If You're Looking for a Laugh

So this blog post is to share the more ridiculous pictures I took over the course of my trip.  I'll post the rest of my real pictures on Facebook eventually...

Subtle.

The "Official Water of 2012"  1.  It's not 2012.  2.  Like that's even a real thing.

"Hello, we're the Police and we'd like anything but for you to take us seriously.

Again, subtle.

Because you can have the "Most Southerly" anything really.

Hello, cow.

I'll be wearing this on the first day of classes.

This is definitely the Shakespeare I know.

Do you see it?  Really?  It's obviously Hamlet.  Now that you mention it, I see it now.

Close, Noobo, close.

"That's a really nice picture of that duck." - Bithy Goodman

That's really all you need.

Absolute must-see.

My next flight.

What the heck is happening in Bath?  Graduates in the streets?

This picture is funny in light of the next picture.

Hahaha.

Regency wedding anyone?

Ok.  The rest of the pictures should be on Facebook eventually.  Peace out!

FOOD!

One thing I wasn't super excited about in coming over here was food.  England isn't known for having fantastic cuisine as country's like Italy and France are.  However, I've had some really awesome food over here.  Some of it is stuff I didn't even know was traditionally English!

For starters:  Here's my first meal in Bath.

This is a traditional Cornish pasty (pronounced with a short 'a').  Cornwall is the Southwest most county of the UK.  These were originally intended for Cornish miners.  The pasty has a thick crust that could be used to hold it to eat.  As the miners hands were often dirty, they would eat all but the crust and then throw the rest away.  Inside are potatoes, steak, some onions...  This is the traditional kind, they fill them with a lot of other stuff as well.The Coke is a little taste of America and a remedy for 12+ hours of travelling and jet-lag.  It was really good.  I got this and two sweet pastries for less than three pounds.

Next up:  Fish and Chips

An obvious English favorite.  It's probably a heart attack on a plate, but it's actually really good.  These were really delicious beer-battered cod.  You can see the Coke (to combat homesickness).  There's also the salt and vinegar up at the top.  That's the best part.  The fish and chips are excellent completely doused in vinegar with a little bit of salt.  At any sit down restaurant where you order chips (fries), usually pubs, they have a bottle of vinegar on the table.  It's really good!

This is where we ate said fish and chips!

Here is another traditional pasty and chips supper consumed in Cornwall, the home of the Cornish pasty.  That is a half pint of Guiness, the ONLY Guiness I have had on the entire trip.  It may look like Dr. Pepper, but it tastes incredibly nasty.  I don't understand the appeal at all.  Not for me.

Also in Cornwall, this is British BBQ.  It was really good.  And we finished this meal with some really good ice cream.

The best thing about the two meals above is that they were provided by the program.  I only had to pay for the Guiness - and the first sip led to every kind of buyer's regret.

This is a buttered tea at St. Kilves over my study trip weekend.  Earl Grey - my favorite and yummy scones.  Tea is the best thing about England.

This was also the prettiest tea garden I've seen and one of the nicest days we've had.  What luck!

I saw Macbeth in Stratford-upon-Avon.  This was my fancy pre-theater meal...

I don't think it really needs much explanation.  It probably looks somewhat familiar.

This is a Bath Bun.  They are completely delicious.  That's sugar, not salt on the top.  SO good!

And as an added bonus, there's a sugar cube baked into the middle.  YUM!

More about actual places later.  In the meantime, today is the last day of classes and the first day of real freedom.  I don't know what to do with myself without papers to write or things to read.  I suppose I'll explore and enjoy Bath until my mom and sister arrive here TOMORROW!

The Beautiful and the Welsh

I do actually take classes here in Bath.  I have a core course on Jane Austen, and a seminar course on Transatlantic Romanticism, or the English and American Romantic poets.  This weekend was seminar course study trip weekend, and each seminar headed off to go "study" on site.  All the other seminars headed to London.  However, my eight classmates, our professor, and the dean/director of the program, Jonathan, headed off to see places associated with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  In the true Romantic tradition, much of our learning for the weekend consisted of wandering through nature, though, to ensure we were not lost in the wilderness and therefore prevent lawsuit, our wandering had some structure to it.

The bridge from England to Wales.  That's the Welsh coast.


We started the weekend with a very brief dip into Wales.  (Very brief as in under 2 hours.)  We visited Tintern Abbey, another ruined old abbey that was absolutely gorgeous.  It was also in such a scenic and beautiful place.  The title of this post may be a bit redundant as my two-hour voyage into Wales convinced me that nearly everything Welsh, except perhaps the language, is also beautiful.  We started by reading the Wordsworth poem that prompted our visit, named very informatively "Lines, Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey..."  If you are now interested in educating yourself in English literature or becoming more cultured, avail yourself:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html.

Here are some pictures of us reading.  Very pensive, very Romantic.

We were then left to explore the abbey.  I suppose you'll want some pictures, and I'll assume that, cultured and intelligent as you all are, you'll want to hear a little of it's historical as well as literary significance.

AHHHH!  WELSH!

I understand the danger a lot more because this sign is warning me in two languages.

The Abbey was founded on May 9, 1131!  That's a pretty long time ago, kids.

These are the cloisters!  Cistercian monks lived here under the Rule of St. Benedict!

SO PRETTY!  This is taken from the cloisters of the church.

Flowers on ruins.  Windows upon windows.

Me with another set of scenic ruins.  TRIBE PRIDE!!!

Pretty.

General splendor.  Unfortunately, this place also fell victim to the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  "On September 3, 1536, Abbot Wyche surrendered Tintern Abbey to the King's visitors and ended a way of life which had lasted 400 years" - Wikipedia

This place was so beautiful.  I could have stayed all day long!

Pretty

Stairs to somewhere secret.

MARY!

Every was in both languages!

Again, it was so beautiful!

The Abbey from across the River Wye.

 

A dove also alighted on the beautiful ruins.

That's all for now.  I'll try to post again soon.  I've taken well over 1,500 pictures.  I'll try to get them up on Facebook when I get back.  But for now, it's final paper week in Bath.  Off to Oxford tomorrow, then London on Saturday!

Also, more information about the Cistercians can be found here, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03780c.htm, if you're interested in joining or just interested in history.

Glastonbury Tor

This was actually part of the Stonehenge and, as the title might suggest, Glastonbury trip.  This place was, in two words, completely awesome.  It was quite a hike (over 500 vertical feet, though we obviously didn't climb vertically), and a crazy number of stairs.  It wasn't that bad at all though, really and, once at the top, it was well worth it.  From the top of the Tor, you can see the surrounding countryside so well!  It's amazing.  There were some truly spectacular views.  The photographs are good, but they can't even begin to demonstrate how beautiful this place was.

For starters, let's get an idea of what this hike even looked like.  If you look closely you can see a tiny little building.  That's where we were headed.

Note little building and fellow American students.

Here's the building a little closer up, and SHEEP!!!

Now you're probably thinking:  What is that building?  Why is it there?  Jane, please tell me the significance of this location!  If you're just showing us this because you think it's pretty, that's kind of lame.  Obviously this place has an awesome historical and mythological background.

OK.  So a brief bit of history.

The building at the top of the Tor is the ruins of St. Michael's Church (or the second St. Michael's Church).  Before the church, there was a non-Christian, Anglo-Saxon fort.  After the fort, the first church was built as a part of a medieval Christian society in the Dark Age.  This was destroyed by an earthquake on September 11, 1275 (precision!).  The second church was built (a rebuilding of the first) in the 1360s and survived until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.  As I wrote in my previous post about Glastonbury, the abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, Richard Whiting put up a fight to the dissolution and was hung, drawn, and quartered on the Tor on November 15, 1539 (precision with the dates again!)

The Tor is also associated with Avalon, the place where King Arthur went to heal from wounds sustained in battle.  Arthur came to Avalon by boat, but this location is a plausible one even though it is landlocked because it used to be an island surrounded by marshy area.  Recall that Arthur and Guinevere are also said to be buried at Glastonbury, though at the Abbey and not at the Tor.

Enough history and Arthurian legend!  More pictures!

A pretty heart made out of grass.  I guess it's cute.  I mean if you believe in love and all that.  (I kid, I kid.)

Some sweet countryside from a grass-eye view.

Window out of  ruin.

Countryside.

This person is me.  Me with some beautiful English countryside.

Storm clouds over pretty countryside.  :(

Me with two new friends!  Elibet and Dana!  And I'm making an awesome expression.

Sunny on one side of the Tor.

Still sunny.

What the heck?  See the rain on just the other side.  But!--the heart thing again.  That is to Q-U-T-E!

The view walking down.  Countryside to the left.

The view walking down.  Town to the right.

I am a selfy expert, mainly because they're funny.  This was before crazy wind and drizzle started.

Walking down into a thunderstorm.

I'll also include, for your amusement, some photos of the local wildlife!  There are three kinds of animals in England: birds (of all sorts), sheep, and cows.

Cows in Glastonbury.

Sheep in Glastonbury.

I took no pictures of birds.  I hate those things with the fire of a thousand suns.

Well that's all for now!  I'll be sure to offer a prayer tonight for anyone who makes it to the end of this blog entry, so if you're reading this, congratulations.  I'm headed to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, this weekend!  I'm pumped to see Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theater!!!!  Anyways, there will be more soon.  This blog is losing any sense of chronology, but I hope it's retaining all sense of awesomeness!