Playing Tourist, or Let's Take a Picture!

The past two days have been all about being tourist-y. Yesterday, we spent the morning touring the farmers markets and flea markets which are open on Saturday here in Bath. All I bought was a sugar and cinnamon crepe. It was quite tasty. A boy named Andrew was eating a strange food that he bought at the market—he said it was called a “Scotch Egg.” Essentially, it’s a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in a sausage and onion mix covered in breadcrumbs. It looked… convenient to transport.

Nearly immediately after discovering a Scotch Egg, we ran into a street performance in front of the Abbey. Two men, probably about 45 years old each, were wearing thongs and carrying torches. They proceeded to dance around with them, set their hair on fire, build a little stand, stand on the stand then—GET THIS—stick a sparkler between their butt cheeks, light it on fire, and do a handstand. They probably would have gotten arrested in America.

The rest of the day was spent relatively quietly. Danielle, Shea, and I got lunch at a cute little Panera-esque restaurant. I ordered an Earl Grey Tea and it came out as an entire tea service, complete with tray, milk, and sugar cubes! It was adorable.

My Tea Service

Later, Shea, Alli, and I wandered around Bath for a little while. We found a bridge that looks like the younger sister of Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Really, the whole town has an Italian feel, which is how it was designed… so well done City Planners from the 1700s. I googled Bath a lot in order to discover things around here that I want to see and found some plays, museums, etc. I also googled plane tickets to Scotland and Ireland and, oddly enough, Stockholm, Sweden (they are running a special at Bristol airport). Some people are thinking of going to Spain, which would be amazing; others want Italy, which I refuse to even consider.

Ponte Vecchio? No...

Today was even more tourist-y. ASE organizes a trip on the last day of orientation for all of the program participants, and today was the day! They arrived with a bus (called a coach) at 9:30. We all boarded and headed off to Stonehenge! Shea and I on the "coach" before leaving for Stonehenge.

Stonehenge, I discovered is a very cold place in the middle of winter. It wasn’t particularly warm in the middle of summer, but this was terrible. I had on layers of clothes and I still thought my hands were going to be frostbitten. A girl named Sylvia commented that she thought, “This is it. My body is going to shutdown right here. I’m going to die at Stonehenge.”

My flatmates and I in front of Stonehenge! (Shea, Me, Danielle, Alli)

Personally, I just wanted Kay or Callie around so that when I said, “Ah, building a henge, are we? Very nice, I’ve seen the plans,” and “Before Stonehenge there was Woodhenge and Strawhenge, but uh, the Big Bad Wolf came and blew them down,” and finally, “Two-hundred miles in this day in age, why, we don’t even know where we live anymore! I wish the Christians would hurry up and get here!” someone would understand that I was quoting Eddie Izzard and would laugh. I mean, hey, Kay could have even said one of those and saved me the trouble of remembering all three! Still, it is pretty impressive, when you consider how long the stones have been there, and how far they traveled in order to reach the very windy hill upon which they have stood for thousands of years.

A picture in front of picture of "What-Stonehenge-originally-looked-like-we-think."

After Stonehenge we went to a town called Salisbury. I’ve been there before, but this time I saw it from a different angle! A colder angle. We went to the Cathedral and I found a very sweet little chapel along the side. I stopped in, prayed, and lit a candle, which made me happy. Even more, the whole time I could hear the music from the end of the service playing. It was beautiful. After being there for a little while my flatmates, Sylvia, and Kathie went to a little pub for lunch. I had a cottage pie, which was excellent. Very traditionally English. Also, very warm, which was a welcome change from the pervasive cold of the day. After lunch we stopped in at the Costa Coffee next door. Danielle and I ordered a selection of mini-biscuits for 2.20 pounds and we each got three cookies. ‘Twas lovely.

Pub for lunch! (Kathie, Danielle, Shea, Me, Sylvia)

Finally, we ended up in a tiny medieval village called Lacock. It was very picturesque, except that both the Abbey and the Church we were supposed to see were closed (the Abbey for the season, the Church for a Christening). The Abbey was used as a location in one of the Harry Potter films.

The exterior of the place where Harry Potter was filmed.

The whole town has been used for over fifteen blockbusters, including Pride and Prejudice and some new Judi Dench film. Exciting! We ate dinner there at a pub called The George. We had a traditional English Sunday Roast Dinner. I had a fantastic stuffed chicken for dinner, a great hard cider to drink called Scrumpy Jack, and a raspberry apple crumble for dessert.

A note on dinner: Kathie and I ended up being separated from our regular group by accident, so we were at a different table from our friends. The girls we were sitting with were… interesting. They seemed nice, except that they were discussing the different camera angles used in Bridget Jones’ Diary versus Bridget Jones’ Diary 2. THEN they started talking about their foreign language skills, namely elvish, as in Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, ELVES! One girl asked the other if she knew any elvish curses; one girl talked about how she has written several poems in elvish; another girl told about how she and her friends used to pass notes in elvish during high school. [Jaw drop]

Kathie is awesome. We had a very nice dinner together in our little corner of the table.

A sign in Lacock, which I thought was kind of cool.

Now we are back in Bath, eagerly awaiting the 10:30 p.m coin toss and 11:00 kickoff of the Superbowl! Exciting! GO PATRIOTS! We’re going to the Northhamptons to watch it with those kids (it’s on BBC2, so we all get it in our ASE houses). I haven’t been to the Northhamptons yet, nor have I seen the Circus or Royal Crescent, so this is exciting, though I’m told the houses are up a mountain, so it will be a lot of walking. I'll say hi to 29 Northhampton for you, Melinda. :)

I’m a little sad, though, because I’m dying for some chips and dip and a Superbowl party American-style, but that probably isn’t in the cards, considering I still haven’t seen salsa or Velveeta in the stores. Grrr… Oh, well—nachos and cheese probably looks tourist-y anyways. :)