BUSY BUSY WEEK!!!!!

This is the water you can drink from the hot springs in Bath. It was warm and icky but we tasted it because it has healing powers. Christina thinks we are going to live forever:)

The ballroom at the Assembly rooms in Bath.

me at stonehenge. My coat was sopping wet and my hands were SO DANG COLD!!!

This portugese man was taking photos of Christina and I, just laughing because he thought we were so funny. So we gave him a thumbs up (below) and then invited him to take a photo with us (above). He was lovin' his life.

Below is the Roman bath museum, then a few shots from Salisbury cathedral. It was super dark in there and my camera didn't take many great photos.

sorry I am falling behind on my blogging. I am jsut so busy with school. Today the sun is shining in London and of course is it Thursday which means we have class from 9 to 4:30 and then dinner is at five. So no going out to enjoy the sun today. I am still so frustrated with out schedules because they really allow for no free time in the city. I mean we see a lot on group outings and that is awesome and I am learning a ton in the classroom but it is a super bummer that we don't get to go explore much on our own. But I just have to buck up and deal with it even though inside I am super frustrated.

So this week, besides school I found a cool bookstore with Mary called Hatchards. It's down in this upscale district of London. We didn't stay long because we only had a couple hours time in Tuesday but it is something I want to go back and see. It had sections for everything and I looked up some giude books and travel books for when we go to Spain in TWO WEEKS! Then yesterday was awesome. We got up super early, had breakfast and then got on the "coach" to head off to stonehenge... and not to be a debby downer but it was way smaller than I head ever imagined! It was snowing super hard and SOOO COLD so they closed off the area within it and we had to stay on that side path that runs by it in order to take pictures. Our group was there for about half an hour and then our fingers and toes started falling off so we got back in the coach and headed to Salisbury. The drive in the coach was almost my favorite part because it is just so beautiful. It is the dead of winter and it's still bright green! The hills are gorgeous.

In Saisbury we drove through the cute little town before we drove to the Cathedral. I want to retire in one of these small English towns because they are so peaceful. But the Cathedral was cool. The people at Salisbury have really elected to try to make their cathedral not just a tourist site but also a modern cathedral so there were like these kids singing songs with teachers and they have like two altars so that they can have more people worship. It's kind of weird but the building is still gorgeous. I love that I learned all about gothic/romanesque architecture and cathedrals in humanities and Eng 201 because I know stuff when I go to museums and cathedrals now and it makes it more exciting. Like in the V& A they have made casts of Trajan's forum and the front facade of Santiago de Compostela and I knew what they were when we saw them and I got Alyssa and Reesa all excited to see them when we went to the V&A.

Anyhow after seeing the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta (there are actually four and three are at the British Library) and observing the highest spire in all of Britain, we boarded the coach again and headed to Bath. In all of my life I have never seen prettier landscape than that outside of Bath. I cannot explain how picturesque it was with the green hills and the old historic houses sprawled out on these hills. I couldn't get a decent picture from inside the coach but it was magnificent. I am never sleeping on days trips ever again for fear of missing the prettiest scenes! Anyways then we drove into Batha nd got to go to the Roman Bath museum. We also drove by the royal cresent where people would walk on Sundays to socialize. I felt like I was in Northanger Abbey once we got into Bath (minus the fact that there was lots of shops and things). The museum of the Roman baths was way cool. I wanted to travel back in time and be able to actually go in them. People used to think that the waters there had healing properties so they would drink glassfuls of this warm water. Now you can try some in the pump room (where people would go eat lunch in Northanger Abbey!) and it was so nasty! So after the museum we went into the Abbey at Bath and it was cool for a gothic church because it was so light inside. The stone and the light windows were the cause of this. I loved it. Then we all walked up to the assembly rooms. This is where they would have balls and tea and socialize. Jane Austen sets Northanger Abbey and Persuasion here in the very rooms we got to walk through. It's so funny to realize that her fictional novels are set in all these places I have walked through now. but I will post pictures of those because it was pretty neat. Then all the way home I read Oliver Twist.

Well I better go work on my Shakespeare project! Goodnight!