As I mentioned in the previous blog post, last weekend was our last group trip – Castles Weekend!!
This was the trip that was the determining factor between choosing this program and one other program so it was a pretty big deal for me.
Our destinations included: Conventry Cathedral, Warwick Castle, Stratford Upon Avon, Bath, Stonehenge, and Windsor Castle.
Although I had to wake up at 5:30am on a Friday morning, needless to say, I was absolutely ready for it.

Friday, as I just said, started pretty early…when it was still pretty dark outside.
We arrived at the Coventry Cathedral around 9am. This was a really neat cathedral and one that was different than all of the other ones I have seen in the past. It consisted of 2 buildings; one was the ruins of a cathedral built in the early 15th century, and the other was a new cathedral built around the 1950s.
The older one, was bombed during World War II and is the reason why it remains as ruins – to hold the memory in place.

the ruins

Notice the row of benches in the picture, and if you take a closer look at one of them (which I can’t upload the picture of it for some reason :/) it says “Valparaiso University U.S.A. February 1964”. So Valpo must’ve donated to this Coventry Cathedral for its rebuilding! Isn’t that neat? It was great seeing a part of Valpo in England.

The light coming through from the glass windows were absolutely beautiful! Especially because the sun rays were at the perfect angle in the morning. It was great seeing two parts of history in one place.

All of our group at the Cathedral!

But the next destination was something that I was really looking forward to: a castle!

Our first castle that we headed to was Warwick Castle. I had the impression that it was going to be just be a regular castle, so I was really surprised to see how touristy it was built to be.

This is the view from the walls that were surrounding the castle. Walking along the wall was very fun, although we climbed almost 600 steps to get to the top of it! The staircases and doorways throughout the walls were really small, and even I felt a bit confined going through it. It really shows how much smaller the people used to be several hundred years ago. Good thing that population started becoming taller throughout the years! …except I might that missed that boat.
Another thing that was really neat about this castle was that it had a “King’s making” attraction that showed what the King’s servants did behind the scenes. The wax figures looked very realistic, and they made me jump a couple of times. There was a wax horse that looked really real, and it’s tail moved all of a sudden which made me definitely startled. They were all really well made.

Servants making weapons.

We were also able to see a WHOLE bunch of peacocks, and I’ve never been so close to a peacock in my life!
They were really pretty, but much larger than I expected and were quite intimidating to be honest.
But while they were perched up on the benches and resting, they were a really nice sight.

After the Warwick Castle, we drove to Stratford Upon Avon, and went to see the house that William Shakespeare grew up in.
It was a nice, small house, but with lots of rooms. It was really amazing to be standing in the house of a historically famous person who lived there a few hundred years ago.
That same night we went to see a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The outside was different, but the inside looked almost exactly like the Globe Theatre in London. It was a great experience to be able to see both the Globe Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. A nice little deja vu!

The following morning, we headed to Bath to see the Roman Baths.
Now the Roman Baths has a LONG line of history. It was first found during the pre-Roman period and the water was thought to be able to heal. That tradition still exists today and visitors come to drink the water from the fountain.
Our group was able to drink some of that water. When we were first offered it by the tour guide, I was very excited. I had been pretty thirsty all morning so this was going to be a great thirst quencher, especially if it had the ability to heal and make me really healthy, right? Well I was wrong. It’s true that it’s healthy but the water was warm, first of all, so it wasn’t very pleasant to drink. It also tasted faintly like blood, which I found out later was because there’s some iron in the water.

Look at the heat waves!

The rest of the day was spent in Bath, and I loved the town! It was a very cute, typical English-looking town. I just can’t get over how adorable the towns are here.

Pretty lights!

Most of the town was already in Christmas season (as am I!) and the lights were so cute!
We also saw the Royal Crescent, and saw a beautiful sunset.

So that was Bath, and it was just splendid.

I realized that this post has gotten pretty long and I don’t want to bore you, so I will post a separate entry for Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. I have LOTS of stunning pictures from Stonehenge so stay tuned!

Cheers!

I don’t know if any of you knew me at Valpo, but I’d like to consider myself a studious student (:
This meant that I spent hours on end at the wonderful Christopher Center Library, which maybe you have seen me at.
Now I’m the type of person who gets pretty lonely doing homework by myself, so I like to surround myself with people when I’m working on things, even if they’re strangers (weird study tactic, I know).
So discovering that there is a public library in the city centre of Cambridge was a grade saver for me.
I have visited the library at least once or twice a week, and although it’s a 20 minute long walk, it’s never a chore.

As I decided to walk to the library today to get some papers done, I thought, why not share my little walk to the library with everyone? It’s actually quite pleasant. So this is my tour of Cambridge: the library version.

Walking out of the doors of the centre, it is immediately a bigger road. I keep following the road and as usual, see the hand wash car washing place (usually has some pretty good looking chaps there, for you ladies!). Then I cross the road, which is actually a struggle for me since I am not very used to the pedestrians not being yielded like in the States. Those cars will be pretty angry at you if you try to take over the road.
Then I continue following the sidewalk for a bit, passing a couple restaurants/bars, the castle mound, a few more shops. I reach the bridge at this point, which I always love watching the punts. I can’t imagine going punting in cold weather, but there are always people there!
As soon as I walk across the bridge, the livelier part of town starts showing. There are a lot of people walking, stores and restaurants everywhere, and a lot of huge buses. Not to mention bicycle users EVERYWHERE! I mentioned this in an earlier post, but bikes are a very used form of transportation here than compared to the US.

Look at all of those bikes that are parked there!

Once I’m walking on the street you can see above, I know that I’m close to the city centre. In the middle of the city centre, I usually hear performers singing or playing instruments. Today, I decided to take a little detour and drop by the market.

So many of them!

The market is open every day until 5 pm. It has so many shops with a huge variety of materials. Some have typical things like clothes and accessories. But there are some really creative ones like accessories made from materials inside a clock, or wine holders made from aluminum. There are markets all around Europe, (or at least the places I’ve been to so far) and I always love seeing the creative inventions that are made.
Here is another view of the market.

After strolling through the market, I turned the corner down to a street and entered the Lion Yard mall. This is a really neat mall because although it is technically not an outdoors mall, the ceiling is so high and open that it feels like it.
Surprisingly, this is where the library is at. Yep, inside a mall!

You might think it’s pretty small considering it being inside a mall, but it’s actually quite large and cozy. It also has 3 stories!
There’s plenty of tables and chairs, although most times that I’ve been there it’s been pretty occupied. I guess the English people must like to utilize their public libraries!
There’s always a broad range of people there. I see older people reading newspapers or working on crosswords, and sometimes I would see kids who look like they are in middle school. Of course a majority seem to be students and adults but there are times when I see a bunch of adorable children too.
It’s really a comfortable environment to get work done and is a nice way to get out of the centre sometimes.
For those of you planning or thinking of coming to Cambridge, I would highly recommend using this library! Getting a library card is free (:
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed my “tour” to the library and the next time you hear from me will probably be about the Castles Weekend. I can’t wait for it!!

Cheers!

This past week was my second break and what did I decide to do last minute? Yes, go to Ireland.
Ireland was a country that I really wanted to go to this fall, but looking at my budget for the rest of the semester, I wasn’t quite sure if I could squeeze it in.
But it was probably the best last minute decision I have made, and I am SO glad to have done it!

One of our C-90 group members Holly and I decided that we’ll do a random travel – not have anything specific planned but just do what we want to do at that moment.
It was a great plan at the start, but we did realize later that maybe we should have done a little more thinking when we did our hostel bookings…something to keep in mind for future travelers!

Our journey started off early in the morning since we wanted to take the ferry to Ireland. We took trains up to Northern Wales where our ferry port was. We were able to see some great views of Wales on the way! The ferry was very nice too; I wouldn’t mind cruising for a few weeks on this ferry!

After about a 3 hour ride, we arrived in Dublin. Dublin wasn’t a huge interest to either of us, so it was just a stop on the way until we headed for Galway the next morning.

And let me tell you, Galway was absolutely AMAZING. I think that it could be one of my favorite towns that I have been to so far, with Venice and Cambridge as close seconds.
I don’t know exactly what it was about it, maybe it was the Irish spirit, but even just walking around town not doing so much was enjoyable.

Our hostel that we stayed at was very welcoming too. The staff were really friendly and the accommodations were great! We met and chatted with our roommates who were visiting their friend studying in Galway. They were from France!
It gave us a bunch of options that we could look into during our stay in Galway. We decided that on the first night, we would go on the pub crawl, and on the second day take the tour to Cliffs of Moher.

The pub crawl wasn’t necessary as crazy as I thought it might be (but maybe that’s because we weren’t partying with the Irish!), but Holly and I had a great time. We met a group of three, who graduated school recently and were traveling before going into grad school, or into the horrifying “real world”. It was nice talking to Americans and hearing their stories on why they were traveling.
(I don’t know if any of you guys reading this are Glee fans, but one of those guys looked like a brunette version of Cameron Mitchell from the first season of The Glee Project. I am a huge Glee fan, and of course, I was thrilled with that.)
The pub crawl ended at a club, which I was pretty excited about. As I went to the club though, I realized that the music was different from the ones that I have been used to at Cambridge. Cambridge clubs tend to play mostly music similar to what we Americans listens to. There are a couple British songs, but most of them I can recognize. But this club in Galway, had maybe two or three songs that I knew during the hour or so that I was there. We came to the conclusion later that the Irish like American music that was popular in the 80s and 90s. So any Americans travelers around their 40s-50s will probably have a blast at these clubs!

The next morning we went on the tour to Cliffs of Moher with our two French roommates.
The tour guides we had – on the bus and when we went on a little hike – both knew exactly what they were talking about. I love the fact that it is actually fun to learn about the things they were telling us because they have so much passion in their history that they want to share. What I liked about Ireland in general was how much Irish are proud of their culture and history. They want to continue to remember and pass down that history which gives them their identity. And you can really tell how much pride they have. I think that’s what makes the Irish spirit so special.
Our tour headed to Cliffs of Moher with a couple stops on the way, such as the Burrens and a little town called Doolin. But I do have to say that the Cliffs of Moher was my favorite destination out of them all. Although it was absolutely terrifying to stand so close to an edge that was unbelievably high, the beauty was haunting.

There are a few films that have been filmed here too. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan so hearing that a scene in the Half-Blood Prince was filmed here (the part where Harry and Dumbledore go into the cave to destroy the horcrux) got me really excited.
I also watched Leap Year right before going to Ireland, and the proposal scene was filmed here as well. And for those of you Princes Bride fans, this was “The Cliffs of Insanity”!

The tour was about 7 hours and it was a great opportunity for us to be able to see some major sites. It was only about 18 euros (about 23 euros) so I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking of going to Ireland. Which I think everyone should do anyway (:

I mean, just look how beautiful it is!

Although we were pretty tired from the tour, it was Halloween so we figured we needed to go out in town this night. We decided to go out with the French roommates and their friend studying in Galway. As we walked into the city centre, all 5 of us were astounded by how CRAZY it was. It was nothing like I’ve seen before! Everywhere I looked there were people dressed in costumes; it seemed like EVERYONE was dressed up!
None of us knew that Halloween was such a significant event in Ireland and we were bummed that none of us had costumes. But it’s the spirit that matters, right?
We had a great night going to a pub and a club (this time with more music that I actually knew!) and met a couple Irish people!
It was definitely a very memorable Halloween.

This Ireland trip feels special to me because of the connections that I made with other people. Since it was only Holly and I traveling together, it might’ve been easier for other people to approach us and for us to join with others. It’s weird to think that I probably won’t see any of the people that I met this past week ever again, but having that experience and time spending together with someone from another country is such a great perk of being abroad.
I think that this was a great experience, and I am definitely convinced that I will be returning to Ireland – hopefully sometime in the near future!

Last Friday, one of my C-90 mates, Angela and I decided to use our 3 day weekend as an advantage and went on a day trip to York!

Traveling wasn’t bad at all. It took us about 2.5 hours and we only had to switch trains once.
The first thing I noticed as we got there was that it was super COLD!
Cambridge had still been in the high 50s – 60s, so we haven’t experienced anything really cold yet.
I thought that wearing a blazer would be fine but I ended being cold the entire day that day.
I should’ve known, since York was much more north than us…I’ll keep this in time for next time I decide to travel up north!

That was the only bad thing though. York was a pretty small town and it was a great place to come for a mini day trip.
From the train station, we walked across a bridge, which showed a beautiful view, and we were already pretty much in the city centre.
There was a beautiful cathedral that Angela climbed up and got this beautiful view of.

A lot of the buildings were made of bricks, which I love! I feel like brick buildings can even make a simple strip mall look pretty darn cool (:

(like this!)

There were a bunch of market places here too. It seems to be a trend in the UK in general!
They always have so much variety with “stores” in these market places. This time I saw things from vegetables, to clothing, to books, to handcrafted decorations, and even pet things!

I think that there must’ve been a field trip to come to York this day because I saw so many children in uniforms.
Seeing them wearing little uniforms was adorable!

These were children probably around 2-3rd grade, but I even saw some kids that looked like they were 3 or 4 wearing the same uniforms, except tiny versions. It was absolutely adorable!

My favorite part though was probably walking on the city wall, which was built way back in the day. I don’t remember when exactly the wall was built, but it was restored in 1889, so must’ve been built even before that!
It wrapped most of York, and would have been quite a walk if we had walked the entire wall.
We just did about 2 km but the view from the wall was great!

(part of what the wall looked like)

We ended our day by going into a garden that was beautiful. The sun was starting to set, which was a great view for us.

(you can see me sitting on the bench!)

It was a long day of walking in the cold weather, but overall it was a great experience.
York was a small, but very homey and cute, town and it was a great way to spend a relaxing day.
Hopefully this prepared me to be able to do day trips on my own because that’s what I’m planning on doing for our upcoming week of fall break!
My plan is to visit castles all around the UK, and I can’t wait because I absolutely love castles. Not to mention that I booked my flight to go to Munich, Germany to see the Fairytale castle for the end of November. SUPER EXCITED! (:

One more week of midterms until the long awaited fall break. At least that gives me motivation to work hard on my school work!

Those 3 words were probably used a billion times during my 6 day trip to Italy last week.
Now let me just tell you, Italy was absolutely amazing!
I didn’t realize though, that English was not very prominent in Verona where 2 other group members and I decided to stay at.
We learned Ciao pretty quickly since we heard it everywhere. It’s neat that it can be used both as hello and good bye. How convenient is that?

I personally was a little spoiled in thinking that I would only need to know ciao (hello/bye), scusi (excuse me), and grazie (thank you) in order to make it through my week just fine – I had assumed that English would be pretty well spoken there.
I was wrong.
As soon as we got to our B&B where we stayed for 4 nights, we realized our assumption was wrong. The B&B was more like experiencing a stay with a host family. It was a large, beautiful home owned by an old Italian couple. And they spoke barely any English. This was a problem to us since the city centre of Verona was actually about a 25 minute car ride away and we couldn’t figure out how to get there at first. However, the couple were such sweethearts (we decided to call them our host grandpa and host grandpa amongst ourselves!) and they appreciated every effort we made in speaking Italian.

The first night that we flew in to Italy, we were all so exhausted that we didn’t do a whole a lot. But on the second day there, we had planned to take a day trip to Venice! At the Verona train station, we met up with 3 other more members of our C-90 group and all 6 of us headed to Venice together. Being in Venice was a bit more of a relief since the language barrier wasn’t as big here. Most shopkeepers came up to talk to us in English, and flatter us so that we will buy their things haha. None of us had specific monuments or buildings that we wanted to see in Venice; we all just wanted to wonder around and take it all in. And Venice was just absolutely beautiful. It really is a town that’s floating on water, and the houses are all so colorful and adorable!

I’m not a huge fan of tourist-y areas, but Venice gave you the feeling of home but at the same time it was a complete foreign place. It really was a magical time being there!

On the second and third days, we spent it in Verona.
The bus system from our B&B (Negrar, Italy) to Verona was very confusing and we didn’t really understand it during our entire stay there. But we did figure out how to get to Verona’s city centre so that was a relief. Verona was also another adorable city. It didn’t seem as ancient as Venice, but still had the look of having long history behind it. Although the buildings were older, there was a main street with lots of modern stores, mostly for clothing and accessories. Those were definitely fun to window shop at (:

A group of us decided to go see a castle on top of a hill, and the view was absolutely beautiful! It was a long way up, but definitely worth it. Not to mention we also got a little bit of nice, warm sun!

On our 4th morning, we bid adieu (or ciao in our case) to our host grandparents to head to Florence. Even though we didn’t get to have long conversations with them, we were able to communicate in bits and pieces and that was such a great feeling. Going to a country not knowing the language, but still being able to connect to someone can bring such happy feelings!
I decided to travel to Florence by myself while the group left a little bit before me because of train situations. It was only traveling by train, but it was a great feeling traveling by myself in a foreign country. The other group members made sure I was okay, and we met up once I got to Florence. Now Florence was a little different that Venice and Verona. It has a bit more contemporary feel to it. The buildings looked a bit different and there were many more English speaking people. My highlight in Florence was probably seeing the duomo. There were so many intricate details on the building I couldn’t even imagine someone creating it.

I only spent about 3 hours there but it was great. That night we headed to Pisa, our final destination.
On our final day, we spent the day in Pisa. Of course we had to go see the Leaning Tower. And it really was leaning! I didn’t realize this, but there were also 2 other church related buildings right next to the leaning tower.

We were all pretty tired this day since we had to carry around our heavy backpacks. There was a nice patch of green grass next to the leaning tower of Pisa and we decided to take an advantage of that and laid out and enjoyed the almost 80s weather. I’d like to think that I was able to get a bit of tan on! The weather was absolutely beautiful and it was such a great moment and the best way to end our amazing week at Italy.

I was able to see some beautiful buildings, views, and adorable houses during my trip and also learn the struggles of a language barrier which was a great experience for me. I enjoyed every minute of my stay in Italy and I definitely want to go back again! Next time, I will hopefully know a little more Italian though (:

Cheers until next time!

Aya

It’s hard to believe that our C-90 group has already been here at Cambridge, England for over a month. Wow, time flies!

So far during this month, we have gone on 2 big group trips to London, and the Lake District. Both of these trips were splendid and of course, I took a lot of pictures 🙂

London was really all an awe. The only negative impression that I got was that there were SO many people there. Everywhere you go, there’s people, people, and more people! That got a little tiring. But what can you say, it’s London! Other than that, it was really neat seeing landmarks that I have only seen on TV before. We saw the London bridge, the London eye, and – the main entree – the Big Ben. The Big Ben really impressed me because there were so many delicate details throughout the building that you can’t really catch from looking at a picture. We spent a total of 2 and a half days there but it wasn’t enough and I know that I definitely want to go visit there again sometime this semester!

Our second trip to the Lake District was probably my favorite out of the two. I have actually never heard of it before so it was almost like a blind date, waking up from a coach bus after a 3 hour drive. As soon as I got off the bus though, I knew this weekend was going to be a blast. I saw mountains beyond mountains, with absolutely no flat lands. We hiked on the first and second days and they were quite an adventure. A lot of us were determined to become friends with the hundreds of sheep we saw, and we all were happy to be taking in vast amounts of super fresh air. On the third day we went to see the Chatsworth House, home to a duke and duchess, and the house was so big! It was also absolutely beautiful.

So those 2 trips were we’re definitely a blast. And in 2 days I’m headed to my first own trip outside the country – Italy! I cannot wait for Italy since its always been a place where I have wanted to go to. Let’s see how romantic this country is!

Differences between the UK and Europe certainly exist. I can remember three occasions on my trip when people in Europe asked me what I thought of the English people – meaning, “What do you think about how different they are?” Being placed in the position of responsibility for representing all of the UK was difficult, because, with my little experience interacting with the English, I did not feel qualified to answer. Sometimes I said this, and other times I just put a stutter-filled answer together.

A funny sign I found in Wales which represents the way I feel when asked, "What do you think about England?"

The English are more reserved than the Europeans I ran into. Everyone I spoke with seems to have been aware of this, both the English and the Europeans joked about it. This mindset may not last long though. While in Poland, Alaina and I took a free walking tour that ended in a pub crawl where we talked with two English guys. One was extremely out-going, and the other told us how he was trying to break out of his Englishness and get up to date with the 21^st century. He lamented the fact that, “most people in England seem like they stepped straight out of a Victorian novel.” The youth throughout the UK seem to be more outgoing than their parents, and with the advent of the internet, I do not see them being able to resist becoming a bit more outgoing.

Welcome to England!

The Europeans may have seemed extra stuffy in comparison to the people I met in Europe because most of the people I met were from the Mediterranean, an area known for its outgoing people. In Croatia, the woman we stayed with had her daughter bring us free wine after we arrived. In Italy, our host cooked us two very special pastas, and then his flatmate gave us two of his aunt’s homemade liqueurs. This type of behaviour seems to be rarer in England than in other parts of Europe, but things have to go on a case by case basis. One of the adult scholars in my course at Anglia Ruskin invited Alaina and me to dinner, and they were extremely hospitable. Germans are also known for their reserve, as are the Dutch. So, making a blanket statement about the differences between the UK and Europe as a whole is quite difficult. There are stuffy pockets of civilization throughout the world.

Beautiful Croatia, home to nice Mediterranean people.

One difference between the UK and Europe that I am comfortable making is that the UK seems to place more importance on pub culture than Europe. The number of pubs I can see anywhere in England vastly outweighs the number I found when I travelled through Europe. One similarity is the importance of football. Everywhere I went, football was one of the most important things on young men’s minds. Music in certain areas of Europe differs from the UK. Both places make heavy use of American music, but Europe differs from the UK in that they enjoy listening to electronica. Hostels in Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands all played a great deal of electronica. The style of dress appears to be similar throughout the UK and Europe when it is adjusted for income level. Rich cities in Italy featured people dressing like people in Cambridge, where poorer cities in Croatia featured people dressing like Norwich, England. All in all, this trip has showed me the similarities between people more so than the differences between them.

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