In Which A Lot of Stuff Happens but We Have Little Time to Write About It

So it's 10:40 pm and our bus for London departs tomorrow at 7:45 am, and we got up really early this morning and went to bed pretty late last night, so I'm (and this will be hard to believe for those of you who know me) going to try and keep this short. 

Some comments:

1. Exchange rate: 2 USD ~= 1 GBP , 1.57 USD ~= 1 euro

2. Coins (that I've encountered so far): one pound, two pound, ten pence, 1 pence, 20 pence. I always get the one pound and ten pence mixed up, until today I guess when I got golden one pounds and the ten pence are all silver. So, I guess I still don't really understand the coinage. Not looking like an idiot at the cashier's counter is quite an accomplishment. As Ashley bragged this morning: "I actually got all my p together!" (p being pence) The 20p coins are heptagons, and the two pound coins are large, thick gold coins, which I like.

3. In Cambridge, a small coffee is about one pound 50 p. 

4. A National Express (nationalexpress.com) bus goes between Cambridge and London airports and greater London etc. and is in general very handy. You can purchase a "funfare" which means you have to have specifc arrival and departure times within a day; these are generally cheaper, although they increase by one pound with every person that purchases them. So, if M. got her tix for 9 pounds, I could get mine (if I were the next person to purchase) for 10 pounds. The amenable day fare for London-Cambridge round-trip is 10 pounds 80 p, so eventually the funfare becomes more expensive.

5. Ryanair is one of the cheap airlines within Europe, easyjet is another. Ryanair only flies out of Stansted in London, though, not Heathrow, and has very specific routes and sales, as well as a max of 33 kg and 81x119x119 cm for checked luggage, so I would definitely recommend using the airline but being careful about planning your routes and luggage. Also, take advantage of the sales as soon as you see them; they disappear arbitrarily.

6. A lot of the shrubbery on the Cambridge College lawns are pruned into this tipped over egg shape with a pointy top, which is apparently a popular style in the British countryside. No idea why. 

7. Isaac Newton, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Francis Bacon are apparently some of Trinity's alumni. No statues of women, though.

8. Sainsbury's is a pretty standard grocery store around here. Cheese is all white, and lunchmeat is all pork, turkey, chicken, ham, pork tongue, liver--no salami or bologna types. Sainsbury's basic is like the Shurfresh/Shurfine of Madison, so I bought a Sainsbury's basic pizza for only 99p, but it was pretty terrible. Oh well.

9. Kitchen at M.'s house is 9 guys, one girl (her), and they share 3 fridges and 1 freezer, except these fridges are like the mini dorm fridges in the US! I guess people go grocery shopping daily here, which is China-esque. The oven is convection, and most of the power is switched off until you need it. There are very few pots/pans, crockery, no napkins or paper towels, only one dishrag...I felt like a pretty wasteful person. On the other hand, I do think that being able to properly wipe your counters after cooking is pretty important.

10. Eating in the dining halls at Cambridge is referred to as "eating slops", and if you're a student, you can get away with paying three pounds for a very decent meal. I also had fantastic creme brulee at lunch one day. 

On Friday Ash and I walked around Cambridge as M. (who says it's okay to refer to her as Mahalia) had engineering projects going on. As mentioned in previous posts, it is GORGEOUS here, and very very clean (the rain seems to wash a lot away). So, our walk was very nice, although I very sadly did not manage to get asked for directions (which was my goal, and still is--I want someone to mistake me for a native before I fly to Ireland. It probably does not help that my British accent is rather lamentable). Colleges we've seen so far (and I mean Cambridge colleges): King's, John's, Trinity, Jesus, Christ, Queen's, St. Catharine's, Selwyn, Peterhouse (the oldest), Caius (pronounced "Keys"). A lot of people are still taking exams now, so everything was pretty quiet. Quote from when we first got here: Me: "Wow, the insulation in your house is awesome, Mahalia, WAY better than our house in Madison. You can't hear anyone!" Ashley: "Actually, I think that's just because everyone is quiet here." It turns out Ashley was right.

In the afternoon we had a full English cream tea in Grantchester Orchard. I skipped the tea part, and stuck with a cheese scone, a bunch of clotted cream, and raspberry jam. It was EXTREMELY good. Also, the orchard/walk to the orchard was beautiful. I chased some birds and mooed at some cattle as well. The fences on the walk to the orchard feature these rolly grate things to prevent the cattle from getting through, which I thought was clever. We saw houses with thatched roofs as well. Also, we "discovered" an interesting type of slug, and as Ashley was the one who noticed it first, I dubbed it "the Ashley." 

I cooked for all of us Friday night (tan pian with eggs and green beans, for those of you Chinese speakers out there), and I guess everything turned out okay because people ate it without grimacing too much. 

Today it finally stopped raining and was actually quite beautiful, which was great because A and I spent the whole day (8-8) visiting Avebury, Stonehenge, and Salisbury via a Roots Travel guided tour (which I highly recommend as an agency in general). It was 35 pounds for a student, which is quite cheap when you realize that these places are over 2 hrs away from Cambridge and quite a bit apart from each other, plus admission to places, etc. Our tour guide was named Matt and was very pleasant and informative, as well as a fast driver.

Avebury was very nice, featuring the largest manmade prehistoric hill, built by Neolithic man about 5000 years ago, either to represent the pregnant belly of a woman, or to allow people to get closer to god (the Sun). We also saw a double circle of stones, which was a very spiritual place back then, consisting of over 100 boulders (now reduced to 27, due to the Christians ordering them to be smashed because they were pagan, etc.). the tall skinny stones represented males, the short, wide stones represented females. In particular, the "obelisk" represented a certain male part, and a stone a bit of a distance away represented a vulva, and apparently at the summer or winter solstice, the sun would hit the obelisk in such a way that a shadow would fall through the vulva stone, representing the man entering the woman. The earth was the mother, the sky the father.

Naturally, Ashley and I wanted to take a picture of us hugging the vulva, but we didn't have time, unfortunately. Luckily, a short ways on, we encountered another male stone next to a female stone, so we hugged that instead. Prasanthi. ( We were not allowed to touch stones at Stonehenge.)

stonehenge was about 45 mins away, and very interesting. You can google the details on this because I really have to go to bed soon, but suffice it to say that there was a Chinese man and woman on this trip, and they'd found out a little earlier I could speak Chinese, so they were very relieved because they found it exhausting to understand English (they'd only been in the UK for six months), so I translated a bunch of stuff, and post-Stonehenge the man came up to me and said, in chinese, "So...it's just a big pile of rocks, then?" I really did enjoy it, though.

Last of all we visited Salisbury, famous for having the tallest medieval structure in the world, the Salisbury cathedral (though I find this a bit cheating, because it's only the tallest because of this gigantic spire at the top; Ash thinks Notre Dame is taller sans spire). The cathedral also houses the Magna Carta. We hung around salisbury for a bit and then went back to Cambridge.

Tomorrow we head to London and will meet with one of my future flatmates, S. at the Tate Modern cafe and head over to Chinatown for dinner! I realllllly hope it doesn't rain.

Oh, and we ate the most amazing fish and chips tonight at the Snug, and they weren't even mean about it when I asked for ketchup. Twice.

Rainy Day in England

Yesterday we spent the day touring Cambridge... it's quite nice, I would describe it as green and quaint, lots of young people.  We started by walking through the Market Square while M. was in class.  The Market was what you would expect; very colorful with lots of food, flowers, clothes and jewelry to buy (May got earrings).  When M. met up with us, after her class, we went to tour some of the colleges in Cambridge.  Cambridge University is made up of 34 different individual colleges.  The colleges, not the University itself, are responsible for admitting students, though students can have classes with students from any of the colleges.  Each college has it's own grounds; we toured St. Johns, Trinity, and Jesus, and walked by many others.  Technically we were supposed to be Cambridge students to be able to walk through these other colleges (M. belongs to Downing), but since we look like students we just walked through and nobody stopped us.  Trinity, St. Johns and Kings are the most famous colleges in Cambridge.  All the buildings look very historic and well kept.  There is lots of vegetation and tons of grass that is "forbidden" aka you can't walk on it and if you do, it's  likely you will be asked (potentially in an unkind way) to remove yourself.  Needless to say, we stayed off the grass.  

We ate dinner in The Hall, aka the cafeteria, that is on the Downing grounds.  The food was decent and pretty cheap, about 2 pounds!  Later May and I made banana bread and were hanging out in M. kitchen.  I guess we were too loud and one of M. roommates had to come down and ask us to be quiet, oops!  We had been in England BARELY 24 HOURS and were already asked to be quiet... we are truly loud Americans, lol.  Seriously though, it's really quiet here, especially compared to our house on Broom St.!  Anyway, we felt bad, but the guy just seemed annoyed so we tried to keep it down, though May said she had been trying to be quiet, lol.

Overall the day was good, though it RAINED THE WHOLE DAY!!!  I'm really glad I brought a rain jacket.  That's all I have to say, I don't feel like writing a lot more, May will fill in the details, even if some are false...We were NOT BLED ON BY PIGEONS (see previous post).  There were lots of pigeons around us and one had a cut foot and it was walking all over.  So basically the blood was on the ground and not us, needless to say it was gross.

Ashley 

WE SAW THE QUEEN

But only for a second. 

Still! Ashley and I got pictures of her (not exactly close-ups, but pretty cool anyway)...she was in a nice car, naturally, with a million guards, including a really tall, skinny, bewildered-looking guy in a fuzzy hat (I also took a picture of him...I thought he looked more interesting, to be honest). She was scheduled for some kind of public appearance elsewhere, I guess, and Ashley, M. (our hostess), and I were lunching outside of Buckingham Palace, in the park by a bunch of fountains and statues, and suddenly we were like, "Hey, why are there a million people standing by the gates?" And then, just as we walked over to check it out, this cavalcade threaded its way between the giant gilded gates and everything started flashing (cameras). So we all grabbed our cameras and elbowed our way to a semi-clear spot, and snapped pictures in her direction, and I got her in the bottom left corner of my picture and Ashley got her in a black-and-white shot, so hers is a little blurry. If you zoom in on mine, you can actually see her pretty clearly, I'll try to post it later. She's the woman in blue-green. 

I guess most people never get to see the Queen in person in their entire lives, so we were really lucky, but to be honest, I was more impressed by the fact that we got through customs in like five minutes.

So. Brief impressions of Buckingham Palace area from XW:

1. Kind of drab. The walls are really gray and weatherbeaten. However:

2. The park around it is very beautiful. Lots of chairs and benches and a huge green lawn area; statues and fountains very nice; ate a "Yogurt Corner" which was tasty. 

3. Would NOT want to be a palace housekeeper. 

Rewind to flights. These were smooth, although I will include a detailed review of Air India, for those of you who may be interested in using the airline, as it is extremely cheap (ours were a little bit less than 700 USD each including taxes, for ORD-->Heathrow and Frankfurt-->ORD). Only comment about my PHL-->ORD flight was that I had to sit next to an extremely large man who kept looking at me every time I took a bite of my Symphony (my fav chocolate) bar, which got awkward.

Ashley and I had around eight hours to while away at O'Hare, so we decided to get something to eat and read. I had a McD's quarter pounder meal with a Scientific American; Ashley had some kind of wheat/lettuce sandwich thing with Glamour and Oprah magazine. Those of you who know both of us will probably find this to be an extremely accurate representation of our personalities. 

We boarded at 7:30 and departed around 8:40 (central time, p.m.). The following are my impressions of Air India:

Positives:

1. Good food. We had dinner and breakfast, both very satisfactory. Dinner was a spicy chicken curry (there were fish and veg options as well), with potatoes, cauliflower, and tofu (the tofu kind of surprised me), as well as a pink thing neither of us ate which I think was supposed to be dessert. I'm pretty sure it tasted good; we were just full after the entree and salad. The salad was pretty fresh, and the roll quite nice. Breakfast was a croissant, fruit, and orange juice, which was perfect for me. 

2. Great service. Steward/esses were constantly patrolling the aisles, proferring coffee, tea, juice, water, etc. They were also extremely kind and they walked past your seat like every five minutes.

3.  The tickets are extremely cheap (as mentioned).

4. Good flying. The ride was VERY smooth, and the landing absolutely fantastic. I get airsick pretty easily, and I dread the landing, because my ears feel like they're about to explode and my stomach gets very queasy, but this time literally one minute we were in the air, and the next we were on the ground. It was incredible. 

5. The screen on the seat had GAMES, not just movies. I played Hangman, Checkers, Caveman, and Gobble the Snake. Those of you who are ex/current TI-83 Silver users: do you remember Block Dude?? Caveman and Block Dude are of the same spirit. It was great. For details, see me.

Neutral:

1. Coat hook! I thought this was interesting, but Ashley refused to let me put it in a "positives" category, because she said she's seen it before and putting a coat on it would have made things even more cramped (see "negatives"). But I was intrigued, so we put it in neutrals as a compromise.

Negatives:

1. SEATS. The seats seemed to be designed to minimize comfort. I don't think any conventional human could find a single comfortable position on these seats. I didn't sleep at all, and Ash slept extremely poorly. There was this weird contour thing at the back and the neck, which I eventually tried to stuff with the poor excuse for a pillow and a blanket. Needless to say, we were all sore and stiff, not to mention exhausted, afterwards, but the smoothness of the ride and the perfection of the landing made me a lot less crabby about this than I would have been otherwise.

2. My screen was broken, so I couldn't watch any movies, which was really unfortunate, since Golden Compass and The Great Debaters were playing, which I would have liked to have the option of seeing. Oh well, the games made up for it. 

3. It was extremely hot and cramped. Even with the air fan things, it was still hot and stuffy, and the girl in front of me (who happened to be from UW, actually, we heard her say it--in fact, she was traveling with Meena's sister--we kept looking at them at the gate and going, "Is that Shanti??" but we were too wimpy to ask) did not endear herself to me by reclining at a 60 degree angle. She gave me a really dirty look, too, when I pointed out that she was balancing on my knees.

All in all--I would fly Air India again, for the price and the smoothness of flight, but don't expect to get too comfortable. 

We arrived in Heathrow about fifteen minutes early, and went through customs in about five minutes, which was a huge surprise to us. We half-expected to see customs officials running after us when we left, since we were sure we had forgotten to do something. We chilled out at the Central Bus Station, since our tix weren't until two hours later, during which time we brushed our teeth and got bled on by an injured pigeon. At 12:30 London time, we got on a bus for greater London, where we met our hostess M. Then we visited the British Museum for about two hours, where we saw pieces of the Parthneon and some Middle Eastern exhibits. Then we got on a bus back to Cambridge, where we are staying for the next five days. 

Impressions of London/Cambridge:

1. Very, very, very expensive. If you are planning on traveling, notify your bank--I think most are ok, but I couldn't use my debit card at all yesterday since I didn't tell my bank and they thought someone had stolen it and was trying to use it outside the US. I called in and it's ok now. Anyway, it's 2 dollars/GBP (pound), and about 1.57 USD/euro. Not only that, but things are more expensive here as it is. So, that's not so fun.

2. Beautiful. London is really a beautiful, very chic city; the Greyhounds here are definitely nicer (they have seatbelts!), it's a little odd adjusting to the roads, it does get rainy a lot (although right now it's amazing, 75 and sunny), and Cambridge (the campus) is extremely green and leafy and there are really nice soccer (football, I guess) fields etc. 

3. The porters at Cambridge U. scared the crap out of me...I guess students are only supposed to have one guest for two consecutive nights max here, and she's trying to get two of us in for six nights, so he wasn't very happy about that. Ah well.

4. Guy on the bus in London got really pro-UK, anti-US on us...M. leaned over and asked me if I knew if Malta was in the Commonwealth, and I thought she meant the EU, so to clarify, she said, "No, I mean the British Empire," and this old man, staring straight ahead, didn't look at us once, said in this very snotty tone, "Malta is a free and independent nation of the Commonwealth," and M. said, startled, "Oh...thanks," and then we were going to resume talking and he interrupted with, "So is Bermuda...in fact, this is true of all the nations of the Commonwealth," and we were like, "Thank you for the info..." and turned away to resume convo, and then he said, "At least we take care of our houses. Not like you. Just look at the Philippines. We always improve the countries; you destroy them," and he went on in that vein for a while, and then he and his wife moved to the other end of the bus. Hm.

5. This is a really really really great place to be if you can afford it. Like I said, it's beautiful.

Yesterday, after we got off the plane, we looked like hell, we felt like hell, we probably smelled like hell too...but we were looking, feeling, and smelling like hell in LONDON and that is making all the difference. 

-love from the UK

PS By the way, the link "xwale" is "xw" + "ale", our initials, NOT "x-wale." 

Here's my first post, this is exciting. All I have to say is packing for 6 weeks has been one of the most difficult things of my life!!! I'm freaking out that I'm forgetting something really important.

THANK YOU TO OUR HOSTESSES!

Also, I wanted to shout out to our fantastic hostesses in Cambridge, Ireland, and Barcelona! And possibly Switzerland. You guys are very, very much appreciated, and dinner is totally on us when we get there, as long as it's not fancy dress, since backpack space limitations have severely depressed our hotness.

THE ITINERARY

Dear all:
Ashley thought it might be a good idea to post our rough itinerary, so here it is; please ignore the random notes to ourselves: (by the way, Ashley will eventually also post to this blog...I just figured out how to invite her two seconds ago):

***

Wed., May 28-London, arrive around noon. 

Tues., June 3-leave for Ireland.

Friday, June 6-Leave by train from Waterford to Dublin.

Saturday, June 7-Fly from Dublin to France.

Friday, June 13-Netherlands.

Wednesday, June 18-Germany.

Saturday, June 21-Czech Republic.

Tuesday, June 24-Austria

Friday, June 27-Slovenia

Sunday, June 29: Italy

Saturday, July 5: Switzerland.

Tuesday, July 8: Spain

July 12: Germany

July 14: Fly home.

***

Tomorrow we embark on our Exciting Adventures. And don't worry, if we don't have any Exciting Adventures, we will certainly make them up for your entertainment.

Scrabulous sabbatical

By the way, I am taking a brief sabbatical from scrabulous. I'd feel kind of ridiculous if I spent all my time, say, thinking up a word to counterattack P playing "sleazo" or "ptui" or something while Ashley is off seeing the Magna Carta and the Prado and castles and whatnot.

So, all my games will be inactive until the end of July/beginning of August. My apologies!

T-3

Yeah, I just want to see how this looks. We haven't even left yet.

Preliminary Observations:
1. I hate booking things.
2. This is going to be really expensive.