This weekend was amazing! All of the little villages were so cute! A lot of them are used in movies like Harry Potter and Pride and Prejudice. Chelsea and I met the coach bus outside the Great Portland tube station at around 8:30 AM Saturday along with about 15 other people. We booked our tour through International Friends and if you go to and go to "England's Green and Pleasant Land" you will see an overview of the tour we went on.
Our first stop was Oxford which was very much like a college town. The students at Oxford University are not back yet so the town and the university grounds were kind of quiet. Our tour guide was a graduate of Oxford University. He explained to us the collegiate system that is used at Oxford and Cambridge. Universities have colleges within them, for example, Oxford contains 38 colleges. Students live and are tutored at these colleges. Lectures are given at universities. After the walking tour, we were free for about an hour and a half so we went to the top of the Abbey because we were told it had great views of the city! We had to climb some creaky old stairs to what looked like an attic space and then wait in line (or a que!) because there were a ridiculous set of spiral, one-way stairs up to the top!!! Came close to the staircase in Barcelona Lisa!!!! But when we got up there finally, the views were really nice. You couldn't go all the way around the top so there was a little traffic jam at one point, but we survived! Before we left I picked up a baguette and we were off to Burford. Burford is a part of the Cotswolds section of England. Its very much what you would typically think of as the English countryside. Our coach driver told us about a bakery in town so we stopped in there and I bought a mini lemon tea cake. All of the shops and cottages seemed really tiny, especially the doorways.
Next was Stow on the Wold, also a part of the Cotswolds. This was our lunch stop on the tour so we had a little more time here. Chelsea and I found a tea room that looked really cute. She ordered these awesome looking like ham and cheese sandwiches that were grilled, yummy!!! I got a scone with clotted cream and jam and we both had tea!!! It was really good and our first time really having tea in a tea room! After that we were off to the Slaughters, Upper and Lower Slaughter. It was a really cute village, nothing around, really suburban like. We took some pictures and relaxed-watched some ducks swimming in the creek! Our last stop for the day was Bibury which had a trout farm. There was a wedding taking place at the church in town, the bride was outside as we drove by. We stayed overnight in Bristol which is about 20 minutes outside of Bath. We stayed at a Holiday Inn, which was pretty nice. There was a pub basically in the parking lot of the hotel so we went in there to eat dinner. We had to get up early the next morning so just laid in bed and watched TV. We saw the X Factor which is like the British American Idol (not as good though, it was weird actually, although Simon's the same). Then we watched a British Grey's Anatomy which was interesting. In the morning, we at some breakfast and got on the bus to head towards Bath.
Bath is really beautiful, I would definitely love to go back there one day. Its a good mix of city and country, which I love. We first took a driving tour around part of the city. We saw where Nicholas Cage just bought a house. And our driver took us around to see a lot of the Georgian architecture. There was one building, the Royal Crescent designed by architect John Wood, that has 1,000 rooms and only makes up 30 houses. Wood only built the facade of the building, so that's what was sold to buyers!!! Just the front of a house!!! Pretty crazy but still amazing to look at. He took us down into the city (Bath sits in a bowl, there are around 7 hills surrounding it). We started off by taking a tour of the Roman Baths which was pretty cool. The spring still brings water up to the baths and they don't treat the water so you are not allowed to touch it. You are allowed to have drink some of the water that has been filtered in the Pump Room after your visit which we tried and did not really like. It was pretty warm and just had an odd taste but at least we tried it. Then we wandered around, taking pictures and grabbed something to eat.
After Bath we made two more stops in villages of the Cotswolds, Castle Combe and Lacock. Castle Combe was a pretty little village. Really tiny cottages and a nice church with a pretty big graveyard. Lacock was a really cute old village, the newest building was built in the 1800's. Pride and Prejudice was filmed there too.
Our last stop was Stonehenge. That was really awesome to see in real life. Our diver told us a little bit of the story behind it. It was built in 3 phases and some of the stones are from over 200 miles away!!! There were a lot of visitors there at the same time. He told us they have private, after hour tours too, during sunrise and sunset which I think would be really cool to do but it might also be a little scary!!! We got on the bus and headed back to London. Took over 200 pictures this weekend!!! It was nice to get out of the city.
Today was back to work. I had to go to the post office, which was in a convenience store, to buy stamps for the catalog mail out. I put stamps on about 300 envelopes!!! After work, Chelsea and I went on the hunt for dinner and a grocery store, a real grocery store, unlike the little 7-11 like things around us. We ate at a really good Italian place and then walked to Waitrose grocery store, which isn't too far from our school. It was like a REAL grocery store. It had carts!!! So Chelsea and I bought actual groceries, we haven't really done that yet because of the stores' selection and because of space issues in the flat. But we found some good deals so we're set for a little bit. When we got back we mapped out the places to go for our independent study course. We will probably go Wednesday after work and Thursday during the day to be prepared for Friday when we meet him. We're also going shopping Thursday!!! Chelsea wants me to help her find an outfit for the London Fashion Weekend event on Sunday. Looking very forward to that!!!
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