A Wonderful Wandering Through Wales

This weekend was the long awaited API overnight trip to Wales! The trip began Saturday morning, very very early Saturday morning may I add, with a 3 hour drive to Wales. Our first stop was a little town called Chepstow.  This is the home to the oldest stone fortification in the UK.  Chepstow castle was built by William the Conqueror in 1027! It was amazing to walk through the old castle, now in ruins.  You could just imagine the history that this place had seen. We had some free time to walk around the village and grab some lunch.  Emma, Mo, and I decided to take a trip to the local Tesco (supermarket) to get our flatmate Jelli a birthday cake!

Next on the agenda was Tintern Abbey.  The ruins of this old abbey were just incredible. I believe it was built in the 13th century.  There is no longer a roof, which was taken off during Henry VIII's reign, but the walls and windows remain.  There is no glass in the windows but the outlines are still there. It is places like this that I wish I was religious.  You can almost feel the presence of something there!

After the abbey we arrived in a small town called Hay-on-Wye.  This is known as the town of books.  There are about 1,000 residents and 30 bookshops.  The second hand books were amazing.  They had signed copies of Jane Austen and Harry Potter, first editions galore, and just everything you could possibly think of! We stayed the night here in a hotel that used to be a private estate.  The hotel inspired Sherlock Holmes Hound of the Baskervilles.

The next morning we were off to the best part of the whole trip....PONY TREKKING! Now some people decided to do a ropes course or archery, but I chose Pony trekking because its awesome! My pony's name was Major.  He was so sweet, but a little lazy.  The intermediate group were able to canter a bit, but Major wasn't having that.  The only down part of the day was that it was FREEZING. I mean below 0 freezing.  No one could feel their limbs after the ride.  To end off the trip we went on a canal cruise in Brecon Beacon canal.  It was beautiful but just about everyone was falling asleep!

Let's pop over to Cambridge

So here is the scene.  Emma and I are sitting in our lecture, Emma leans over and whisper's "Want to go to Cambridge tomorrow?"  I thought about it for a long time, all of 3 minutes, and began looking up train fares to Cambridge. Thanks to my student rail card, it was only 9 pounds! So it was settled we were going to Cambridge! We also picked up another traveler, Stuart.

So the next day at 10 am we were off.  It was 50 degrees and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  IT WAS PERFECT! We wandered around the streets looking for anything interesting, and let me tell you, there were plenty of interesting things.  The flower were just starting to bloom, the grass was green, the sky was blue!  We were able to sneak onto a few of the college campus' and take our own behind the scenes tours. To round out a wonderful day we took a river tour and tried our hand at punting (a boating style).  Overall it was a perfect day and well worth skipping class (but don't tell my teacher that!)

Just Me and London

As I may have mentioned before, I don't have any classes on Fridays so I use this time to explore London.  Sometimes I have company, sometimes I just wander with me, myself, and some itunes. Last Friday I decided to go down to the London Bridge and walk along the water and boy was it B-E-A-Utiful and very therapeutic.  Nothing like a little Train and some quiet time to make life feel a-ok.

I began my tour at the London Tower Bridge.  Most people think that this is the "london bridge" but it is not. The actual London Bridge, built in the 18th century I believe, is much less grand, but only a short walk away.  On the south side of the river you get an awesome view of the Bridge, the London Tower, and the newest attraction, the Shard. All of these were great, but the coolest part was watching a few guys parkouring. For those of you who don't know what that is, its basically jumping off high places and doing flips and such things, but its very cool.

Onwards! Next I found the Borough Market, very well known for its fresh produce.  Its a completely outdoor market where farmers, cheese artisans, bakers, butchers, etc come to sell their food.  It delicious. Right next to the market is this beautiful church, which I found out is the oldest cathedral in London built in 1212! Close by there was very a pretty ruin of a palace built in the 12th century.

To end off the walk, I walked past the Globe theatre.  I felt like shakespeare was alive! Then I went to the Tate Modern (only fueling my dislike of modern art) and made my way over the millennium bridge!