Dear Grace,
What a crazy week this has been! So first off, it has been fashion week here in London - can you believe it?! I can't believe how lucky I've been to be here during so many cool things that have been going on.
So my first adventure of this week had to do with my trip over to a toy store called Hamley's. Apparently Hamley's was established in 1760, and is the world's oldest toy shop (254 years old, to be exact) and it's still going strong today. The most exciting part of going down to check this out was the fact that as soon as we turned onto the street where it is, I recognized it as the street where Colin (my British dad) and I first walked on in London! I remembered the building where we went to his business meeting and the street we went down to park and where he got me lunch at Subway that day! (Thanks again for that, Colin, you're the best!)
Okay, on to the big stuff. We had our first overnight trip on Wednesday and Thursday this week. It. Was. AWESOME! On Wednesday we headed out bright and early at 7:00am to go to a little town by the name of Glastonbury. One thing I hadn't realized before we got on the bus was that we were putting our bags in the baggage compartment under the bus. I had put my hat, scarf, gloves, and lunch in my bag, and out of sheer awkwardness I was to embarrassed to ask the driver if I could get in there to retrieve them, haha. Fortunately I dress in basically every layer I've got anyway, so I managed to make it through the cold okay.
We had a guided tour of the grounds/ruins of where the old abbey used to stand. Our tour guide was a super funny guy dressed in medieval garb, and he had even grown out his beard to go with the costume!
Legend has it that the bones of King Arthur and Guinevere are buried here, so that was sweet to see that! It rained on us pretty much the whole time, right up until we had to get back on the bus, of course haha. That's when the sun finally came out.
Our next stop was a town called Tintagel (tint-agile), where the ruins of a castle on the cliffs are rumored to have been the very castle where the legendary King Arthur lived during his lifetime! We have a guy in our little family named Ryan who absolutely LOVES castles and King Arthur stories, and I thought he just might swoon from it all!
The ruins were incredible. I've never seen anything like them in all my life. Everywhere there are foundations of where walls must have stood once, but now there is a carpet of grass on the ground unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's so fine and soft it's practically football turf, and it just grows there naturally. Perhaps a bit of Merlin's magic still lingers on these grounds...
The best part about exploring these ruins was the view. Anywhere you went on the hilltop you could climb over to the edge and just sit in awe of the landscape (if the wind didn't blow you over or dry your eyes out of course). At the tallest point of the hill you can see everything in every direction of both land and sea. No wonder the castle was built here! No invasion could ever sneak up on you!
I don't exactly understand why those strong winds can kick your butt so much, but by the end of our time here, I was exhausted and glad to get back on the bus for a while.
We had a very pleasant and scenic ride to our hotel (although truth be told, I slept through most of it). When we pulled up I was very excited when I realized our hotel (The Victoria Hotel) was pretty close to the beach, and even more excited because Rose was my roommate! When we walked through the front door I immediately fell in love with the place. It was one of those elegant hotels I've seen in old movies, but never in modern hotels. When Rose and I got up to our room, I started freaking out because our window had an ocean view and we had a wardrobe and a dressing table as well!
Well, as you can imagine I was absolutely starving at this point as I had not eaten anything since 6:30 that morning. So, Rose, Dr. C and I all went out to a pub down the street where I had my very first dinner of fish and chips!!!
I realize that this wasn't served traditionally wrapped in newspaper, but I was just so excited about FINALLY getting to try fish and chips that I don't even care!
I made a new friend that night as well! One of the guys from our family - Tyler - happened to walk into the pub where we were eating to watch the Olympics, which he invited us to join him in after dinner. I ended up taking him up on that offer and we had some pleasant conversation whilst watching curling. When we headed back to the hotel, I was overcome with the urge to play the piano and sing in the lobby, so I skipped over there to do so only to discover that it was horrendously out of tune! When Tyler opened up the lid, we initially thought the inside was covered with dust, but when he blew on it and the dust didn't budge he said, "Whoa, that's not dust, that's mold!"
So apparently ocean climates are not good for pianos, haha. Oddly enough though, in spite of the mold and the piano being painfully out of tune, I don't think I've heard the sound of anything so wonderful in such a long time. I've missed my piano sorely since I've been away from home. I think I must have played for at least an hour, maybe even more. There were a few people in the lobby who sat and listened to me and applauded me after each song; I haven't performed with such ease for so long, so that really did my heart good.
The next morning I woke up at 7:00 to a beautiful, warm and sunny day. So nice, in fact, that I didn't even need my coat! I hurried downstairs for a traditional English breakfast, which I was absolutely stoked about! I never would have thought that having baked beans for breakfast could be so good.
After breakfast I hurried out for a breath of fresh air and a quick walk on the beach. Unfortunately all I had time to find was a place with a walkway in front of a rocky beach where the high tide made walking impossible anyway. All the same, it was so wonderful to stand there with the waves crashing in front of me and feel the spray of the mist on my face.
Once we were all loaded back onto the bus, we drove for a little over an hour or so to a place called "Land's End."
Land's End is basically the very Southwestern-most tip of England, which they seem to take great pride in. The little house in this photo had a plaque on it that read "The first and last refreshment house in England." It was pretty biting cold there, and there was some pretty wicked wind that drove the cold right into you. Land's End was beautiful, but I was grateful to get back on the bus out of the cold wind.
Next, we drove about another hour or two to see St. Michael's Mound. I basically saw this out the window:
and thought, "Boy, wouldn't it be awesome if we got to go see that?" And then, as if some genie had been listening, the bus turned around after we had passed it and drove us right over to it! That's when we were told that this incredible castle on an island was St. Michael's Mound, and that that was where we were going! I can't even tell you how excited I was!
We couldn't walk across the causeway because the tide was still in, so we ended up taking an amphibious truck-boat vehicle over to the island (Rose was debating on names for it, including the troat and the buck). When we got to the island, we seriously only had like 30 minutes to explore, so we booked it up the hill to get to the castle. I made it about a quarter of the way before giving up and just walking.
But, as you can imagine, every second we had there was totally worth it. Legend says that this island used to belong to a giant who used to wade over to the main land to steal livestock from the locals. Then one day a boy named Jack came along and cleverly killed the giant by tricking him into falling into a hole and burying him there. He then became known as Jack the giant killer.
When it was time to go, the tide had gone out enough so that we could walk back across the causeway. Rose and I were thrilled because we felt like we were in "The Scarlet Pimpernel."
A three-hour bus ride later, we came to a little town called Exeter. We had the opportunity to see the cathedral, which was beautiful and had some painting styles I haven't seen in cathedrals before, and then we had the rare privilege to be shown one of the four oldest manuscripts of medieval literature. According to the curator, this manuscript is over a thousand years old. I was amazed with how good of condition the book was still in, despite its age!
Once we were done at the cathedral, it was dinner time. I'm pretty sure just about everyone went to dinner at a place called Nandos (which I'm not overly fond of personally), but I wanted to go check out a book shop before going to dinner. I wasn't there very long, but by the time I had gotten back to where everyone had been, they were gone. So, I resolved to just head into a pub or something by myself for dinner (which I was secretly pleased about, because as I have said before, I'm avoiding American food and chain stores as much as possible), when who should I run into again, but Tyler! He invited me to go with him to go get something to eat at a grocery store, which would be much cheaper, and I was only too happy to join him!
After that we went to this little place to get a cup of tea with the time we had left:
I have to say, Tyler has to be the classiest guy I've ever met in my life. I don't think I've ever met someone who would willingly go with me to get a cup of tea, let alone be the one to suggest it! We decided to get a table upstairs, because the view was prettier, and there also happened to be a group from our family having dinner there.
They shared their desserts with us, and Tyler and I had another long chat over a cup of tea. I've deeply missed being able to really talk to someone like Marne or Lyssa all this time, so it was really nice to have a meaningful conversation with a friend.
Some girls were talking about how fast the time has flown here, and how soon we'll be going home, and I must confess that I've been getting in a funk over it today. I wish I didn't have to go home; I wish I could stay here with these people in this program for at least another semester. I'm really going to miss my friends and our creaky held-together-with-duct-tape flat. I'm going to miss taking the bus and the Tube everywhere and randomly going on adventures in the city at the last minute. I'm going to miss my trips to do laundry at Metrogate, and the precious minutes I steal to play the piano and write songs in the basement of the church. I'm going to miss the food and the shops, and I think especially, the tea.
It's only natural to enjoy that little treat here in England, but we don't have anything like a tea shop back home. We don't have a place that requires and even encourages you to sit down and enjoy yourself, read a book, stare out the window and just take the time to think and not have to sit at home for a while. I'm really going to miss this place.
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