Oxford, Bath, Stonehenge: The Real Hogwarts

This past weekend was the Oxford, Bath, Stonehenge trip.  In case I haven't mentioned this before, England is the land of roundabouts!  Where we have our complicated over and under interchanges, helping to keep traffic from slowing down, they have millions of roundabouts, which causes traffic to move slower.  The smaller roundabouts work just like Troy's, with a quarter-turn lane and another lane for going farther than that.   The bigger ones remind me of Troy before the circle change, with 2 (plus) lanes going around a massive greenspace. These roundabouts will occur if a road intersects the A1 or if the M1 (or some other such highway) intersects it. In addition, most cars here are manual.  In fact, if you don't get a manual drivers license (in other words, you take it in an automatic and don't learn how to drive manual), you have a limited license and can't legally drive a manual, even if you learn later! (thanks go to Chloe for this information.)  So these coaches that we go on these trips in are manual and, despite the hours upon hours that I've spent on them, no driver has managed to stall the coach.  Until this weekend when the driver stalled it 3 times!  I thought it was pretty comical, though I didn't appreciate the jerkiness of his driving and the millions of roundabouts and windy roads he was taking us on.  Anyways.  Enough about that.  Onto my trip!

We left Harlaxton at 8 in the morning in order to get to Oxford by 10:30.  We only got 4 hours in Oxford, so priorities were made.  This meant that I didn't end up having enough time to go through the Oxford Castle, but I got to see it and the trade-off was definitely worth it!  Alayna and I headed to Christ Church College, Oxford University straight off the coach.  Not only did we get to walk around the campus of one of the most prestigious universities in the world, but we also got mistaken for students!  Christ Church College is important to us for a number of reasons.  1) Alayna would kill me if I didn't mention that J.R.R. Tolkien was there.  2) Lewis Carroll (which is a pen name) taught there and was influence by it for the Alice stories.  3) Parts of the college were used in the filming of Harry Potter!  I already knew about the Harry Potter filming locations, so I was prepared when we walked into the entryway, but Alayna either didn't know or had forgotten and it was great watching the realization dawn on her face!  Because in this entryway is the staircase from Harry Potter!  The two scenes that I always remember from it are: 1) when the First Years are waiting to go into the Great Hall and Neville finds Trevor the toad and Malfoy introduces himself to Harry; 2) at the end of Sorcerer's Stone when Ron and Hermione are standing at the top looking down from the banister at Harry, who had just left the hospital wing to join them for the End-of-Term Feast.  Many pictures were taken of me and this staircase.  But wait!  The Harry Potterness doesn't end there!  At the top of the stairs is the Great Hall!  We got to go into the room that was used as the Great Hall as well!  (it doesn't look exactly the same, but it's still awesome!)  We also found Professor Trelawney's ancestor in a portrait on the wall there!  (Also, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, which I thought was interesting.)  We also got to visit the church in the College and walk by the massive library and around the grounds, which is where we sat and ate our sack lunches.  After that we headed over to Alice's Shop, where the real Alice (inspiration for Alice in Wonderland) bought her sweets, which is now an Alice souvenir shop, and the Oxford Shop next door.  I of course picked up a few Alice-related things, and a something for Ellen as well!  After the shops, we walked back towards Oxford Castle, stopping to watch some street preformers (I went to go to the bathroom and when I came back out, Alayna had bought their cd!).  We found Oxford Castle but I didn't feel I had enough time to really go through it, so we just looked around the shop, where I found some Sour Plooms! (hard sour apple candies that are amazing but really hard to find), and played in the stocks.  We had about half an hour or so left before we needed to get back on the coach, so we went into the museum across the street from the coach pick-up point and looked at the special exhibit on one of the printing presses from the 19th century, which I found really cool.  (except most of the books were in French, so I couldn't read them.)  Then it was back on the coach and on to Bath!

We got to Bath around 4, a bit late to do any museums or anything that day.  Alayna tried to go to the spa baths that night, but it was too long a line, so she decided to do it the next day instead and we met for dinner. We went to Pultney Bridge (a bridge over the river that's lined with shops, so you don't realize you're on the bridge) and found this absolutely amazing Indian restaurant.  Seriously the best Indian food I've had here!  We also saw some fellow Harlaxton students (though not from the group).  I wish I could've had another plate of that chicken tikka masala and nan.  It was soooo good!  After dinner we walked around Bath a bit, just seeing what's there for tomorrow.  Then we hiked back up the 2 mile steep hill to the hostel (why pay for a cab or bus when we're perfectly capable of walking?).  We were planning on doing a little bit of homework, but Gretchen and Lyndsey were in the room, so we ended up talking with them instead!

The next morning we were back on the bus at 9 and at Wells Cathedral by 10.  We only had 45 minutes to look at the cathedral and try to get some lunch.  We kind of walked quickly through the cathedral (since by this time I, for one, am pretty tired of seeing cathedrals) and went to the cafe for some food (which we had to scarf down.  try doing that with a hot drink!).  Then we were back on the bus for another 15 minutes or so for the reason I went on the day trip (other than the fact that we had already paid for it), Glastonbury Abbey.  The ruins are absolutely gorgeous!  And flowers were coming up, so it really was perfect.  This is the Abbey where King Arthur and Guinevere are supposed to be buried.  And Arthur's grave is marked.  Thanks to Mr. Davis Senior year (and the King Arthur movie a bunch of us watched a few weeks ago) I was pretty excited to see this.  There was plenty to look at there, but I was ready to get back to Bath by the time we had to get on the coach to leave.  We got back to Bath around 1 and were dropped off down towards the center of town, so we didn't have to walk down the hill from our hostel and that saved some time!  Alayna and I (and a lot of other Harlaxton people, it turned out) headed straight for the Jane Austen Centre.  She spent time in Bath, both as a visitor and living there, and two novels are set and influenced by Bath.  Northanger Abbey shows Bath in a good light, influenced by her visits there, while Persuasion shows Bath's faults, influenced by the time she lived in Bath.  The Jane Austen Centre showed her Bath and her life there and how it influenced her and such.  It was pretty interesting, especially because those are two of my favorite novels of hers.  I bought a couple of little souvenirs there as well (some one's getting a surprise when I get home!).  After Jane Austen, Alayna sped off to the baths, where she ended up waiting almost 2 hours for her hour and a half spa time.  According to her it was totally worth it though!  Left on my own, I happily meandered around Bath.  My first stop was the Assembly Rooms and Fashion Museum.  The Assembly Rooms were absolutely gorgeous!  And the Fashion Museum had so much to look at!  When you first went in there, there was an exhibit on wedding dresses throughout the centuries, which was perfect since I had gone to see a similar exhibit in Charleston over the summer.  Then there were the changing fashions from the 1600s to 1900.  Some absolutely gorgeous dresses, along with some styles that were just plain interesting.  The last part in the museum was fashion from 1900 to the present.  I loved seeing the changing styles there too.  One of the guy mannequins even had a tattoo on his arm!  One of the 2009 outfits was totally something I could see people wearing.  And there was a white dress with black lace on the front that was I absolutely loved!  After getting my fill of fashion and talking myself out of a 15 pound reusable bag (I can make my own) I walked through the Circus, which was a roundabout with curved terraced buildings surrounding it, to the Royal Crescent.  The Royal Crescent is a set of terrace houses that were (and are) for the well-to-do and have a great view of the city.  By the way, the city buildings all look exactly the same!  They are all basically the same design and are made out of the same yellowish tan stone.  Not exactly my type of town.  I next walked through a park on my way back to the city center.  There I went into Waterstone's (like a Boarders) and bought a copy of Philosopher's Stone.  I splurged a bit and bought the hardcover, because it still had the original cover on it, unlike the paperback ones which have the crappy new cover on them.  They had a Costa in Waterstone's, so, since I was hungry, I went in there and bought myself some hot chocolate and a muffin and proceeded to relax and read some Philosopher's Stone.  After a bit I left and roamed the city center, doing some shopping. I met Alayna around 6 and we went to KFC for dinner (we needed to save a bit of money).  I cannot get over the fact that they have fries at KFC and shakes (which were quite good-the shakes, not the fries) but no mac-n-cheese, mashed potatoes, or biscuits!  I think Alayna got a bit tired with my exclamations over the fries after a bit to be quite honest.  But seriously, fries at KFC?!  I needed to do some reading that evening, so I headed back up to the hostel while Alayna went to go look at the Royal Crescent.  Some reading was accomplished, so that was a plus.

Sunday we left went as a group to the Roman Baths, which were quite interesting to look at, but I personally didn't need the entire almost 2 hours there.  Luckily there was a pasty shop with absolutely amazing hot chocolate right next door, so I passed my time drinking that and talking to Josh while we waited for the rest of the group to get done.  Some of the baths still had water in them, which was pretty cool.  Some parts were kind of dark and creepy to go look at, but I went in anyways because I wanted to see everything!  They also had a little exhibit on the Romans there, and there was a skeleton!  I love looking at skeletons and wishing I knew forensic anthropology.  After we finished at the Roman Baths, it was on the coach an on to Stonehenge.  We had 45 minutes at Stonehenge, which was plenty of time.  It was quite windy there, which made it cold and not incredibly cold.  For me, Stonehenge was just a stop on the trip that I wanted (Oxford and Bath).  It was a lot less impressive in person.  Plus I had kind of gotten my fill of it Senior year with Mr. Davis!  Unfortunately, no aliens were sighted, but I did see a girl with a Dr. Who Sonic Screwdriver, which i think should count!  A little over an hour stop in Salisbury for lunch followed (yummy Pizza Hut, and more Costa) then it was back on the bus for the long ride back to Harlaxton.  Actually, there was one more stop.  Alayna had the bus stop for an emergency bathroom break (which elicited a few cheers from others with full bladders).

I've got a super busy week this week, but I'm going to be rewarding myself with Barcelona!  Tune in next week for my Spanish stories! (probably not written in Spanish)