Last Day in Wales, Last-Minute Sightseeing (...and papers)

'm going to be good and only allow myself to write a paragraph of this blog in between paragraphs of my literature paper, so that I'll finally finish that stupid thing tonight and feel a little bit better about not doing work tomorrow.

Sunday-Last day in Wales, back to England

Sunday we woke up early, around 7am, and went to have our fully cooked breakfast in another building of the farmhouse complex. It was a traditional English (umm Welsh too?) breakfast, with eggs, sausage, back bacon, toast, tea, baked beans and a fried tomato (I skipped the last two, but the rest of it was good) and it also included hash browns, which is not usual. The breakfast was good although I'm pretty sure not all of it was that fresh (the hash browns were definitely frozen) so perhaps not as authentic as I had hoped. Still, it was very good to have a big meal to start the day, so we could spend less on lunch.

We left the farmhouse at 8:15 am after making sandwhiches from leftovers from the night before and hurriedly cleaning the kitchen. Our last stop in Wales was at the town of Llangollen, site of the ruins of the castle of Dinas Bran. We were again given a tantalizing choice...do the hike to Dinas Bran (quickly, so we could make it back to the bus in time) or sightsee around the town. I was incredibly tired from barely getting any sleep the night before due to the rude people, and wanted to see some of yet another adorable town, so Charlotte and I did half the hike up to where we could get a better view of Dinas Bran and the surrounding countryside before going back down to walk around the town. The castle was actually burnt down in 1277 and never rebuilt. It was a Welsh castle that was later taken over by the English, and the website I found said that it has some connection to the Holy Grail but our guide defintiely didn't say anything about that so who knows. At any rate, it is basically ruins now and it was satisfactory to gaze at them from afar, although again it would have been nice if we had more time to do both the hike and walking around the town.

Back in the town, Charlotte and I walked around looking into various shops, all of which were quite tempting as usual, in particular a really cute chocolate shop which I resisted buying anything from, although I kind of regret that. They had a bigger selection of Lindt and Green and Blacks chocolate bars than I have ever seen anywhere else (there were Lindt bars I didn't know existed! That is saying a lot for someone who was once a 'chocolate advisor' for the company). I ended up buying a clear plastic umbrella with red welsh dragons around the perimeter. It is super cheesy but my other umbrella is dying out from overuse and too much wind, so it was well worth it for only 4 pounds. I also picked up some more postcards, which you should all be getting soon since I finally mailed all of the ones I have accumulated since being here today. Woopy and I also got some "Welsh Cakes" which are like raisin scones made on a griddle over the stove and dusted with sugar, and hot chocolate for the bus ride. Tasty.

And then it was time to bid farewell to the beautiful country of Wales. Sigh…I really want to go back, for longer. And to go to Ireland. Any takers? I know Melanie is coming with me. We’re going to open a bookstore, because I’m sure that town needs a 31st store.

Anyway, enough daydreaming. We drove back into England toward Stratford-upon-Avon, after confirming that we could, in fact, get into the town. There has been terrible, dangerous flooding in England this past week and a half, and parts of Stratford (mostly the park from what we could see) are underwater. London, in case you’re wondering, is fine. Just lots of puddles. Stratford was lovely although we only had an hour to try to run around and see the important things. The bathroom was first on our list, followed by Shakespeare’s grave at the church he frequented when he was alive. We didn’t think we would have time to see Shakespeare’s birthplace because it looked too far away on our map, but a few of us ran into our guide and told her we were sad and she told us it was much closer by than we had thought and ran with us to take a peek. It would have been nice to stay longer and go inside his house but it was still neat to see the town. There are lots of very pretty Tudor buildings as well.

And then we drove back to London, arriving at approximately 5pm. We took the tube back to the dorm, and Charlotte came with me to spend the night since we narrowly missed the time she had to check in for her program at the London School of Economics. We bummed around and made some dinner (pasta and vegetables), while comparing and swapping pictures from the trip. I think I did a little bit of work but we went to bed early, exhausted. She left early the next morning to get to her program and I went back to bed. And so the week began…

This Week

Monday I had class as usual, and we stayed longer because the International Program Directors were visiting from U of M to check out the facilities (hopefully they saw how absurdly small our classroom is) and to get our opinions on the program. What resulted was a highly tense session of about an hour and a half, since we were so relieved to finally have someone to tell about all of the things we think are wrong with the program. It probably sounded like we hate London, which is not the case at all…they just have a lot to think about in terms of academics and communication. Who knows if anything will change though…case in point, they wanted to buy us tea, but had not set up anything, so when class was over the directors were like “where should we go for tea?” 30 people? Are you serious? You can’t fit 30 people in a café in the US. Anyway. It was at least a much-needed venting system, and hopefully they got to see some of the issues for themselves. That night we saw our final play, In Celebration, with a cast that included the gorgeous Orlando Bloom. I thoroughly enjoyed the play, although much of our program didn’t share that opinion. Orlando himself played a relatively minor part, since apparently he looked too young to play the main brother. His character was silent and cried a lot, but he was still pretty to look at from my far-away seat. Some of my friends have gone after other performances to see him, and he even kissed one of their cheeks.

Tuesday was class and then Maureen, a girl from my program, and I decided to wander over to the Soho area of London. It is a more youthful district with a hip nightlife, and used to be considered a not-so-good area of London due to the proliferation of sex shops and other shady doings there. It is much safer now and a fun area to walk around. After a few hours of wandering and shopping through Soho and down the ritzy Regent Street, we decided we had enough of people and crowds and went home. I went grocery shopping (for maybe the last full time…sniff…I really love Sainsburys) and spent the night doing homework…I think. I don’t think I got very much done though.

Which is why I need to go finish my literature paper now. I’ll have to finish catching up later, but for now I’ll leave you with some pictures of Wales and Stratford. I won't bother titling them...and the only two of Stratford are one of the flooded park and Shakespeare's grave, so they are kind of obvious.