Castles and Fairs- What could be better?

I  am currently on a bus coming home from an excellent weekend in Wales. This morning we got up and packed our backpacks and put them into storage at the hostel. We then head out to go to the castle but as we left the hostel, the guy working there told us he had a better idea. He suggested that we go to St. Fagans (where we went the previous day). The Welsh sure are pushy, two people telling us to abandon our plans to do something else. Regardless, we walked to the castle and got there at about 9:30. It was really quiet so when we got there which was wonderful. We first watched this video and we were the only ones in the cinema so Eleanor, Kate and I talked throughout the video. It was incredibly corny and supposed to tell the story of the castle but it involved a girl in modern day Cardiff and the story was lost on us. She ran through the streets, got chased by football fans, and someone this teenage boy was incorporated it. Overall it was a strange video, but hey, it was interesting. 

At the end of the video the screen lifts up and you can see the inside of the castle. Then a set of doors opened and we went through the tunnels and walked through the corridors which became an air raid shelter during World War II.There were lots of unique posters in the halls that reminded me of the ones I have studied in school, but much more sinister as bombings in the UK was a much more direct threat and this castle was bombed. From there we took the walk along the castle walls. It was a beautiful day out and we got to walk through lots of cool halls with little windows to peep out. From there, we went the actual residential building. There was a beautiful library with lots of old books from council meetings, city dealings and religious texts. There was also a stunning spiral staircase and a magnificent 'Arab Room' that was spectacular to look at. From there, we made out way up the keep. It had super steep steps that we had to climb and once inside there was an open green space about 30 feet in diameter. Then we climbed a set of stairs even more steep than the first set to get to the top where we got an absolutely breathtaking view of the city. It was a gorgeous day and we could see really far! The castle is in the middle of the city so right behind the clock tower you can see Millennium Stadium. Then we had to walk down the stairs which was terrifying. I never thought I was afraid of heights but these stairs made me question that. My foot could not fully fit on the steps but I made it down alive. \

From there, we went to the country fair that was occurring. Since we were there and got free admission with our ticket, we decided to check it out. There were alpacas, chickens, and guinea pigs. Whereas the Minnesota state fair may just let you pet them, here they were actively selling them. They were advertising how easy it is to raise the chickens in the city (presumably in Cardiff, not in our London flat). You could also buy an alpaca for 495 pounds. (It reminded me of Gilly's llama sound). Unfortunately they were not selling bison, sorry dad! There were tons of food places so Kate and I went and sampled all of the cheeses (once place had 7 types, the other had at least 10). We continued our sampling and tried a jam (I tried Raspberry with Coriander and Kate had Apricot with Lavender), elderberry brandy, elderflower wine, ginger wine (amazing!), two ales, roasted pecans, game and red wine pie and some delicious breads. Needless to say we enjoyed the foods and I managed to only buy one thing (ginger cheese) although I was tempted to buy much more. 

Given the nice weather, we then went to the park next to the castle and walked around It was quite picturesque and there were lots of blooming flowers, dogs frolicking in water, etc. Finally, we wen to the National museum and wen through the national history museum which had lots of exhibits on earth, dinosaurs, neanderthals, etc and some stuffed animals. Then we ventured upstairs to the art museum and we looked at some Montes, Picasos, etc. There were also rooms with Nethlandish and Italian Renaissance art next to each other which was exciting. There was also a really strange modern art area and I watched a movie about a man made boulder that was followed for 30 years and this really strange fire ceremony. 

Before we left Cardiff we stopped at McDonalds to get a quick dinner before we picked up our bags and went to the train station. The McDonalds had four machines where you could order instead of going to a person. Then you would go to the counter and watch a board that would say what they were preparing and what was ready. I had a nice kids meal but I still dislike the ketchup here. It is far to sweet for my taste so I added a little bit of salt to it. Eleanor laughed at me but it made it taste more like home. Now we are on the bus coming home. I have a lot of homework to do but I am tired and decided to take a quick break to blog. The pictures will be up in a few days when I have the time to go through the pictures. I think I have over 300 pictures but am not sure. (Update as of 9/30/13: There were 561 photos taken. The internet is super slow today so I will only upload a few pictures and am just going to put them at the end because it takes too long to move them.)

Caerdydd (Cardiff for you English speakers)

Hello from Wales! I am posting from Cardiff, but unfortuanately there will be no pictures until I get back to London. Yesterday we took a bus from London to Cardiff. The moment we were in Wales, we started seeing Welsh everywhere! Every street sign, ad, etc is in English and Welsh which makes it much slower to scan the sign to find the information you need because theere is so much gibberish on the signes. Once we got here, we checked into our hostel and then went to grab dinner. On the way, we saw Cardiff Castle and a prison. For dinner, we went to a pub called the Cardiff Cottage. I ended up getting Cardiff chilli nachos and a Black Cherry Bulmers. The nachos were delicious and came with chilli, sour cream, guacamole and rice, but no cheese. It was really good and then we finished the meal with sticky toffee pudding. After dinner, we walked back to our hostel and saw lots of people out and about. There were people playing drums, stag and hen parties, and lots of people giving trying to give us fliers about clubs. It is a cool city with some old towers sprinkled in. When we got to our room, we watched an episode of doctor who to prepare for the doctor who experience and crashed early. This morning we got up and I took a shower. The hostel is much nicer than I was expecting and my shower was warm and with good water pressure. After getting ready we went and had our free continental breakfast. I was even able to pack myself a sandwich for lunch. Eleanor and Kate then headed out for the Doctor Who Experience. It was rather pricy and given that I am not a Doctor Who fan, I figured it would not be worth it. Thus, I spent the morning wandering through Cardiff.

I first went through the market which was dirt cheap (70 p for tea, 2 pounds for a sandwich), but super overwhelming because everyone was speaking Welsh so I did not buy anythin. Then I ventured to the visitor centre to get ideas of what to do. The woman strongly recommended the Natural History Museum, something we were not planning to do. She recommended we spend a day there so I decided would not have the time and instead ventured towards the bay. It was rainy and chilly but the bay was really prettty. There were some boat tours, cute restaurants, and fun statues. I saw the National Assembly Hall and decided to go in. I had to go through security and ended up waiting behind a tour group. Once inside, I realized the only thing I could do was go to a cafe or tiny shop and thus promptly left since I could not see anything without a tour. Whoops! Then I wandered into the Millenium centre and looked around a bit before sitting down and reading my brochures. I met up with Eleanor and Kate and we wandered through the shops a bit. We found the most ridiculous store called "Americandy", but most of the candy was not American. There were; however, fruit loops, lucky charms, pibb extra and coke vanilla. The weather had begun to clear up so we walked to the city center to catch the bus to the Natural History Museum. Our timetable we had recieved was incorrect so we ended up with half an hour to kill. We went to the local shopping mall and wandered around it. The first store we hopped into was this strange liquor shop. You would buy a glass bottle and then you would buy the alcohol by volume. There were some strange flavors, and it was really expensive! One of the wines was 114 pound/100 ml but some of the spirits were much cheaper, 4 pounds/100 ml. Then we went to this knick knack type place that had so many adorable umbrellas, wall decorations, christmas decorations, scarves, purses, and furniture. I found this adorable purse that was a crossbody with a snap and zipper (important to not be pickpocketed) but I decided that I was not going to get it. It was time to go back to the bus station so we went back.

The bus to St Fagans (the natural history muesum) was only 3 pounds round trip which is dirt cheap compared to London. We arrived at the museum and bought a map for 30p (but the entrance was free). The "museum" is an open-air musuem with over 40 buildings, animals, etc. and is meant to show you what it would be like to live in Wales in the past. We went to the gardens first and it was absolutely gorgeous. There was a large reflecting pond, some awesome architecture, towers, and a castle that we got to walk through. Then we made our way to the other half that had cottages, little shops, two churches, pigs, cows and a turkey. It is a really hard thing to describe this but I hope you get the idea. It is an old time village you can walk through and we had so much fun. We spent 3 hours there and took lots of picutres. After lots of fun, we were happy to rest our feet on the bus ride back. Since it was only 5 we went back to the store we went to earlier and I bought the purse I had been eying and Kate got the scarf she had been looking at. We walked through the indoor mall and looked at lots of shoes but no one bought anything else.

By 5:30 we were quite hungry so we set out for this vegitarian Indian restaurant Kate had read about on TripAdvisor. I started with a mango soda that had real mango juice in it. It was so tasty! We got the chef's special for 6.25 which is a phenomenol deal! It came with one poppadum, two slices of roti, one samosa, two fried potato things, soup, rice, a curry and a dessert. I got a yogurty soup that was spicy but really well flavored. The samosa was very hefty and well-filled with a spicy bean filling and flaky outside. The curry was not as spicy and also delicious and paired great with the bread that we got. We do not know what the dessert was but it was a bean-paste like texture and tasted kinda almond-y. It was really sugary and a good way to finish the meal. Afterwards, we walked home past all of the clubs and saw many stag and hen parties. They are quite outrageous ordeals, the groomsmen dress up (one group was all wearing golf outfits, complete with one glove), the grooms dress up (one was wearing a slutty flight attendant outfit), and the hen parties were crazy, one group was all wearing camo, and another group was all wearing the slutty halloween outfits you did not know people even wore. It was hilarious to see and we had a great time people watching! We crashed early because we were exhauseted and have a busy day tomorrow at the National Museum and Castle!

Stereotypical London: The British Museum, Shakespeare and Curry

I think that I have finally recovered from the weekend in Belgium.

 

Monday morning started out depressing because we studied the gin crisis in history and ethnofederalism in Nigeria in polysci. At lunchtime, I went to Sainsbury's (grocery store) to grab lunch since I did not have time to shop on Sunday. I tried out the salad bar there and it was delicious! It is not by weight so you can cram the carton as full as you want! I took advantage of this and filled one side fruit and the other side with two bean salads and two pasta salads. I really liked one of the bean salads and one of the pasta salads that I may have in the future if I do not pack lunch. In the afternoon we debated the use of cognitive enhancing drugs in neuroscience.  It was interesting; however, we strayed way too far away from science, talking about social inequality. That said, it is interesting to hear these topics discussed by non-science majors. After class I went to Sainsbury's (again) and bought tons of groceries for 11 pounds. Sara, Eleanor and I are all feeling quite proud of ourselves because we have been shopping fairly cheaply thanks to the generic "Sainsbury's Basics" brand. After getting groceries I made the trek home which always feels twice as far with two bags of groceries. Nonetheless, I got home, made dinner, changed, and then walked to the West End. We saw a play called the Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. It was a  really interesting satire about Hitler (historically accurate) and had a cool political message at the end. The goal of the play is to make you think and I think it did that well.

Wonderful seats as usual!

Tuesday I was able to do lots of studying in the morning and Eleanor and I booked  our tickets to Italy for fall break! Yay! Art class was interesting as usual, but I think we are all a little tired of art after studying it all weekend. In the evening, I did lots of studying for my mid-sem exam. There were five of us studying together (out of 8 in the class) so hopefully we all understood the material well.

 

Wednesday, we had a walking tour near Holborn for history and then our polysci test. Hopefully it went well! After I had lunch and finished my readings for the day, I was working ahead and losing focus. Because of this, I decided to hop over to the British Museum for an hour. I was not really in the mood to read, so I just looked at the hieroglyphics, tombs, Roman and Greek art and sculpture and the Rosetta stone. They have a phenomenal collection of Greek, Roman and Egyptian art and archaeology. When I was in one of the exhibits, I knew a lot of the religious symbolism because of my art history class. It was exciting to have that moment when I realized that art was actually sinking in! The only problem at the museum was that tourists were swarming. Strangely, the crowds were mostly 40-60 year olds from other countries. It is interesting to see the cultural differences between tourists. Some stop in the middle of the exhibit to look at maps, some take pictures of everything, some talk loudly, some try to touch everything, etc. I will not perpetuate the stereotypes here, but it is interesting to not how cultural differences affect peoples behavior at the museum.

After neuroscience class, Mollie and I raced home to eat, change and then head out again. We walked to the national theater to see Othello. The program director of Grinnell-in-London is so accommodating and is wonderful and wants everyone who is enthusiastic about theatre to be able to come so she got us tickets. I am so thankful for the program for paying for these tickets because at 48 pounds they are expensive tickets. It was a spectacular performance and my favorite play we have seen so far! The main actors, Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear, were absolutely breathtaking. Given that I am not taking the Shakespeare class, my seat was in the grand circle instead of the stalls; however I was in row B and had a phenomenal seat. It was cool to have an almost birds eye view of the production. Two of my friends, Sara and Eleanor, were in row A in the stalls so they had the opposite view as they had a view from below. 

This was the best way to show the theatre- the stalls below and the grand circle above.
The stage was a circle and we sat around it. 

On Thursday my art class was cancelled because our professor had to go to Pasadena to open her art exhibition. With so much time on my hands, I went to the Museum of London in the morning. It is a very nice museum that takes you through London over the years. The museum is located within a roundabout so you have to take stairs from a neighboring building and then walk on a bridge to get to the museum. 

Afterwards, I meandered home and took some pictures on the way. It was beautiful outside.

Garden in middle of roundabout

These collapsible bikes are everywhere! 

Borris Bikes- also everywhere! I will never ride one. I value my life too much! (Note the adult on the scooter in the background. Scooters are everywhere, kids ride them, adults in suits ride them!)

Even the bins are branded by the corporation of London.

More branding.

Branded street sign.

Every time you walk into the city of London you will be greeted by a dragon like this. Some are much larger but they exist on every entrance road.

In the evening, we had curry night. Almost everyone from the program went to this amazing Indian restaurant (Sheba Brick Lane). We each had to pay 5 pounds and the program subsidized the rest! They got rice and naan for the table. We also got popadums which was this crispy bread thing with four sauces.  We each got to get a drink ( I got a Magners) and an entree. I got Chicken Makani which is chicken in a buttery, yogurt, ginger sauce. The menu says "Breast pieces of chicken marinated in ginger, garlic and yoghurt, served with rich home made butter ghee in creamy rich sauce."It was phenomenal. Afterwards we went out and went to a local pub/club. It was really fun and then we finished the night with some chips. 

Today, I have been doing some homework and packing for Wales. I will take lots of pictures and update my blog when I get back!