Old York

Actually its just called York but sometimes I need help differentiating between that the old and the new. And they definitely are old and new. Like always, I am writing this blog a little later then I should have. I went up to York the weekend of Jan 30-31. Just last weekend a couple guys I know went up to celebrate Viking-fest (I couldn't got because of work). I heard it was it was a really good time and it should have been because almost everyone who lives around York has some type of genealogical connection to the Vikings. Well that's enough text for now, time for some pictures.


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Just kidding. I wanted to put in a picture here of a nuclear power plant but I never got a good one. I was about a 6 hour bus ride (double-decker by the way) to Yorkshire(the actual city is called York, around it is Yorkshire). We must have counted at least 10 nuclear power plants on the way up there. I felt like I was in an episode of the Simpsons.



A stunning view of the River Ouse. Ouse actually means river or water in Celtic so there are a bunch of rivers around the North of England named the River Ouse or, if you think about it, just River River.



Here is the old abby at York. As the town grew the monks decided that there was too much fun and liveliness where they live so they(the 13 that were left) decided to travel a couple miles outside of York and build a new abby. We went to see that one the next day. The funny thing was the monks decided to do this in January. I can tell you from experience that North England is pretty cold in January.



Birds Attack! Seriously though, they would fly almost at you with no fear. Ive noticed this about a lot of the birds, especially in London. When I go running in the parks there are a bunch of birds in the middle of the path and they don't fly away when I run by basically blocking my path. I wanted to kick some of them but then I just went around. Its a good thing I didn't because I learned all the birds in the parks of London are property of the Crown and it would be the same thing as a felony to harm one of them. Stupid birds.



This is one of the gates in the wall surrounding the old part of the city. Today, of course, the city has expanded outside the walls, but if you walk toward the middle of the city the buildings get older and older.



A view of York Minster from the wall. More on this later.



The wall, and who's that stunning young man in the foreground?



Look! Its Loopijuice. I wonder if it makes you loopi?



And the Codfather. Where everybody eats with the fishes.



Here is part of the oldest part of York circa the middle ages. Notice how close the building are. People in York say that if you wanted to shake your neighbor's hand you would just have to reach out the window.



Remember Remember the 5th of November...ring a bell? If you have ever seen V for Vendetta you know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, click here. Guy Fawkes was born in York at this very museum. Every 5ht of November, the U.K. celebrates the foiled attempt of Guy to blow up Parliament by burning figures of him at the stake. They also eat and drink and do normal holiday stuff, except in York. I guess they feel they don't want to celebrate the death of a fellow Yorker.



So on the bus ride up to York, one of our tour guides told us about Yorkie bars. They have this marketing campaign were they say the chocolate bars are not for girls. Seeing as everybody on our trip now wanted one of these Yorkie bars, we went into the first candy store we saw (there were a lot to choose from as York is know for its chocolate) and ask for a Yorkie bar. The lady looked a little disgruntled and told us she didn't carry them. Apparently our tour guide forgot to mention that Yorkie bars are a national chain and are all over England, not just a specialty to York.

Well that's all for this post, Ill finished up the second day of the Yorkshire trip in the next one.

Rubber ducky you make Bath time so much fun!

Wow, I really have to get on this blog. I realizes when Im writing this post that I am forgetting alot of stuff because I have been doing so much stuff over the past couple weeks. By the way, Happy Chinese New Year everyone! We went out to eat at a restaurant down in China Town tonight. I tried to take some pictures of the streets but they came out pretty bad so Ill just have to post picture of my time in Bath about 3 weeks ago.

Side Note: I'm probably wearing the same clothes as the last blog post. That's because I went to Bath the same day as Stone Hedge.



Here is the Abby at Bath. We did not go inside but notice the color of the building. In an old post I talked about how all the building in Bath are made out of the same Limestone from the surrounding hills. It looks really cool but it was a little hard to tell where you were.




At the end of the street is on of the modern Bath houses which still uses the natural spring water. I really hope I get a chance before I leave to come back at take a dip in the waters.

The older woman on the right was our tour guide for this Stone Hedge/Bath trip and our trip to Wales (blog post coming soon). She really knew her stuff about the history and culture of the places we visited. Unfortunately she did not make enough of an impression on me to remember her name.



There were a bunch of street performers all around Bath. This guy was my favorite. I was singing a Jamaican Reggae song which makes me wonder how he wound up in Bath.



The original Roman baths. This was the large bath pool but there were about 18 rooms in the Roman bath with different temperatures of water. There was a roof to this building 1900ish years ago.



Doesn't that water make you want to take a bath? We weren't suppose to touch the water but psh, rules, who needs em.. It actually is warm but it smells like sulfur because it is rain water that trickles through thousands of feet of Limestone.



Another street performer. Yes, that is a man. We had to leaved before I actually saw what he was going to do with that unicycle but he had mentioned something about knives and a teddy bear so I was REALLY disappointed we couldn't stay for the grand finale.



We just walked by the center but this guy looked funny enough to deserve a picture. Our tour guided commented on how strange his western England accent was but it still sounded all the same to me.



This is only half of the circus(what British people call a circle). Apparently this is some of the most expensive housing in Bath. There was a famous writer from bath who had a character who lived in one of these houses. I'd give you names if I cared about British literature.



The architect was a famous one as well. He designed the circus to be the exact diameter as Stone Hedge since Bath is only a short distance away. All of the apartment are the same except for the symbols above the door way which represent different secret societies through out history. Kinda like a real life version of the Da Vinci code except less Tom Hanks.

Well that's about it for Bath. We had lunch this cool pub called The Lion and the Lamb(unpictured). I had quiche for the first and last time but the atmosphere made up for it. You could tell it was definitely not a touristy spot by the people that were in there. While waiting to order I heard this old guy get the usual, Carlsberg (a beer) with lime and chips. Or at least I thought that's what he said. Perhaps he had the western British accent cause it just sounded like mumbling to me.

The River Themes and Stone Hedge

After the first week of orientation we were all invited on a boat tour of the river themes. I didn't get many good picture because, well, its a boat. But here are two of the best ones.



That big space ship thing is the O2 arena. O2 is a major cell phone provider in the U.K. In fact its the one I have. The arena was built around 2000 for a millennium exhibition but fell out of use shortly after. Its was a major public issue as a lot of public funds were used to build it. But eventually a couple of years ago it was bought and now is one of the largest concert venues in the UK.



This was probably the coolest part of the cruise. We went over the prime meridian and crossed into another hemisphere. The green laser represents the prime meridian and my first time in the eastern hemisphere. The Western Hemisphere is much better in my opinion.



There it is, 4800 years old and just entering its prime. Feel free to use the pic as a screen saver, free of charge of course.



Look! There's me in front of one of the Seven Man Made Wonders of the World. (Yes I did take this picture myself)



Here's a cool trick that I can do with my phone. Jealous? That stone on the right marks the point were the sun rises on the equinoxes if you stand inside the stone circle. I marveled at how an ancient people could predict such an event.



Another picture of the great stones.



15 minutes and 33 (excruciatingly similar) pictures later, the great stones are started to just look like a bunch of rocks. O well, it was impressive for a bit. I did get quite a delicious beef pasty from the Stone Hedge concession stand, so looking back it was a pretty good trip.

Photo Dump...finally

My room. Yes its that narrow but at least the chair is comfy. You can see the end of my bed around the corner.



The bathroom. Just imagine an airplane bathroom and that basically what it is with a shower. And I'm not sure a horizontally challenged person could fit in the shower.



Isn't the view amazing!?! That tower in the background is called the BT (British Tower I think). It use to be a TV/Radio tower but now I'm not sure what it does.



My first sighting of Big Ben, well actually my only sighting so far. This is from my first weekend in London when we went on a walking tour of some of the major sites. Did you know that the tower is not called Big Ben but the bell is. So when you tell a British person that you went to see Big Ben, they will look at you in a funny way (at least a guy at my internship did).



That was our tour guide. He's telling us about the very important building in the background which I forget the name of. Dam, I should have done this sooner. Well I do remember that statue is of Oliver Cromwell(the winner of the English civil war (did you know the English had a civil war (I did (I was just testing you))))



Right outside the Parliament Building. LOOK! English people protest about stuff too.



Buckingham Palace. You can tell the Queen is away because they are flying the standard British flag. When she's there they put up the white one with a red cross. Or maybe it's the other way around?




Here's a pub we passed on the walking tour. They are every where around London! Over 7000 to be semi exact. We were encouraged to not try them all.



The London Museum of Art. We had tea and crumpets in their restaurant. I had my first scone...not a fan. Maybe I just got a stale one but it was nasty. There was also sandwiches with the crust cut off, very fancy. At the end of the tea time we had a bunch of food left over and ask if we could get a doggy bag for it being poor college kids and everything. Later we heard from our program leader that people don't take food home from restaurant in the U.K. which would explain the hesitation by the waiters and the shopping bag style bags we were given for the food.



Here's my keyboard from my internship. Notice the shape of the return key and the @ sign key being right next to it and not above the 2. That and the fact they put their dates in the wrong order gave me some difficulty but I got through it. Also, they have a dollar, pound and euro sign on their keyboard.

These are all the pics I'm posting for the first week. I'll try to catch up with the other ones later. Speaking of ketchup, they do have Heinz over here but if you don't get Heinz the other brands of ketchup are very very sweet and strange tasting.