Two weeks ago, I spent my week in England. Mostly in London, but our class did take a day trip into the countryside to see Stonehenge, followed by a trip to Bath (beautiful...like a little fairytale place). I will let the pictures do most of the talking, but just to give you an idea of what we did:
We stayed at a Holiday Inn in central London, right by King's Cross Station. One of the best parts of the trip was the full American breakfast buffet we had every morning. But that's beside the point. Just to backtrack briefly--the purpose of the trip to London was for my "Current Trends in News Media" class to experience various media outlets in London, including Public Relations firms, newspaper headquarters for major papers such as The Daily Telegraph, photography collectives, museums, chatting with the "Spin doctor" for the Tony Blair administration, etc. We of course were also there to explore the rich culture and history of London.
Anyway, we all had a great time. Every day was filled to the max with activities. We were fed great meals at great restaurants, saw Billy Elliot the musical, saw a bunch of great landmarks and tourist attractions, museums, and so on. We also had time to explore on our own, during which I went up to see Abbey Road and a few other landmarks that we weren't scheduled to see as a group. It was such a great trip. The British were incredibly kind and outgoing as a whole, at least much more so than the Danes. In Denmark, the people are really nice once you get to know them. But they don't say "please" or "excuse me" or "pardon me" or anything like that--they generally just don't like to talk unless it's necessary. The British, on the other hand, had plenty of outward social manners which was a nice change.
The day trip to Stonehenge and Bath was one of the most fun days I've had abroad. We saw the beautiful English countryside during our bus ride to and from Stonehenge. Stonehenge itself was, of course, very humbling. The structures are absolutely massive, and to think people were able to move and arrange so many of those monstrous boulders 5,000 years ago is pretty extraordinary.
Bath was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been. All the buildings and structures are made of the same stone, which gives the town a very fairytale-esque feel to it. There was a stunning cathedral in the town, some beautiful structures, a very pretty river running through it, etc. It was just visually amazing. Hard to describe. Johnny Depp has a house in Bath, so you know it has to be a great place. Also, it was the home of Jane Austen. We saw her house and the little park where she would sit and write. Of course, while in Bath we spent an hour or so at the Roman Baths, the remains of these huge baths that the Romans built so long ago. It was so cool to see these things because they were all basically intact. As in, they were basically the same exact way they were thousands of years ago. The complicated infrastructure within the building, with all the baths and drains and this and that was extraordinary considering how long ago they were built. Again, it's tough to explain, but the Romans had these brilliant methods for filtering the water and keeping certain baths steaming hot and certain ones freezing cold, as well as making certain rooms into saunas without any kind of special technology to keep in the heat. They really were smart back then.
Anyway, it was a great week. I put up the pictures that best represent the activities and places we saw. Enjoy...
