lThis is my last weekend in Cambridge! I have a 10-15 page Ulysses paper due Wednesday and a >1000 word Shakespeare paper due Thursday then I fly home on Friday, arriving in Boston that night at 7 PM EST (I think). These six weeks flew by...
For our last excursion - meaning our last 2 hour trip on buses as a cohesive unit! - we went back to Stratford-Upon-Avon to look around and to see a performance of Hamlet. We saw Shakespeare's birthplace, the Shakespeare Family Homestead, and went for a boat tour of Avon. Stratford-Upon-Avon also contains seemingly thousands of character-named places like Cordelia (a pub). We passed a horribly tacky 3d-tour of Shakespeare plays called the Shakespeariance. I could not make this up if I tried, trust me. (We did not go on The Shakespeareance. We retain some dignity.)
Anyway, there was much excitement surrounding this production, because David Tennant - the current Dr. Who - AND Patrick Stewart of Star Trek fame both starred in it. (For those of us who like scifi things, this is a very exciting moment. Also, the player in the play-within-a-play representing Shakespeare himself looked MUCH like the King of the Cosmos from Katamari and nobody else on this trip had any idea what I was talking about. The King of the Cosmos - and that player fellow - looks like this.)
David Tennant was perfect as Hamlet! Patrick Stewart was a little bit flat as Claudius for my liking, but it was awesome anyway. I know I keep saying that each thing I do is better than the last, but this performance BLEW King Lear and Merchant of Venice out of the water. The actor who played Lear at the Globe was Polonius in Hamlet, and he was absolutely perfect. I don't think anybody in that entire audience disliked it. It's getting rave reviews all over England; critics are saying that David Tennant might be the quintessential Hamlet of the 21st century (so says our Shakespeare professors). The Courtyard, where we saw it, sold out the remainder of the run, and it moves to London in the fall. Tickets are as expensive as £100 and rising...
That's about it from here really. I promise you the British Food Entry is coming this week (I've been working on it!) and upon my arrival to the states I will write the British Language & Culture entry...because I know you're all waiting for it.
I hope all is well with you, and I'm looking forward to seeing you soon.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Enter the Haggis!
This weekend we went to Scotland. You know how people talk about how they fall in love with a place the second they set foot there? That pretty accurately summarizes my feelings for Scotland. It was all so beautiful and so perfect; I could spend the rest of my life there.
Anyway. We left Cambridge at 8 AM on Thursday and drove to Haworth, where the Brontes lived. We walked around their house and the moors. The moors are presently occupied with several thousand sheep and Mr. Heathcliff and Jane Eyre were conspicuously absent. "Creepy" is not quite the word I would use to describe Bronteland - as most seem to - but rather "picturesque". Haworth was a hill-based town, with a very steep cobblestone main street and lots of fields nearby.
We got back on the bus to keep driving to The NORTH (as UK road signs read). There is apparently some rule that one may not drive for more than 4 hours at a crack, so you must stop and take a break. We stopped right on the border of England and Scotland to get something to nibble on and to stretch our legs a little before heading further north.
While in Edinburgh we were staying at the Pollock Halls, some sort of conference housing as part of the University of Edinburgh. These were really nice buildings; way nicer than I think any of us fully anticipated. Nobody had roommates, which was actually a very good move on the part of someone! After getting off the bus, we all unpacked a little bit and then went out for dinner. Some friends and I found terrible Chinese take-away, and later met up with the rest of the group at some nearby pub, where we met a Real Scottish Person and his Irish friend.
That night, I got sick. I'm allergic to shellfish and the like, so I had assumed I had accidentally ingested some at the Chinese place earlier... There were 21 of us on this trip, and 17 people were sick over the 3 nights we spent in Edinburgh. Rumors abounded: Was it food poisoning? Was it Avian Flu? Was it West Nile? What about Kevin? He was just in the States for someone's wedding, maybe he brought it back! Luckily I had a pretty mild form of The Plague, I still did everything the next few days. Some people barely left their rooms and therefore became very familiar with Baird Hall but didn't see any of the city!
So the next day (Friday) I went to Edinburgh Castle, The Royal Mile, and Hollyrood Palace with the group. My friend Kat and I had both been sick and were the only ones who managed to make it all day on the Mile. The castle was really cool, the Royal Mile was one big collection of shops, pubs, and advertising for the Fringe Festival. While we were in Scotland, their big theatre festival was taking place, so advertising for it was everywhere. We also went into a beyond frightening museum called The Museum of Childhood, had really good gelato, saw Parliament (more like Uglyment! it was so bad) and went through Mary, Queen of Scots' chambers. What a day! I went back and passed out for a while, then ate at a horribly named place called Absorb Cafe, walked halfway up a trail on one of the hills behind us, and went right back to sleep again.
Saturday was basically designed as a re-do of Friday for those who missed it, but in reality everyone sort of went off on their own accords. We all felt a lot better, and I certainly felt fine! If I could do all of Friday... Saturday was only better. A big group of us went down to the Edinburgh Dungeons, which were fantastically cheesy. Other than that, we basically stuck to the Royal Mile; I bought a kilt!
We went back to the Fringe Festival Leaflet Collection Zone and scoped out some shows to see.
Real names of plays going on right now in Edinburgh: Apocalypse The Musical, Plague The Musical, The Duck That Died for No Reason (their shirts said Discipline The Duck; a much better title), Dracula On a Bouncy Castle, etc...
A very enthusiastic young man talked us into seeing a HORRIBLE play called ShakesPod (I promise you, it is WAY worse than the title begins to imply. Trust me: I wish I could have that hour of my life back) and we also saw a wonderful sketch show called The Duck that Died for No Reason ("I don't eat animals that Beatrix Potter wrote about!"). That evening we had plans to meet some guys from our group and go out to a pub together, but they never materialized, so two friends and I went off. We ended up at a scottish punk club, filled with 40-something punkers, and a live band yelling "Oi!" a lot. It was AWESOME.
I DID try haggis while I was in Scotland. Our dining-hall thing in the very MUBlike John MacIntyre Center had haggis (and for our vegetarian friends, Tofaggis, though it was quite sadly not called that). I had sort of hoped to get the whole stomach shebang - haggis, tatties and neeps - and eat that, but that might have been a little bit intense. Haggis, in case you were curious, tastes much like meaty hash browns with lots of seasoning. For more fun about haggis, please see this wikipedia article!
Since you only live once, a group of us wanted to take the hike up Arthur's Seat to watch the sunrise at 4 am. 6 of us were ready to go, but 4 of them had only flip flops, which are not very good hiking shoes; I had borrowed my (still sick) friend Liz's hiking boots. The flip flop crowd weren't really prepared for very much, so they went up a very straightforward path while my friend Becca and I decided to tackle the largest mountain.
After walking around the base of it for a long time, we decided if there was no recognizable trail at the bottom we may as well start going up it and pick up the trail where we could. This ultimately turned into us crawling up the entire face of the crag, one hand at a time! Occasionally we'd stop and wonder why we hadn't found the trail yet... but if you stayed in one place too long you might also fall off the side of the wall, so we had to keep moving. We became quite intimidated by a collection of very small trees (we felt pathetic) and I still have thistles stuck all in my hands, but it was AWESOME.
We made it up to the top in about 40 minutes or so, which wasn't really so bad. There was a very big sign, warning us of our impending death by falling rocks (this would have been a little useful at the BOTTOM of the mountain too...) and a small barricade with similar warnings (NO PEDESTRIANS, IMPENDING DOOM, etc). We walked around that on the VERY well-kempt trail, which we followed to all the major nearby hills. We ultimately made it to Arthur's Peak after climbing the world's supply of stairs. Though we missed most of the sunrise, we certainly saw all Edinburgh, from the best vantage point possible. It was so beautiful, and I was so impressed that we did it and the mountain is still there. (yes! nobody died! TAKE THAT!)
After that we packed up, piled back onto the bus, and saw York in 2 hours. York was drastically different from New York! It was a city, but not a huge one, but I didn't see much of it beyond a sandwich place and a few used bookstores and the like. Another 5 hours later, we arrived back in Cambridge, where we eventually learned that all of Cambridge was sick in our absence too, effectively ruling out Kevin as a source of disease.
Despite the plague, I had SUCH a great time! I wish I could do it again! I might have been the only person who actually liked Scotland, but that's fine by me.
Anyway. We left Cambridge at 8 AM on Thursday and drove to Haworth, where the Brontes lived. We walked around their house and the moors. The moors are presently occupied with several thousand sheep and Mr. Heathcliff and Jane Eyre were conspicuously absent. "Creepy" is not quite the word I would use to describe Bronteland - as most seem to - but rather "picturesque". Haworth was a hill-based town, with a very steep cobblestone main street and lots of fields nearby.
We got back on the bus to keep driving to The NORTH (as UK road signs read). There is apparently some rule that one may not drive for more than 4 hours at a crack, so you must stop and take a break. We stopped right on the border of England and Scotland to get something to nibble on and to stretch our legs a little before heading further north.
While in Edinburgh we were staying at the Pollock Halls, some sort of conference housing as part of the University of Edinburgh. These were really nice buildings; way nicer than I think any of us fully anticipated. Nobody had roommates, which was actually a very good move on the part of someone! After getting off the bus, we all unpacked a little bit and then went out for dinner. Some friends and I found terrible Chinese take-away, and later met up with the rest of the group at some nearby pub, where we met a Real Scottish Person and his Irish friend.
That night, I got sick. I'm allergic to shellfish and the like, so I had assumed I had accidentally ingested some at the Chinese place earlier... There were 21 of us on this trip, and 17 people were sick over the 3 nights we spent in Edinburgh. Rumors abounded: Was it food poisoning? Was it Avian Flu? Was it West Nile? What about Kevin? He was just in the States for someone's wedding, maybe he brought it back! Luckily I had a pretty mild form of The Plague, I still did everything the next few days. Some people barely left their rooms and therefore became very familiar with Baird Hall but didn't see any of the city!
So the next day (Friday) I went to Edinburgh Castle, The Royal Mile, and Hollyrood Palace with the group. My friend Kat and I had both been sick and were the only ones who managed to make it all day on the Mile. The castle was really cool, the Royal Mile was one big collection of shops, pubs, and advertising for the Fringe Festival. While we were in Scotland, their big theatre festival was taking place, so advertising for it was everywhere. We also went into a beyond frightening museum called The Museum of Childhood, had really good gelato, saw Parliament (more like Uglyment! it was so bad) and went through Mary, Queen of Scots' chambers. What a day! I went back and passed out for a while, then ate at a horribly named place called Absorb Cafe, walked halfway up a trail on one of the hills behind us, and went right back to sleep again.
Saturday was basically designed as a re-do of Friday for those who missed it, but in reality everyone sort of went off on their own accords. We all felt a lot better, and I certainly felt fine! If I could do all of Friday... Saturday was only better. A big group of us went down to the Edinburgh Dungeons, which were fantastically cheesy. Other than that, we basically stuck to the Royal Mile; I bought a kilt!
We went back to the Fringe Festival Leaflet Collection Zone and scoped out some shows to see.
Real names of plays going on right now in Edinburgh: Apocalypse The Musical, Plague The Musical, The Duck That Died for No Reason (their shirts said Discipline The Duck; a much better title), Dracula On a Bouncy Castle, etc...
A very enthusiastic young man talked us into seeing a HORRIBLE play called ShakesPod (I promise you, it is WAY worse than the title begins to imply. Trust me: I wish I could have that hour of my life back) and we also saw a wonderful sketch show called The Duck that Died for No Reason ("I don't eat animals that Beatrix Potter wrote about!"). That evening we had plans to meet some guys from our group and go out to a pub together, but they never materialized, so two friends and I went off. We ended up at a scottish punk club, filled with 40-something punkers, and a live band yelling "Oi!" a lot. It was AWESOME.
I DID try haggis while I was in Scotland. Our dining-hall thing in the very MUBlike John MacIntyre Center had haggis (and for our vegetarian friends, Tofaggis, though it was quite sadly not called that). I had sort of hoped to get the whole stomach shebang - haggis, tatties and neeps - and eat that, but that might have been a little bit intense. Haggis, in case you were curious, tastes much like meaty hash browns with lots of seasoning. For more fun about haggis, please see this wikipedia article!
Since you only live once, a group of us wanted to take the hike up Arthur's Seat to watch the sunrise at 4 am. 6 of us were ready to go, but 4 of them had only flip flops, which are not very good hiking shoes; I had borrowed my (still sick) friend Liz's hiking boots. The flip flop crowd weren't really prepared for very much, so they went up a very straightforward path while my friend Becca and I decided to tackle the largest mountain.
After walking around the base of it for a long time, we decided if there was no recognizable trail at the bottom we may as well start going up it and pick up the trail where we could. This ultimately turned into us crawling up the entire face of the crag, one hand at a time! Occasionally we'd stop and wonder why we hadn't found the trail yet... but if you stayed in one place too long you might also fall off the side of the wall, so we had to keep moving. We became quite intimidated by a collection of very small trees (we felt pathetic) and I still have thistles stuck all in my hands, but it was AWESOME.
We made it up to the top in about 40 minutes or so, which wasn't really so bad. There was a very big sign, warning us of our impending death by falling rocks (this would have been a little useful at the BOTTOM of the mountain too...) and a small barricade with similar warnings (NO PEDESTRIANS, IMPENDING DOOM, etc). We walked around that on the VERY well-kempt trail, which we followed to all the major nearby hills. We ultimately made it to Arthur's Peak after climbing the world's supply of stairs. Though we missed most of the sunrise, we certainly saw all Edinburgh, from the best vantage point possible. It was so beautiful, and I was so impressed that we did it and the mountain is still there. (yes! nobody died! TAKE THAT!)
After that we packed up, piled back onto the bus, and saw York in 2 hours. York was drastically different from New York! It was a city, but not a huge one, but I didn't see much of it beyond a sandwich place and a few used bookstores and the like. Another 5 hours later, we arrived back in Cambridge, where we eventually learned that all of Cambridge was sick in our absence too, effectively ruling out Kevin as a source of disease.
Despite the plague, I had SUCH a great time! I wish I could do it again! I might have been the only person who actually liked Scotland, but that's fine by me.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Fancy a pint?
Wow, okay, so I'm really bad at keeping this updated. So much has gone on lately! I will try my very hardest to write more often! I apologize in advance, because this is going to be long.
(Also: Hello to the Extended Canadian Family and Grandma, who are also now reading this!)
I finally saw The Dark Knight on Thursday -- despite the fact it was supposed to technically be released in theatres here on Friday. We went to a very American mall to see it, so it felt a little bit like being home. Anyway... we were all settled in our seats, having seen the previews and ads and whatnots...and the most British alarm possible went off. "A situation has arisen and we kindly request that you leave your seats..." This, of course, did not really fly with the presumably mostly American audience, who were all quite displeased with this Situation's Arising. Eventually a staff member came in and informed us that the situation was cleared and we should all take our seats, and that when the projectionist finished going up the stairs he would start the movie for us. Either way, the movie itself was fantastic and well worth the wait. If you haven't seen it, I strongly urge you to!
Friday I went on a tour led by John Morrill, a Leading Cromwellian Scholar and Expert on English Beer (He led the lecture on the history of English beer drinking, which was sort of dull and should have warned me not to take his next tour, but apparently I didn't heed that knowledge). We went to a nice church about 40 minutes away, where we spent about an hour and read some poetry. After that we went to Oliver Cromwell's hometown to look at the Oliver Cromwell Museum and Major Points of Interest in Reference to Cromwell Himself. This was spectacularly dull; the highlight was listening to John Morrill very excited about Oliver Cromwell's Stupdendous Hat, which was large, felt, and sort of ridiculous. This tour lasted about two hours and the real highlight was eating, to be perfectly honest. From there we got back on the bus and drove to a major site of the British Civil War and then went to Ely Cathedral, which was easily the highlight of the entire day. We left at 9 AM and returned about 5 PM; I had been hoping to work a little bit on my paper that day but this was apparently not in the cards for me. After all of this I still don't actually know who Oliver Cromwell actually is, beyond the fact that he liked the Bible a lot.
Saturday we went to Canterbury Cathedral (just like the Pilgrams in the Canterbury Tales!), which quite conviently had a Starbucks next to it, in case the pilgrams wanted a mocha frappachino after their long journey. No, seriously, Canterbury Cathedral was gorgeous! The program had arranged for us to have an audio-guided walking tour of the cathedral, which was convienent provided you could follow directions that were along the lines of "if you turn left next to the pulpit you will find a set of doors. Walk through them until you see three steps, then turn right. Then, please choose the next number on your keypad." I was very bad at these directions and subsequently got lost a few times, but Canterbury was really cool.
From there we hopped back on the coach to Dover, which put everything I had seen so far to shame. We were deposited at the helm of Dover Castle, and from there we walked around the perimeter of it, looked at the White Cliffs, climbed a few hills, and then set off for the beach! In fine form I fell down a rather steep incline near the Hidden Wartime Tunnels. You would think they would not advertise them so much, in the event of another war (HIDDEN WARTIME TUNNELS THIS WAY! ---> etc) but due to time constraints we didn't really get to check them out. We did, however, see a Wartime Lookout (this also had big signs) and reached the ultimate conclusion that part of Atonement was probably filmed here. The beach was beautiful and rocky, but certainly worth the walk down! We did not, sadly, see France, as it was once again in True British Style, fogtastic. But in all seriousness, Dover was easily the coolest place we have been thus far and I'm glad I've been going on these excursions; they've been, for the most part, lots of fun.
Sadly while in Dover my camera broke; the lens doesn't close and doesn't focus, so I don't have many pictures from there. I think I'm going to have to get a new camera though, which is going to be expensive due to dollar/pound exchange rates....
Yesterday I went on an optional trip as sponsored by Stuart, our chef, on a traditional Englishman's holiday to the beach. Stuart is too wonderful for doing this; we finally felt like we were seeing Real England as opposed to Tourist England, which is what much of our trip can occasionally feel like, despite the fact we can say that we've been to Dover, Canterbury, London, etc. A traditional English holiday, so it seems, involved trains - several of them - but we ultimately ended up in Sheringham, which seems akin to the Cape in terms of English Touristybits. We had asked Stuart if the beach was sandy (he said it was...it, much like Dover beach, was quite rocky). We climbed some rocks there, frolicked in the ocean for a bit, and then Stuart took us to two pubs. One was a nearby pub in Sheringham and the other was in Norwich, where he used to live. So, an Englishman's Holiday is essentially a beach and a beer. This is how real English folk live! Sunday is a big day for these sorts of things, it seems; he found it strange that Sundays in America are sort of quiet, subdued days compared to the rest of the week. He had a lot of good stories to tell and was legitimately happy to show us around, which the five of us that went were very happy about. It sucks that everything else we've done was led by the Leading Expert in the Field (Cromwell Day was led by a Cromwell scholar, the castles / cathedrals we've been to have been led by castley/cathedrally people who are quite knowledgeable about it, etc. This was a normal guy living his normal life, and being so kind to take a day out of his life to try and show us real British culture, not the prefabricated tourist culture we're exposed to all the time.
Still coming up: The Bristish Food Entry, The English Language Entry (you knew this was coming)
This weekend: The land of plaid & bagpipes!
(Also: Hello to the Extended Canadian Family and Grandma, who are also now reading this!)
I finally saw The Dark Knight on Thursday -- despite the fact it was supposed to technically be released in theatres here on Friday. We went to a very American mall to see it, so it felt a little bit like being home. Anyway... we were all settled in our seats, having seen the previews and ads and whatnots...and the most British alarm possible went off. "A situation has arisen and we kindly request that you leave your seats..." This, of course, did not really fly with the presumably mostly American audience, who were all quite displeased with this Situation's Arising. Eventually a staff member came in and informed us that the situation was cleared and we should all take our seats, and that when the projectionist finished going up the stairs he would start the movie for us. Either way, the movie itself was fantastic and well worth the wait. If you haven't seen it, I strongly urge you to!
Friday I went on a tour led by John Morrill, a Leading Cromwellian Scholar and Expert on English Beer (He led the lecture on the history of English beer drinking, which was sort of dull and should have warned me not to take his next tour, but apparently I didn't heed that knowledge). We went to a nice church about 40 minutes away, where we spent about an hour and read some poetry. After that we went to Oliver Cromwell's hometown to look at the Oliver Cromwell Museum and Major Points of Interest in Reference to Cromwell Himself. This was spectacularly dull; the highlight was listening to John Morrill very excited about Oliver Cromwell's Stupdendous Hat, which was large, felt, and sort of ridiculous. This tour lasted about two hours and the real highlight was eating, to be perfectly honest. From there we got back on the bus and drove to a major site of the British Civil War and then went to Ely Cathedral, which was easily the highlight of the entire day. We left at 9 AM and returned about 5 PM; I had been hoping to work a little bit on my paper that day but this was apparently not in the cards for me. After all of this I still don't actually know who Oliver Cromwell actually is, beyond the fact that he liked the Bible a lot.
Saturday we went to Canterbury Cathedral (just like the Pilgrams in the Canterbury Tales!), which quite conviently had a Starbucks next to it, in case the pilgrams wanted a mocha frappachino after their long journey. No, seriously, Canterbury Cathedral was gorgeous! The program had arranged for us to have an audio-guided walking tour of the cathedral, which was convienent provided you could follow directions that were along the lines of "if you turn left next to the pulpit you will find a set of doors. Walk through them until you see three steps, then turn right. Then, please choose the next number on your keypad." I was very bad at these directions and subsequently got lost a few times, but Canterbury was really cool.
From there we hopped back on the coach to Dover, which put everything I had seen so far to shame. We were deposited at the helm of Dover Castle, and from there we walked around the perimeter of it, looked at the White Cliffs, climbed a few hills, and then set off for the beach! In fine form I fell down a rather steep incline near the Hidden Wartime Tunnels. You would think they would not advertise them so much, in the event of another war (HIDDEN WARTIME TUNNELS THIS WAY! ---> etc) but due to time constraints we didn't really get to check them out. We did, however, see a Wartime Lookout (this also had big signs) and reached the ultimate conclusion that part of Atonement was probably filmed here. The beach was beautiful and rocky, but certainly worth the walk down! We did not, sadly, see France, as it was once again in True British Style, fogtastic. But in all seriousness, Dover was easily the coolest place we have been thus far and I'm glad I've been going on these excursions; they've been, for the most part, lots of fun.
Sadly while in Dover my camera broke; the lens doesn't close and doesn't focus, so I don't have many pictures from there. I think I'm going to have to get a new camera though, which is going to be expensive due to dollar/pound exchange rates....
Yesterday I went on an optional trip as sponsored by Stuart, our chef, on a traditional Englishman's holiday to the beach. Stuart is too wonderful for doing this; we finally felt like we were seeing Real England as opposed to Tourist England, which is what much of our trip can occasionally feel like, despite the fact we can say that we've been to Dover, Canterbury, London, etc. A traditional English holiday, so it seems, involved trains - several of them - but we ultimately ended up in Sheringham, which seems akin to the Cape in terms of English Touristybits. We had asked Stuart if the beach was sandy (he said it was...it, much like Dover beach, was quite rocky). We climbed some rocks there, frolicked in the ocean for a bit, and then Stuart took us to two pubs. One was a nearby pub in Sheringham and the other was in Norwich, where he used to live. So, an Englishman's Holiday is essentially a beach and a beer. This is how real English folk live! Sunday is a big day for these sorts of things, it seems; he found it strange that Sundays in America are sort of quiet, subdued days compared to the rest of the week. He had a lot of good stories to tell and was legitimately happy to show us around, which the five of us that went were very happy about. It sucks that everything else we've done was led by the Leading Expert in the Field (Cromwell Day was led by a Cromwell scholar, the castles / cathedrals we've been to have been led by castley/cathedrally people who are quite knowledgeable about it, etc. This was a normal guy living his normal life, and being so kind to take a day out of his life to try and show us real British culture, not the prefabricated tourist culture we're exposed to all the time.
Still coming up: The Bristish Food Entry, The English Language Entry (you knew this was coming)
This weekend: The land of plaid & bagpipes!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Castles and Oxford-in-an-Hour-and-a-Half
On Saturday we went to Broughton Castle and Oxford but never actually made it to Branbury. We - arguably - didn't really see Oxford either. But, I did get a fully guided tour of Broughton Castle! (today's pictures are brought to you by my friend Kat. Mine did not come out this 
well / I haven't uploaded them yet)
Broughton Castle is actually owned by the Fiennes family (yes. Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, the actors) and people still live there; we saw their dining room and living room. The castle was certainly cool. They have a moat, gardens, and you can stand on the roof! Pretty sweet... The gardens were so well-kempt, too. They certainly put most gardens to shame. Apparently Broughton Castle is used often in films, so maybe you have seen it before? One of the hallways we went down was used in Shakespeare in Love.
This castle is also home to a very steep spiral staircase, perhaps designed to frighten invaders and keep them away from the upstairs. It would have worked on me! Several important British people have come to visit (and apparently survived these stairs) and therefore the rooms they stayed in became big memorials to them. Queen Anne's portrait is in one room in memorandum of her visit.
After visiting the Castle Gift Shop we got back on the bus to go to Oxford, another two hours away. By this time it was around 1PM and we had last eaten at 8:30 that morning, so we were starving. The Brits seem generally uninterested in lunch until about 1 in the afternoon anyway, but when we finally arrived in Oxford it was 3PM. 3 PM with 17 hungry college students is not a good idea!
I didn't spend much time there, it was really more of Oxford-in-an-Hour-and-a-Half, a majority of which was spent at a restaurant. If (to quote the informational papers we recieved on the bus) "Cambridge is a city built into a school, but Oxford is a school built into a city". Oxford (or what I saw of it, at least) reminded me a lot of New York City whereas Cambridge reminds me a lot of Burlington, VT or Cambridge MA. We didn't really get to see very much; we went to a japanese noodle bar and a church and that was about it! I wish they had given us more time there to see some of Oxford University, but I did see Oxford University Press, so I guess that's better than nothing.
Yesterday my one class was cancelled because my professor was stuck in Italy, and it was beautiful day, so I ended up taking a four-hour walk around town, from the colleges to the markets to the residential areas to the Backs (The backs of the colleges - how fitting.) According to our lovely porters, we are currently in the middle of British Summer, which is much like May in New England, but with a little bit more rain. Pictures don't do this place justice; it's absolutely beautiful here and I wish you could see it for yourselves.
Coming Soon: The British Food Entry!
well / I haven't uploaded them yet)Broughton Castle is actually owned by the Fiennes family (yes. Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, the actors) and people still live there; we saw their dining room and living room. The castle was certainly cool. They have a moat, gardens, and you can stand on the roof! Pretty sweet... The gardens were so well-kempt, too. They certainly put most gardens to shame. Apparently Broughton Castle is used often in films, so maybe you have seen it before? One of the hallways we went down was used in Shakespeare in Love.
This castle is also home to a very steep spiral staircase, perhaps designed to frighten invaders and keep them away from the upstairs. It would have worked on me! Several important British people have come to visit (and apparently survived these stairs) and therefore the rooms they stayed in became big memorials to them. Queen Anne's portrait is in one room in memorandum of her visit.
After visiting the Castle Gift Shop we got back on the bus to go to Oxford, another two hours away. By this time it was around 1PM and we had last eaten at 8:30 that morning, so we were starving. The Brits seem generally uninterested in lunch until about 1 in the afternoon anyway, but when we finally arrived in Oxford it was 3PM. 3 PM with 17 hungry college students is not a good idea!
I didn't spend much time there, it was really more of Oxford-in-an-Hour-and-a-Half, a majority of which was spent at a restaurant. If (to quote the informational papers we recieved on the bus) "Cambridge is a city built into a school, but Oxford is a school built into a city". Oxford (or what I saw of it, at least) reminded me a lot of New York City whereas Cambridge reminds me a lot of Burlington, VT or Cambridge MA. We didn't really get to see very much; we went to a japanese noodle bar and a church and that was about it! I wish they had given us more time there to see some of Oxford University, but I did see Oxford University Press, so I guess that's better than nothing.
Yesterday my one class was cancelled because my professor was stuck in Italy, and it was beautiful day, so I ended up taking a four-hour walk around town, from the colleges to the markets to the residential areas to the Backs (The backs of the colleges - how fitting.) According to our lovely porters, we are currently in the middle of British Summer, which is much like May in New England, but with a little bit more rain. Pictures don't do this place justice; it's absolutely beautiful here and I wish you could see it for yourselves.
Coming Soon: The British Food Entry!
Friday, July 18, 2008
Ye Olde England-Land
Cambridge is sort of far away from a lot of major places in England. Yesterday we drove two hours to Stratford-upon-Avon; London is about an hour and a half away. This is not to say there is absolutely nothing near us, there's a handful of nearby townships with extremely entertaining names including Trumpington, The Gog Magog, Fen Ditton, Madingley, etc. (I'm not making these up. I promise you there are more: here is a rather comprehensive list of British townships, in case you were interested.) As you can imagine, there is a lot of carryover from British towns to American ones - the town right outside of Cambridge is Chemlsford! There is a Newmarket St and a Mill Road, both with buses to take you there... sometimes I forget that these buses won't take me to Newmarket, NH and Mill Road Plaza. (Next weekend we're going to Dover...nope, not that one...)
Anyway, Stratford-Upon-Avon was cool. We didn't get much of a chance to look around; we left Cambridge at 3:30, arrived around 5:30, and had an hour to eat before Merchant of Venice at 7:15. We saw the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre. I daresay I liked the Courtyard theatre more than the Globe as a performance space. The Merchant of Venice was well-done (comparatively, King Lear sort of sucked) and also ended with a joyous jig. I'm not really sure why all the plays are ending with jigs, but I would very much enjoy having jigs performed at the end of everything I do... "Dinner's over!" (jig), "class is dismissed!" (jig), etc. I understand we're going back there in August to see Patrick Stewart and the current Dr. Who perform in Hamlet, so hopefully we will get more time to look around.
Today we took a nice three-mile hike to Grantchester, home of the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forester, Manyard Keynes, Rupert Brooke, Augustus John, Bertram Russell and friends), for a nice luncheon in the garden where they used to meet. This - I promise you - is exciting for us literary folk. There's not a lot there, admittedly; Grantchester was very Ye Olde England-land, with rolling fields and tiny houses. The route we took brought us through the Granchester Meadows of Pink Floyd fame (Fun Side Note: I have been to the pub that Syd Barrett used to sneak into! What now!). It was very pretty, though a bit rainy. Perhaps I will go back there for a picnic or something.
Tomorrow we leave for Oxford, Branbury and Broughton Castle...Harry Potter land, here I come!
Anyway, Stratford-Upon-Avon was cool. We didn't get much of a chance to look around; we left Cambridge at 3:30, arrived around 5:30, and had an hour to eat before Merchant of Venice at 7:15. We saw the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre. I daresay I liked the Courtyard theatre more than the Globe as a performance space. The Merchant of Venice was well-done (comparatively, King Lear sort of sucked) and also ended with a joyous jig. I'm not really sure why all the plays are ending with jigs, but I would very much enjoy having jigs performed at the end of everything I do... "Dinner's over!" (jig), "class is dismissed!" (jig), etc. I understand we're going back there in August to see Patrick Stewart and the current Dr. Who perform in Hamlet, so hopefully we will get more time to look around.
Today we took a nice three-mile hike to Grantchester, home of the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forester, Manyard Keynes, Rupert Brooke, Augustus John, Bertram Russell and friends), for a nice luncheon in the garden where they used to meet. This - I promise you - is exciting for us literary folk. There's not a lot there, admittedly; Grantchester was very Ye Olde England-land, with rolling fields and tiny houses. The route we took brought us through the Granchester Meadows of Pink Floyd fame (Fun Side Note: I have been to the pub that Syd Barrett used to sneak into! What now!). It was very pretty, though a bit rainy. Perhaps I will go back there for a picnic or something.
Tomorrow we leave for Oxford, Branbury and Broughton Castle...Harry Potter land, here I come!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Cambridge Life
People Whom I Have Not Yet Met: The Queen
People Who Are Present In My Life: Doddering old men on bicycles
Things in Cambridge are going well. I feel like I have an inordinate amount of time to do all of my work, which is nice because I don't have to rush through it. Every morning the University serves us breakfast from 8-9, then I usually do the day's reading between breakfast and morning coffee at 11. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have my Ulysses class between 11:15-1:15, and more free time until teatime at 4 PM. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have the same schedule but class from 2-4 PM. We meet at the on-campus pub, The Buttery, at 6 for drinks and dinner is served at 6:30. At night we are free to wander around town, but nothing besides pubs and eurotrash clubs are open past 7 PM; even these close around 11 or 12 at night. The only place that is open all night is a cart called the Trailer of Life, which sits in the market at nighttime, feeding the drunk people (a la Kurt's Lunchbox).
Cambridge is a fairly big city, about the same size as Cambridge MA. During the day there is certainly lots going on; across the street from us is a daily market, with different vendors each day. I try to get there every day to see what they're selling. Usually there's a produce market, a juice bar, a used record shop, assorted touristy Cambridge apparel, artisan jewelery, and a bike repair, among other things. The bike guy gets tons of buisness, everyone here rides bikes! I saw my first Cambridge traffic jam yesterday; four "coaches" in a row were stuck in limbo because they all had to stop at the same bustops (not "coachstops" but whatever). England is a very eco-friendly place despite the fact I have yet to actually see a recycle bin anywhere.
In terms of Exceedingly British Things: We recently observed British Problem Solving at tea when someone forgot to bring the hot water. This involved three British people getting very worried, and rather than sending someone to get hot water - the teabags, teacups etc were all present - they came back with around 40 cans of soda from the Buttery...so we had Afternoon Soda that day. Also still here are the Erection Specialists, who are putting up lots of scaffolding for no reasonable purpose beyond making our lives more interesting. There are three courts at Caius - Tree Court, Gonville Court and Caius Court - and recently we left morning coffee in Gonville Court to find ourselves fenced in from Caius Court and barred from a passageway to Tree Court. We ended up getting a porter to talk to the construction workers, who were unconvinced that we were stuck in Gonville Court. As you can imagine, things like this take plenty of time to work around.
Tonight I have High Table, wherein I get dressed up and eat with the professors instead of with the other students. Every night a group of students are randomly selected and invited to eat at High Table, usually a few times over the six weeks we are here.
We have lots planned for the next few days: On Thursday we are taking a trip out to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see the Merchant of Venice; Friday we are walking over to a nearby town to see where the Bloomsbury Group spent time; Saturday we are traveling to Oxford and the surrounding towns to visit the Other English University and tour several nearby castles.
People Who Are Present In My Life: Doddering old men on bicycles
Things in Cambridge are going well. I feel like I have an inordinate amount of time to do all of my work, which is nice because I don't have to rush through it. Every morning the University serves us breakfast from 8-9, then I usually do the day's reading between breakfast and morning coffee at 11. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have my Ulysses class between 11:15-1:15, and more free time until teatime at 4 PM. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have the same schedule but class from 2-4 PM. We meet at the on-campus pub, The Buttery, at 6 for drinks and dinner is served at 6:30. At night we are free to wander around town, but nothing besides pubs and eurotrash clubs are open past 7 PM; even these close around 11 or 12 at night. The only place that is open all night is a cart called the Trailer of Life, which sits in the market at nighttime, feeding the drunk people (a la Kurt's Lunchbox).
Cambridge is a fairly big city, about the same size as Cambridge MA. During the day there is certainly lots going on; across the street from us is a daily market, with different vendors each day. I try to get there every day to see what they're selling. Usually there's a produce market, a juice bar, a used record shop, assorted touristy Cambridge apparel, artisan jewelery, and a bike repair, among other things. The bike guy gets tons of buisness, everyone here rides bikes! I saw my first Cambridge traffic jam yesterday; four "coaches" in a row were stuck in limbo because they all had to stop at the same bustops (not "coachstops" but whatever). England is a very eco-friendly place despite the fact I have yet to actually see a recycle bin anywhere.
In terms of Exceedingly British Things: We recently observed British Problem Solving at tea when someone forgot to bring the hot water. This involved three British people getting very worried, and rather than sending someone to get hot water - the teabags, teacups etc were all present - they came back with around 40 cans of soda from the Buttery...so we had Afternoon Soda that day. Also still here are the Erection Specialists, who are putting up lots of scaffolding for no reasonable purpose beyond making our lives more interesting. There are three courts at Caius - Tree Court, Gonville Court and Caius Court - and recently we left morning coffee in Gonville Court to find ourselves fenced in from Caius Court and barred from a passageway to Tree Court. We ended up getting a porter to talk to the construction workers, who were unconvinced that we were stuck in Gonville Court. As you can imagine, things like this take plenty of time to work around.
Tonight I have High Table, wherein I get dressed up and eat with the professors instead of with the other students. Every night a group of students are randomly selected and invited to eat at High Table, usually a few times over the six weeks we are here.
We have lots planned for the next few days: On Thursday we are taking a trip out to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see the Merchant of Venice; Friday we are walking over to a nearby town to see where the Bloomsbury Group spent time; Saturday we are traveling to Oxford and the surrounding towns to visit the Other English University and tour several nearby castles.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
London Calling
On Friday we had an elaborate Opening Banquet. Everyone got dressed up and we were promised our first (and maybe only chance) to stand on the grass. This is a big deal; everyone has made it very clear we are not allowed anywhere near it. Well, all of us got really excited… and then it rained. Of course. We did, however, pretend to be fellows, which was very cool. The fellows have their own elaborate and highly decorated dining hall and drawing-room, lest they be seen with the simplistic peon community of everyone else. Needless to say it was nice -- it was gorgeous and lavish and delicious. (For those of keeping score at home, the Fellows dining room is still intact.)
The fellows are treated like royalty! As mere students, we feel like we’re being treated unnecessarily nicely – we have someone called a bedder who comes in daily and makes our beds, we are served at dinner, tea and coffee, there are porters sitting around waiting for us to ask questions, etc. As Americans we’re not used to that, and while it’s certainly a pleasant luxury we don’t need it by any stretch of the imagination. If this is what
Yesterday we went to
Anyway, we left at 7:45 in the morning after picking up our prepared box breakfast from the dining hall. They pump us full of coffee here, so it was a grand disappointment that they did not provide it in their little box breakfast. Coffee is available at every opportunity possible! I, obviously, love it. (A fun digression about coffee: the English drink espresso. If you ask for a cup of coffee, you are getting a café americano, which is one part espresso and two parts water. If you ask for an espresso, you get a shot of espresso.)
My group went to the London Eye, which was really cool, and then proceeded to the Dali exhibit, which was beyond awesome; their focus was on his drawings rather than his paintings, so it was something I hadn’t seen before. After that we walked past Parliament and Big Ben to
I met up with Kim Pho after the all the Art Exhibits. She took us to Buckingham palace, which was not on our little Joy Winston Map of Epic Failure; we would have never found it on our own. The palace was large and lavish (this appears to be a recurring theme in lifestyles of the Important Brits) and we were there to see the guard marching around for their break. Instead of seeing the Tate Museum of Modern Art – no more art! – we found a great used booksale, where we ran into about half of the group. This was much more exciting than paint on canvas, this is what we’re interested in… we spent the entire time checking out the books there. Maybe we can persuade Joy to make us a map of the bookstores everywhere we go instead! For £15 I bought The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism & Facsism.
The Globe was wonderful (and way more interesting than art). We had seats in the second tier of balconies, but were free to move about at any time. The performance was set up into two sections, from Act 1-3 and 4-5. For the second portion, my friend Becca and I went to be a Groundling, which was awesome and arguably better than being in Globe Bleachers. Interestingly, the end of every performance at the Globe concludes with a song and dance, which was unexpected. Our next Shakespeare performance is at
Sorry this was long! So much exciting, blog-worthy things have happened in the past few days. I hope all is going well at home.
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