 minutes before finally finding one that worked in the Sainsburys across the canal. I could not have been more frustrated with life. I was going crazy. Finally we checked in to the hostel, took showers, met one of our roommates (they moved us from a mixed to a female room which was nice) and are now blogging. Hopefully this is the END of the bad day, although right now, Lethal Weapon 2 is playing in the background. there is an entire shelf of movies- they couldn't find anything better???

A Good Day

Sunday morning we arrived at Victoria station literally exactly on time to meet Hazel. We had been there for pretty much one minute when she showed up, a lovely reminder of home. The weather was absolutely gorgeous so we decided to head up north to Camden Market, wander about there and then hit up Regents Park.

Oh Camden. It is absolute madness and mayhem up there but in a good way. There are actually several different markets- Camden Market, Camden Locks, the Horse Stables Market, Inverness Market, just to name a few. However, they're all pretty much the same. Vintage clothes, cheap collectibles, books, tons of ethnic food (right by the canal, it's like an international potluck of food!) and anything weird or crazy that you can imagine. There was one kiosk devoted entirely to motorcycle racing jackets, there was another stable that had the most ugly wedding dresses that you could ever imagine (although we decided that Hazel is going to wear one on her wedding day :) ). It was a treat to wonder what would be around the next corner. Oh, and Shiri was finally excited to get the jersey she wanted. And Youval, we bought you something too. You're going to love us forever.

Eventually though, Camden wore us out and we wandered about until we found Regent's Park. We hiked up Primrose Hill, while snacking on Hazel's Honey Nut cheerios (by the way, you may wonder why we talk about food so much on this blog- it is because we miss it. At this point, we are compiling a list of where to go when we get back. Jamba Juice, Panera and Pei Wei are at the TOP of the list. And Michal wants a turkey burger really badly....) and got a gorgeous view of the city. We could see Canary Wharf, Battersea, the BT Tower, St. Paul's, the Tate, all the major hotspots of London. We were so lucky that it was a gorgeous day because it felt like we could see just for miles. Although we really couldn't. But you know the feeling.

We trekked down into the Primrose Hill area (keeping our eyes out for Jude Law) and got our usual at Tesco. Then we trekked back up the hill and sat down for a lovely picnic lunch. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering around Regent's Park. We of course had to walk past my future home in Cumberland Terrace (where we spotted a fox! No joke! It was so random!) and then went into the gardens where we stumbled upon a tango show, I guess you would call it. There was tango music playing and a bunch of people were just tangoing. Very strange but really cool at the same time.

We walked all the way down to Baker Street, checked out the resident of the famous detective (and husband to my favorite Mary Russell) and then decided we were tired of that area and our feet hurt and we were looking for a Flake so we tubed it down to Trafalgar, pointed out the Tower of Big Ben and all the monuments of Trafalgar to Hazel and then sat down to eat our ice cream. We spent a good forty minutes people watching in the square, including the most resilient little boy who fell down numerous times, nearly toppled into the fountain several times and enjoyed splashing his sister (but not getting splashed back). And we concluded that "manpris" will never be in.

We met JJ and her friend Ellen at the Marylebone Station at a quarter to five and went to go find St. Mary's church. Let's just say that church was an experience and luckily we all felt the same way about it- slightly lost and confused but also interested and intrigued. To make a long story short (and we will tell the long story if asked), the church (although being Anglican) as recently gotten big on the idea of healing through prayer. Towards the end of the service, they said if you needed prayer for healing to come up. Literally half the congregation (so like over a hundred) came up for prayer and that's when the oddness began. We are not to judge what was real and what was not, but the pastor was going on about how the Holy Spirit needed to come in and how the church needed to be a place of fire and as people were being prayed for, they would sway or do a kind of dance or speak in tongues or moan or even, as we witnessed at least twice, fall over. It was incredibly bizarre and after the service was over, the five of us headed back to Regent's Park to the boat area to discuss. Luckily we all felt the same way about the situation and had a good chat about it but needless to say, I don't think I'll be asking Scott to implement "the fire tunnel" into Thursday night group....

All in all though it was a wonderful day, which we probably would have appreciated more if we knew what was coming the next day.....

Two in One

So we haven't really had internet the past few days which is why there are no blog entries. But they are coming now so have no fear.

Let's go back to Friday. We woke up to pretty decent weather and went down to the coach station to catch the coach to Bath. However, the pleasant gentleman at the office who sold us our national express ticket for the next day recommended the train. So we took that instead. It was an absolutely lovely hour-long drive. We thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful scenery and I was deeply engrossed in my audio version of Laurie King's Locked Rooms, so all was well. Upon arrival in Bath, we headed into the Bath Abbey just as it began to rain. It was a beautiful Gothic cathedral, of course though, quite similar to the seemingly multitude of cathedrals that we've seen in the last few days. There was a fascinating exhibit in the museum next to the Abbey that went through Anglo-Saxon, Norman, Victorian, etc. times in the Abbey. And Shiri was creeped out once again by the manakin dressed as a monk kneeling infront of one of the exhibits. What's new?

Next, because it was nearly pouring now, we headed into the Bath Roman baths. It was quite pricey- 9 pounds per person with concessions that by gosh darn it I was going to make the most of it. So we listened to practically every single section of the audio guide, no matter how long winded it go. The really awesome part though was that Bill Bryson recently had been to the spas and gave his own persepective on certain things. So that was aprt of the audio guide and to hear dear old Bill give his perspective in his litling American/British vote was wonderful. I adore Bill Bryson and it got to the point where I just listened to him. Oh, and there were two guys who dressed up in Roman costume and wandered around the bath making comments, including calling us Barbarians since we were not from the 'Roman Empire'. They were cute.

After the baths, we just wandered about the town, walking up past the Jane Austen Centre (I was not paying 6 pounds for that- I don't even really like the lady) to the Circus and the Cresent (two strips of road with uber fancy houses). Then we just wandered around town, getting some Ben and Jerry's and finally deciding just to take the train back in. The rest of the night was relaxing at the hostel, packing up, trying to find an alarm clock and then eventually praying that we'd wake up in time to catch our 9:30 bus.

The next morning, I was awakened at around 8:00 but some random lady in our room. Odd but god-sent, since we were totally up in time for the bus and enjoyed a long (three hours almost) but scenic route back to London. We took the tube up to High Barnet to where Dan lives (the person that we're staying with) and then after getting settled and finding the footpath to the tube, went back into central London. We wandered around the Covent Garden area, listening to the random people singing and performing in the square, wandered through the Apple Market, walked around a ton, got chewed out (as a group) by a palace guard and eventually went to dinner at Pizza Express by Picadilly.

All in all, it was a nice two days of seeing things, walkinig around, injuring our feet and enjoying the finally beautiful weather England often has to offer.

"Dude, We're in a frickin field!!"

So I'm still totally floored by how utterly awesome today was (or should I say "udderly awesome"...teeheehee...you shall see why).
This is Shiri by the way.

So we started the day off with a beautiful breakfast provided by the hostel. It was our first real breakfast of the whole trip so it was absolutely lovely (we only ate cereal, but the fact that there were other options made it very exciting, and I finally got that glass of orange juice I had been craving for about 5 days).

We headed down to the bus station to get a day pass for the surrounding sights, including Stonehenge and Old Sarum. We were unaware that we were actually purchasing a full on tour with a special bus and narrated tour during the drive to Stonehenge. So that was cool. Stonehenge itself was amazing--it's crazy to try and imagine people over 7,000 years ago creating these massive stone structures with little or no technology whatsoever. It was definitely very impressive. And we made some friends: these kids on a People to People trip were trying and take one of those "perspective pictures" and they were really funny. We chuckled at them. And with them.

After walking around Stonehenge for a while (those of you in AP English will appreciate that I looked for Laurence Olivier dressed as King Lear but was unable to find him mingling about the stones--sorry), we headed to the visitors center to find out what kind of footpaths we could wander around on to some of the other sights in the area (other stone circles, burial mounds, etc.). We managed to find a footpath and headed out on it only to find that it led us straight through a fence into a field were a bunch of cows were grazing. We were slightly confused but did what any other experienced hiker does--follow the trail no matter what. And the rest is history, we ended up wandering through field after field, occasionally spotting information plaques along the way reminding us that we were on the right track, frolicking with the cows and sheep grazing in the field. It goes without saying, I was so excited and giddy I didn't even know what to do with myself. We definitely took lots of pictures.

Without meaning to, we ended up taking the 2.5 hour loop around this thing called the ancient Cersus. We were never able to figure out what that actually was. But it was a lovely walk. We spent most of it feeling a mixture of uneasiness ("are we really supposed to be wandering through this pasture?"), fright ("that cow is mooing and glaring at us with a vengeance"), and excitement ("dude, we're in a frickin field!"). We passed the time singing songs (old Sonrise Island and Wee Sing songs) and Michal asking me questions I didn't want to answer (for the record, If i had to have 3 living people and 3 dead people to dinner they would be: Barack Obama, Christian Bale, Alan Shearer, William Shakespeare, JFK, and Jesus. Michal's would be: Hugh Laurie, Bill Bryson, Michael Owen, Henry VIII, Claudius, Laura Ingalls Wilder).

Several hours later, we arrived back at the Stonehenge visitors center and ate some delicious and well-deserved ice cream. We then took the tour bus to Old Serum which is the remains of the old castle that was built by William the Conqueror's son in the 10th century. It's up on a hill which was really cool and there's very little left of it so you can see the layout of all the rooms and everything. Michal pointed out that it reminds her of Masada and I have to agree. It's basically Masada but with gray walls instead of brownish yellow and green grass everywhere instead of dirt. Oh, and you only climb for about 5 minutes as opposed to 105.

After a quick look around Old Serum we headed to the Salisbury Cathedral and looked through there for a bit. It wasn't as intricate and exciting as the Winchester Cathedral but it did have one of the only surviving copies of the Magna Carta on display which was really really cool. We also learned that the reason Salisbury was never bombed during WWII is because the Germans used the Cathedral as a marker so they didn't want to destroy it. They would fly over England, locate the cathedral, and then use that as a reference point for bombing other things. So note to self, if you don't want to be bombed, build a huge church in your town.

Anyway, today was definitely one of the best of the trip. We had absolutely gorgeous weather which we were worried about since yesterday so rainy and cold. Tomorrow we're off to Bath, so we'll see you all later!

Winchester- Closer to Sam and Dean than ever

So, our last night bus back from Newcastle (and EVER!) was UTTER HELL. I have no idea why but neither of us slept, we were uncomfortable and when we arrived in London, we probably looked like we had been throuhg the ringer. I felt like my face was like the saggy dog's in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It sucked. I did go pick up some groceries and some hot chocolate as a treat since the weather sucked sucked sucked. The bus to Winchester wasn't a big deal but when we arrived, it was still raining. The bus dropped us off exactly where we needed to be. It was right next to the Information Centre and across the street from the bus station. The man in the info centre was incredibly helpful and pointed us off into the direction of the cathedral.

This being our first outside London Cathedral, I was really excited. Plus, itwas one that I hadn't been to before so it was a whole new experience. The ouside was typically Gothic and the inside was also typically Gothic. We were immediatly greeted by two old men that worked in teh cathedral- David and Brian- who told us about the tour and waited with us until the tour started and chatted with us. I love friendly old people. Kate, our tour guide was also a friendly old person and she was excellent- so very cute. Winchester Cathedral is really cool in the fact that the back half of it is Norman. So there are extreme Gothic elements, but also some lovely Norman pillars and stones in the back after the choir area. The walls and ceilings are ornamented and painted and Jane Austen is buried in the cathedral, having lived in Winchester right ebfore her death. Another interesting point about Winchester is that it's so low to the water source that it often floods. The crypt was flooded the day we were there and we learned the story about teh diver whol spent days under water for four hours at a time, blindly putting in sandbags underneath the church so that the water could be pumped out and cement pumped in in order to make the foundations stronger.

And taht was pretty much Winchester. We walked up to teh old gate that used to be the boundary of Winchester but the rain was still lashing down so we spent the last hour sitting on this comfy bench in the visit centre waiting for our bus. The ride to Saslibury was an experience- two large buses coming at each other at high speeds, water rushing everything, slamming of brakes, banging of doors, it was a rush! No need to learn how to bunjee jump- just go a ride a bus!

Salisbury was wet but very cute and the road to the hostel wasn't far. The hostel was absolutley lovely and I got to meet up with James and Michael and we chatted (Michael only for a bit) but James for a few hours before he had to close up the hostel. It was lovely lovely lovely to have a shower and a warm bed again and we were just praying that the weather the next day would be favorable.

Pictorial Recap of the Last Few Days

So, because most of the picturs are up on facebook and not all of you have facebook, here is a little picture recap.

Wednesday: We leave home and arrived in England after a lovely ride in first class.



Thursday: The backpacks could not have been heavier.


Friday: Shiri thoroughly enjoyed her flake and the Globe Museum.


We both loved the fountains at Trafalgar Square.


We made friends with the guard with the itchy nose.


Saturday: THIS IS ANFIELD!


We Won It Five Times!


Liverbird on my shoulder and in my heart.


Sunday: Shiri made friends with the mummies at the British Museum.


And Michal made friends with the whale at the Natural History Museum.


Monday: We trekked to the top of New Castle in, where else? Newcastle, of course!



Tuesday: We toured St. James's Park



More to come as the trip continues!

Howay the Lads, Howay the Lads!

Day Two in Newcastle! We had read the night before that there was going to be heavy showers. Then Mom said before we went to bed (via facebook chat- again, shall never make fun of that function again....) that it looked like it was going to be a nice day. I (Michal) had a heck of a time getting to sleep and then all of a sudden it was 10:00! The plan was go get up, go find some fabric freshner, some groceries and thencome back and check out. We decided to do a little change of plans: we quickly repacked (sparying things with my Lucky) changed, had some quick breakfast and then checked out. The first St. James's tour was at 11:00, so we made it there in time, was helped by a very friendly gentlement who went quite out of his way to make sure that we found the tour and bought tickets.

Our guide was a sweet old gent named Richard. The tour was wonderful- incidentially, it was slightly different from the one that I had been on the year before. I had been to some places last time that we didn't go to this time (the top floor and the last row of seats, some of the larger banquet rooms, the children's technology room) but we also went to some places on this tour that I hadn't been to before, like the away changing room and a different suite. We also were down the hall from Michael Owen's suite but sadly did not get to see it. I contemplated running down the hall but I honestly bleieve that Richard would have taken me out.

Shiri's thoughts on the tour: Hello! Oh man, the tour was absolutely amazing. The stadium is huge and much more modern and high-tech than Anfield was, which was really cool. It was awesome hearing about all the traditions and history of the club (including famous players and such) because it's all stuff I reallydon't know. The Liverpool tour told us lots of things that I had already heard about, but this was all new, which was fun. We also got to see a lot more on this tour, including the place where all the press conferences are held (we took a picture of each of "signing" with Newcastle United FC). Plus, i got to take a picture near Shearer's, which was cool.

Sadly, no Michael Owen sighting this time but we did get shirts that said "Walking in a Keegan Wonderland." After the tour, we headed east to the Seven Stories Museum. This was quite far out- probably a good fifteen minute walk, out by Ouseburn. We were quite looking forward to this- Seven Stories was basically a museum dedicated to children's books. There had just been an exhibit about Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake (famous illustrator of Dahl's books) and there were also lots of original manuscripts, inclding soem from JK Rowling. However, when we arrived, we found that it wasn't free as I had thought so we decided to just have lunch (oh, I forgot to say that after leaving the tour, we stopped in the Grainger Market and bought some strawberries, apples and tomatos) before heading back to the other side of the city. We walked kind of along the quayside towards the Discovery Museum and it was about a 30 + minute walk because it was literally on the other side of the city, but it went by pretty quickly as I related to Shiri virtually the entire plot and extensive background on all the characters in the first few seasons of Prison Break and she did the same for me regarding the plot of Friday Night Lights. We also did some seriously speculation about what's coming in season 4 of Supernatural. Excellent way to pass the time.

Before we knew it though, we were at the Discovery Museum which was actually really cool. It wasn't Discovery really like at home at teh Cube museum, but there was a little section about magnetism, electicity, sound, motion, etc. The three coolest exhibits were the Newcastle Story, the Soldiers' Story and the Fashion section. There were all these creepy mannequins that again freaked Shiri out, especially the ones that were motion censored. One of them (in the soldier exhibit) started yelling at SHiri when she stepped on teh indicated footprints. That was kind of funny for me. Also, in the beginning of the Newcastle exhibit, there was a creepy bloodied man and a priest and all these other bizarre mannequins. There was also a tortue thing where you pertended you were being branded and when you touched the button, a voice in the background screamed. It was very odd but in general, an incredibly interesting and informative museum.

We left then the museum closed and headed to get dinner. The only problem is that seriously, where the frick do people in newcastle shop? Because we cannot seem to find a grocery store in the entire city. We finally found this place called Herrons which did not have a great selection but luckily, we were able to buy some chicken slices for sandwhiches (the hostel had free bread) and then foudn another grocery store that kind of sucked. Thank goodness for being back down south tomorrow where hopefully there is Tescos. Because we love their bread.

Now we're blogging and uploading pictures and in about half an hour, we're going to head back out and enjoy the gorgeous weather Newcastle has to offer today. Then our last night bus (halle-frickin-lujah) and ten tomorrow Winchester, Salisbury and seeing James and Michael! Then Bath, Stonehenge, Avebury and then the end of nights in hostels and the beginning of relying on friends. Yay for friends.

PS- Shiri wanted to mention that absolutely adorable, freckle-faced Australian lad in a Michael Owen kit on the tour. He seriously was so cute!

I'm Coming Home Newcastle, I Wish I'd Never Been Away

Newcastle! Rain! What else!

We arrived around 5:30 in the morning in Newcastle. This is when you DON'T want to be early. Because then you are stuck walking around in the pouring rain trying to figure out what you wanted and should do. However, the figurative sun was shining down on us. We went to the hostel and checked in. The sweet girl at the desk asked if we wanted to upgrade to a double room (aka, just us in there) since there was one free at the moment. I thought it was going to be 5 pounds each but as she was checking us in, I was telling her our situation and how we only had one more night bus and if James had screwed our Salisbury hostel up I would kill him and she's like "well, because you're the rain-bringer" (yes, not in Newcastle for fifteen minutes and I already have a nickname) "and because I don't want a screwdriver in my back, I'll give you a discount." So, for only 6 pounds altogether, we got a room right away juts for us. After long and well-deserved showers, we fell asleep for about six or seven hours. It was heavenly.

Upon emergence from a dead sleep, we got dressed and headed out into a somewhat cloudy Newcastle. (OK, sidenote. There is a seagull not shutting up outside the window right now. It's like in Nemo "Mine, mine, mine. End sidenote). We decided, seeing that it was about 3:00, to head first to the castle keep and then see where we were with time. The first thing we saw of the Castle was all scaffolding and I nearly died. The Newcastle Keep is absolutely gorgeous and I was just gutted that it was covered up! We went through the Black Gate and upon seeing the other side of the castle, I was greatly cheered to discover that only two sides were being worked on. So we just pretended that it wasn't there. Because I've already been there, I'll let Shiri talk about her experiences at the castle.

Why thank you, Michal. Okay, so for the record, as we were walking up the steps of the castle to the visitor's center I told Michal that just for kicks, while we were in the castle she should call me Aurora and I should call her Belle, but needless to say, she didn't really go for the idea. Fun-sucker.

The castle was amazing though. It was picturesque and medieval and creepy and beautiful and everything a castle should be. It was really fun just exploring the random staircases (one of which leads nowhere), looking down the uber deep well, and pretending to be locked behind bars. We also went up to the roof (where it was raining) and looked out at a spectacular view of Newcastle. It really is an awesome city. On one side of the Tyne there are all the old buildings like the castle and train station and St. John the Baptist Cathedral, which are all built in that sort of medieval/olden time style. Then on the other side are buildings like the Gateshead and Baltic Museum which are both really modern--but not that ugly kind of modern, but the really artsy type of moder, with lots of glass and shiny things, and cool architecture. So it was fun seeing the meshing of old and new.

Okay, so I'm done talking about the castle. Now, Michal, back to you in the studio.

All righty then, where were we? Ah yes, leaving the castle, we walked across the bridge and then down the quayside (pronounced Key-side) to the BALTIC. This is a contemporary art museum housed in the old Baltic Flour Mill building. Six stories, over 200 stairs and some very odd exhibits. I won't get into too many of them but there was this one that had some crazy video installations, one exhibit that had several houses constructed with the same Japanese-y styled painting of the same girl scattered throughout all the buildings. She kind of creeped Shiri out a little. My favorite was this digital technology exhibit with these tinted mirrors that made you look both purple or orange, depending on where you were standing. It was crazy!

When the BALTIC closed, we went searching for a supermarket and discovered every place and their mother closes at 6:00. So that left us going to subway for dinner, which was fine. Tomorrow, we'll plan better and get some supermarket food for lunch and dinner and preparation for the next day as well.

So, on plan for tomorrow- St. James's, maybe the Laing Art Gallery and Seven Stories, a museum dedicated to children's books. Awesome!

Lions and Tigers and Red Pandas, Oh My!

Our ride back down to London was uneventful and for some reason, a delay or something, we arrived later than expected. Perfect- just what we like to hear and no, I'm not being sarcastic this time. We probably got out onto the "road" around 8:30 and took the long walk down Victoria and Fleet Street back to Saint Paul's for church. On the way, we watched the set-up for the British 10K, saw more Gatorade in one place than we ever have in our entire lives and had breakfast on the steps of St. Martins in the Field. Our arrival at St. Paul's was met with some disappointment as it was now 9:30 and the next service was not until 11:00. So we sat down on the grass near the Thames in order to wait and plan and relax and guess what? IT FRICKIN' STARTS TO RAIN!

WTF, mate?

Church was amazing though. St. Paul's is an absolutely gorgeous Romanesque cathedral with beautifully domed ceilings, mosaics, paintings of Christ and the apostles and the prophets. The service was also beautiful- the music was taken from Mozart's Coronation Mass and unfortunately, we did miss some of it because we were both nodding off. The choir boys and the choir sang beautifully and the music just filled the halls with glorious melodies.

Upon leaving St. Paul's, the original plan had been to go to Camden but it was raining and windy so we stopped in at Tescos, our new favorite place, and tubed it over to the British Museum. After getting slightly lost (dude, the map we looked at could not be more incorrect!) we arrived at the Greco-Roman building that holds everything the British stole from other countries and civilizations. We ate lunch in the Great Hall and then headed into the exhibits. Our favorite, by far, were the Roman, Greek and Egyptian exhibits. There were this awesomely huge Egyptian head that looked incredibly jolly- who knew the Egyptians could be jolly? But this bloke certainly was. The Romans also had some excellent statues, especially the one of Marcus Aurelius who looks bored out of his skull (we also encountered an American family who was slightly obsessed with Marcus Aurelius. It was slightly odd....).

It wasn't too wet when we left the BM and it was only a short tube ride away to the Natural History Museum. This building was gorgeously gothic and didn't look like it was a museum. Inside we were amused by dinosaur skeletons, large moving t-rexes, a dinosaur hand giving us the thumbs up and a replication, bones, muscles and all, of a dino leg. Also, of course, the massive mammal section, with everything from red pandas, the dugong, horses, elephants, marmots (for Megan!), dolphins, blue whale, etc., etc., etc. We also went to the marine section, passed by the creepy crawlies, enjoyed the creation of the world and rode the escalator up into the center of the earth (passing by the solar system). The Natural History museum definitely rivals other awesome NHM like in New York, LA and Washington DC and comes highly recommended by US.

Our last adventure of the night was the Jack the Ripper tour. We headed down to Tower Hill and enjoyed the Tower of London, the City Hall building, the Thames and the aptly named Tower Bridge (NO, this is NOT the London Bridge, people... Fergie.... idiotic people.... etc.) We crossed under the bridge by St. Katherine's dock and walked up onto the bridge and then back to Tower Hill. This was probably our first meal of bread, chicken, grapes and of course, the raisins, what did not conclude with us running for shleter. Hurray. That was lovely.

The Jack the Ripper tour was also pretty sweet. As a preview, imagine this- a cool tour guide named Molly with a penchant for drama, a fainting Spartan, lots of blood, guts and gore and Johnny Depp. Be prepared....

Our ride to Newcastle was excellent. We are going to check facebook to see how our picture uploading is going and shall return soon.

We Love You Liverpool, We Do

Our first nightbus night was definitely interesting. Aside from the fiasco mentioned in the previous post and having to deal with extremely obnoxious and terrifying teenage mothers (seriously, this one girl was insane--homegirl needed to take a chill pill), I had a really hard time sleeping just because we were sitting in a bus. Not the most ideal conditions. So needless to say, I was in a pretty bad mood on the bus, but then all of a sudden I looked outside the bus window and we were passing through the quaint English countryside and the sheer beauty and cuteness of it all put a smile on my face. And then as we passed over a little hill I spotted some COWS! They were absolutely adorable. Finally seeing the cows and sheep that I had been dying to see for so long made me really really happy. Now you might wonder why i'm so excited about cows, because we have them at home, right? Wrong! These cows are WAY cooler because they're the fun, clean black and white ones (as opposed to the uglier dark brown ones we have at home), and they hang out on lucious green grass (rather than dusty brown dirt and weeds that wish they were grass) so the contrast between the grass and their spots is gorgeous. seriously, it's a sight to see. So getting to see the cute little country cottages and farms made the fact that I couldn't sleep okay.

We arrived in Liverpool around 6:00 AM and headed to the train station to find a place to crash for a few hours until things started to open. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes after we found a nice place to sit, we got kicked out of our little corner by station police who said we weren't allowed to be there. Great. So we had to sit in terribly uncomfortable benches not conducive to sleeping and attempted to rest while strange people walked by (one of whom yelled "Boo!" to Michal and then walked off chuckling to himself--he was probably about 40 years old too).

Around 8:00 we gave up trying to rest and just got up to explore. It was raining outside (what's new?) so we headed over to this little square with a bumch of shops around. The Liverpool FC Official Club Store was just opening so we headed in to look around. It was heaven. They had everything you could possibly imagine, from the classics of jerseys, scarves, and hats, to completely random things like golf tees and dog water bowls--and it all had an LFC crest or liverbird, or "You'll Never Walk Alone" on it. It took a great deal of effort to not buy out the entire store. Michal did find a longsleeve jersy on sale for 8 pounds though, which was really exciting.

By the time we were done with the store we were pretty hungry so we found a grocery store, got some food (and an umbrella for me because we had only brought one) and found a sketchy little stoop to eat on (because everything else was wet). After eating we too the bus to Anfield (LFC stadium)!! We took the stadium tour which was so amazing. We went into the away team changing room (because the home team one was undergoing renovation), took pictures with the jerseys, explored the dressing room areas a bit, walked through the players entrance to the stadium and touched the "This is Anfield" sign, and sat in the seats of the stadium, learning about the history of the field and the team, etc. We absolutely loved it--it was awesome. There was this really sweet tourguide who really enjoyed taking pictures of us for us--it was kind of wierd but very nice of her. The club museum was also pretty interesting. Both of us were close to tears while watching the documentary recounting the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, and getting to look at the cup on display as well as see old jerseys and the like was really insane.

By the time we were done with the tour, the weather had cleared up a lot and it was absolutely beautiful. We took the bus back to the town centre and walked down to Albert Dock, on the Mersey river (we didn't ferry across it though, so we didn't get to hear the "Ferry Cross the Mersey" song unfortunately). This is where parts of Accross the Universe were filmed. There was some kind of crazy yachting convention thing going on and people were freaking out waving at the people in the boats which was odd, so it made things really crowded. We first checked out the International Slavery Museum which was pretty interesting, then the Magical History Tour which was a really cool exhibit about the history of the town of Liverpool. Unfrotunately we were so tired we didn't really get a chance to enjoy it. We were kind of falling asleep standing up.

We decided to take a little nap/picnic on a large grassy area near the museums but about 10 minutes after we laid down, what happens? Ah yes, the heavens open on us. Yes, CCR, we saw the rain coming down on a sunny day. Seriously, there were white puffy clouds in the sky and sun shining, yet raindrops were falling on our heads...and our picnic of cherry tomatoes and carrots. So we rushed into shelter. The rain stopped 5 mintues later but by that time the grass was wet so we couldnt' go back so we headed to the Liverpool City Library to take advantage of free wifi. It was actually a really nice museum but it closed about 30 mintues after we got there--enough time to upload a few facebook albums and write half a blog post.

After the library closed we decided to lounge on the grass in the square across the street and five minutes later, it started to rain. seriously, the clouds probably retain all their water all day and then when they see us go to lie down on grass they say, "Oh look, Michal and Shiri are resting on the grass--let's let out the water!!" and they rain on us. Not even kidding.

We wandered for forever trying to find a place to get dinner but everything was either a 45 minute wait or closed (everyhting closes SO early here its ridiculous) until we finally found a place called Bella Italia which was delicious but we had this extremely odd waitor named Ben. We weren't too sure what to think about him. Our pizza was delicious though.

Then after dinner, it was back to the Coach station to take our bus back to London. We were considering trying to take a bus to find Penny Lane (who's in our ears and in our eyes) but we couldn't figure out the right bus and we were tired so we were over it.

All in all though, the day in Liverpool was great. It's an amazing city, rich with culture and history, and really creepy teenagers.

8 Mile Continuation

OK, so we apologize for it being like a month later (ok, like three days) but believe us, it's felt like 18 months.

So, where did we leave off?

OK, the Museum of London, I believe. So we left the Museum of London and headed our long trek, about 3 miles down first Fleet Street and then Victoria back to the station. After passing St. Paul's again, we headed down to the Old Bailey because Shiri wanted to see everything that had been blown up in V for Vendetta. As we walked by the Central Criminal Court, there was a group of people congregating outside. A few seconds after we passed, we heard cheering and turned around to see them hugging two people who had apparently just been released. So random! They literally pulled out champagne and plastic cups.

On our walk down Fleet Street, we passed the Royal Court of Justice (as seen on Bridget Jones' Diary, the second one), St. Mary-le-Bow, some theatres and a lovely Cromwell statue. Upon arrival in Trafalgar Square, we had a little picnic on the grass (until Shiri decided to throw the pigeons some bread, the idiot). We read some weird England and relaxed before walking down Whitehall. For the first time ever, there were no horse guards but we did get to witness the changing of the guard there! One commander and three little soldiers in full uniform. It was pretty cool to watch and we took a picture with our favorite guard there.

Side note: As it was Fourth of July, we were keeping our eyes open for anything "American". And as we were walking out of Whitehall, there was this guy who had a backpack with an American flag and a little sign that read "Happy Fourth of July. We Won!" It was hilarious but sadly we didn't get a chance to chat with him.

We continued down Whitehall, past Inigo Jones's Banqueting House, the War Cabinet, 10 Downing Street where Mr. Gordon Brown now lives until we reached the Houses of Parliament. There was obviously something going down there that night because we kept seeing older men and their wives dressed to the nines going into the building and there was more security there than on a normal day.

And that was, we thought, the end to our day. We would go back to the coach station, ride our little night bus up to Liverpool and that was it. But no. At the station, there were apparently two buses combined into one coach. So about 13 of us, including two little girls (neither who, sadly, look like they have great futures judging by their mothers- the little girls were both absolutely adorable though...) had to wait for half an hour for another bus which would take us to Birmingham. Then at Birmingham (and seriously, who in their right mind wants to go there?), we had to wait half an hour to catch another coach that would drop us off in Liverpool.

Insanity? No, just our lives.

8 Miles

So today was insane! Well, yesterday, actually, but let's just pretend that today is the Fourth of July. So Happy Independence Day, America. We got up, had breakfast, checked out of the hostel, stopped by the Westminster (now UMI for some reason- that actually sounds like a disease or something) and the Prince Edward and then ehaded down to Victoria to drop our stuff off. We then had about three minor/major disasters which we are just not even going to get into because it'll upset me way too much and so let's just skip ahead to about noon when we finally left Victoria and headed down towards the Westminster Bridge. It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny, and not too many clouds in the sky. We walked all the way down, past the Abbey and Parliament Square again (where we got to wish Mr. Lincoln a Happy Fourth of July) and then crossed over the Thames to the South Bank.

We walked along the Victorian Embankment, passing such buildlings like the Aquarium, the National Theatre and the OXO tower, street preformers like a beautiful cellist, a guitarist who was singing "Achey-Breaky Heart" (Shiri laughed) and "living statues" and of course, stopped in at a used book sale. Our journey led us all the way to the Tate Modern, which was deliciously weird as usual. There was this fantastic exhibit called 9 Scripts which was all about different people's reactions to the war- detainees, soldiers, lawyers of prisoners of war, etc. It was very fascinating and of course, the other exhibits of the tate left us confused and interested. My favorite was this one piece where the lady flattened over 1000 pieces of silver and then put it together into thirty arrangemetns. Pretty cool.

Next we hopped over next door to the Globe Theater. It's an awesome recreation of the old theatre that was around in Shakepseare's day. We got to do a tour and learn about the history and then go inside but we didn't really get to explore the interior at all because there was a play being rehearsed so we couldn't disturb the actors. It was kind of disappointing, but the sheer awesomeness of the Globe itself and the idea that we were hanging out sort of where Shakespeare hung out 400 years ago made the disappointment bearable. The Shakespeare freak inside of Shiri was giggling with delight. We also looked around the museum for a while but it wasn't as exciting as it could have been. They're currently putting on productions of King Lear and some other Shakepseare plays so we're going to try to go see one later in the trip.

We crossed the Millunium Bridge to St. Paul's, took a few pictures but mainly headed around to go to the Museum of London. This was the third time I had been there and the third time that almost everything but the top floor was closed. Oh well, it was all good.

Sadly, our adventures must momentarily end here since the Liverpool library is closing. More tomorrow on the weather adventures of Liverpool as well as a continuing of our long Fourth of July journey.

Fingers Crossed....

Well Hello from the land of the Spice Girls, Harrods, and pick-up cricket in the park. We've finally arrived and we have had the most ridiculous first day you can imagine. For the three people who will actually read this thing, I'll give you a little playby-play of what went down. It all started when we left the house at 9:30 this morning to take a second shot at making our flight to Cincinnati (our standby tickets didn't get us on the Tuesday morning flight).When we checked the seat availability before leaving the house, it looked like there were lots of empty seats so we were optimistic. Only a few minutes before we were supposed to board, however, the Delta man comes on that speaker-phone thing and says "This flight is completely full so there will be no seat changes allowed." Well "oh dang" we thought, and I boldly went to the counter to investigate. When I politely asked the nice gentleman whether or not there would be a seat for us on the plane he very impolitely answered "Noooooooooooo" (literally, with 12 o's). "Really?" I ask in a very puppy dog-esque tone. He oh-so-considerately replies, "Well we have to wait until every customer is accommodated but let me tell you, it does. Not. Look. Good." (with wrinkled eyebrows and a very "you are a 5-year old and I'm speaking to you like you're retarded" kind of expression…I didn't appreciate it very much).

So we start freaking out, Michal rushes to the pay phone to call our mother and find out the situation and meanwhile I start up a nice conversation with the lady sitting next to me all about the woes of weather delays and buddy pass travel. A few minutes later our name was called and we got on the plane, no problem. Seriously, Delta-man, why did you have to do that to us? Every stand-by person in the terminal who wanted a spot on the flight got one, and everyone was just happy as a clam. So that was some unnecessary stress to begin the day.

The flight to Cincinnati was uneventful—we watched Drillbit Taylor, which I'm quite glad we didn't pay money for, and read all about SHC (spontaneous human combustion: wikipedia it, I guarantee you'll be quite intrigued and at least slightly disturbed). The only available seats on the connecting flight into London were First Class so we were forced to ride in that cabin the whole 8-hour flight over the Atlantic. It was painful, let me tell you.

But no, seriously, the accommodations were so lovely, the whole idea of a special First Class cabin should be illegal. The seats were so big and cushy that my feet didn't even touch the floor, and next to the seat there was this little diagram of the chair with buttons showing arrows the pointed in the direction that you could shift the chair. We could adjust footrest length and angle, seat length, and headrest inclination. It was marvelous. We also got our own personal TVs with little remote controls that offered an extremely diverse selection of movies, TV shows, HBO specials, etc. The things that you have to pay for in coach were complimentary in First Class. And the food….oh my gosh the food. We were greeted by Julie, the very kind "head flight attendant" who gave us MENUS and asked OUR ORDER for dinner: Michal and I had such a difficult time deciding what to eat because the foods were so fancy we had no idea what they were!! We ordered what appeared to be the most normal thing on the menu—and what followed was a five-course meal. On an airplane!! It was insane. First was the salad/appetizer that we ordered, next came a bread plate, then the main dish, then a fruit/cheese platter, and finally an adorable little ice cream sundae for dessert. It was really quite lovely.

Taking advantage of the plethora of entertainment options aboard, we began with watching Definitely, Maybe (absolutely adorable), then proceeded to watch Jumper (also quite good, very odd though). It was during this film that a truly tragic thing happened. I had been lying in my chair in the position that the "sleep" button created for me but decided to shift because my leg was falling asleep. However during this shift, I bumped my personal remote control and my movie stopped!!! It went back to the beginning and I had to fast-forward through about ¾ of the film to get it back to where I started. I freaked out and panicked for a second because I didn't know what was going on and I was in a dark, not-so-claustrophobic, yet still unfamiliar place, and was really quite upset because Jamie Bell and Hayden Christensen were in the middle of al really intense argument and I was certain a punch was about to be thrown. It was extremely frustrating and traumatizing. Just ask Michal. (And if you can believe it, this was the smallest problem we encountered that day). Anyway, after that was done we decided to try and get some sleep but I simply could not fall asleep (I discovered later that it probably had something to do with the several glasses of Diet Coke I had drunk during dinner.) So after lying in the "sleep" position in the dark for two and a half hours listening to my iPod, everything from Celine Dion to Steve Miller Band to Jonas Brothers to Big Band Swing, I gave up and went back to visual entertainment (an episode each of Hannah Montana, Big Bang Theory, and Flight of the Conchords). It was heaven.

And now I'm going to let Michal take over and talk about our post-airplane experience, because believe me the fun does not stop here…

PS. Pictures are up on her facebook so look if you're interested. I haven't gotten them up on mine yet, so just hang tight and I'll get around to it eventually.

--Shiri


So I'm in an incredibly frustrated and asdflaerwoigsdf mood right now so I apologize if it is reflected in my section of the blog. In all honesty, the morning started out just great. We got out of Gatwick with no problems whatsoever- we even sat in the "first class seats" of the train (although backwards, which, as my good friend Sara and I recently discussed, is not a good thing). When we arrived at Victoria, we decided to head straight to the STA office, which was about a block away. That's when it began…. And by it, I mean the downpour of rain. We busted out the umbrella (the $1 of high quality) and that sort of protected us but by the time we arrived at the STA office we were slightly wet. And disturbed to discover that it must be costume day at the STA office, seeing as that there was a man dressed up as a nun helping a customer, a clown talking on the phone and Braveheart asking us to take a seat, he'd be right with us. When we got over the shock of being helped by a man in a kilt, horrible wig and blue face, we got down to business. (it really was the most authentic Braveheart outfit we'd ever seen in our entire lives) Disappointment number 2 for the day. It was the most unsatisfactory STA visit I have ever experiences. First, they weren't able to book us for the Salisbury hostel and secondly, the tour of Oxford and Stratford was booked up! Man, oh man, we felt unlucky. But on the upside, the rain was over, it was sunny outside and we headed up the path to Buckingham Palace.

We arrived at the gorgeous home of the Queen around 11:00. This was an hour out of the changing of the guard, but the fence was already packed and so we headed over to the Barracks where the band was practicing and the gunmen were already lined up and ready to go. We experienced a wonderful yet impromptu concert from the band and then headed into the Guards Museum. Now, this is a little gem of London that people rarely talk about. It's right behind the Barracks, next to the Guard's Chapel but it is a wonderful little museum and I have never met a staff more friendly and ready to talk with you. The previous year, I spent the good part of a n hour not wandering through the small exhibits of the history of the Queen's/King's guard but actually talking to the lovely old gentleman working at the museum. One of the things he taught me was to tell what group the guards were a part of according to the number of buttons on their jackets. I couldn't remember what one button was but the new gentleman working was pleased that I remembered the rest. For all of you at home: one button=grenadiers, two buttons=coldstream, three buttons=Scots, four buttons=Irish and five buttons=Welsh. Remember and learn that, there will be a test at the end of this blog.

After the Guard's Museum (which I suggest you ALL check out next time you are in London), we went to Westminster Abbey, home to al the famous dead people in England. My favorite part was Oliver Cromwell's beautiful area with the gorgeous stained glass windows and the ever-famous Poet's Corner. We were there just in time for Holy Communion, so we got a chance to experience that, which was incredible but very different from Voyagers or Sterry. It was very much steeped in tradition and ritual and to experience that in Westminster Abbey was very moving.

Having enjoyed our little rest in the Abbey, we decided to make our way to the hostel. We walked in between Green Park and Buckingham Palace, through the Wellington Arch area (which I had never been to) and up to Hyde Park. We caught a quick peek of the side of Harrods and then headed into the park. Usually, this would be a pleasant experience but we were, as mentioned earlier, lugging the entire population of Bury St. Edmunds on our back. We took a little rest on the banks of the Serpentine and then plugged onward, becoming horribly turned around by those sneaky waters. We did again end up in places I had been before on the London trip, so it was nice to become reacquainted with the Peter Pan statue and the Spike Church. Finally we arrived at dear Queensway. So much yet so little had changed since I had last been there- the Hilton was still on the corner, there were the numerous Bella Italias, the falafel shop. However, no Internet café, no lingerie shop, the addition of a Starbucks. Yet, it was like home!

We easily found out way to the hostel. Quick background- we obviously hadn't made it out the day we wanted to so we sent the hostel an email saying that we wanted to cancel our first room and to please save the rest of the nights since we would be arriving the next day. Apparently, the first claim was that they never got the message. So they gave away not just our room from Wednesday, but ALL our rooms. Meaning we had no place to stay. Now, I understand business. And I understand good business. But that was just shady shady business. So with some cajoling and fighting, the guy finally gave us a double-room to ourselves (I guess the only one there was left) but didn't make us pay more. However, he said that from now on, we were on a night-by-night basis. Fan-frickin'-tastic. He was kinda sleazy and I nicknamed him Shady Daisy although his name was Jan/Young (Shiri and I argued over this for about five seconds). We got up to our room, which was pretty nice (and has a view of the PRINCE EDWARD!), and got out the computer to start to do some research on hostels. Total suckage. Nothing was cheap, nothing was practically available it was some pretty dire straits. We sent a couple of emails to people who could hopefully help us out and then headed out for dinner and a picnic in the park.

It was on our way to the picnic in the park that we came up with our Plan B. Plan B basically removes the need for hostels until Salisbury. We'll spend tomorrow in London, then night-bus it up to Liverpool. Saturday will be in Liverpool and then we'll night-bus it back. Sunday will be in London at Church and Camden Market and Primrose Hill area (everyone, PRAY for good weather), and then we'll bus it up to Newcastle. Monday and Tuesday will be in Newcastle with a night bus back to London on Tuesday night. Then Wednesday, we'll head over to Winchester and then train it up to Salisbury and stay at James and Michael's hostel for a few days before heading back to London for one night. Then it would be hanging with Hazel down in Brighton until she kicked us out and hopefully hostels would be free-er farther down the road for the last week of our trip.

With our Plan B happily brewing, we sat down in Hyde Park for our lovely picnic. And that's when it began again. And yes, by it, I do mean an absolute downpour. But this wasn't just downpour, this was thunder and lightening and I think some locusts were involved at some point. We were under a tree AND an umbrella and still getting wet. Classic, classic. Now I know why Eeyore is so depressed all the time. When we finally got back to the hostel, things continued to sort of not go well. We were having some Internet problems, we still couldn't get the phone card to work, hostels the following week were still looking bad. Something needed to go right! And finally, after four failed phone attempts, two busy signals and two times making a connection and having it cut out two seconds later, I got in touch with James, our new hero. (For those of you who don't know, James is an Australian that I met in Newcastle when he worked in a hostel up there and is now working in a hostel in Salisbury.) He got our dates down and told me that we'd facebook chat in about fifteen minutes (PS- I will never laugh at facebook chat again in my life). When he finally got in touch, he told me he had booked us room and it was all good! Hooray, hooray, hooray! We planned to meet on Wednesday and hang out before he went to Paris and there was finally a little ray of sunshine in our day. So tomorrow it's to the coach station to purchase numerous tickets to various places in the country, a stop at the STA office in hopes of getting a hostel in Newcastle (if not, there's always camping on the quayside), then a jaunt around the Tower of London, the HMS Belfast, the Globe, the Tate Modern and St. Paul's. Lovely.