This summer, I spent two weeks in Europe with my parents and my brother to celebrate TJ graduating from college. I had every intention of posting about that time as soon as I got back...but that clearly did not happen. So now that it's October, I've decided to do some reminiscing and have compiled some of my favorite photos and an overview of what we saw and did while in England, which was the first stop of our vacation. The other installments of the rest of the vacation should be coming soon-ish, with any luck...
Sunday, July 29th, 2018:
International travel is no fun, no matter who you are. Being crammed in a small seat for six plus hours overnight and arriving in a foreign land at the crack of dawn after getting little to no sleep is enough to make anyone feel a little less-than-stellar. I couldn't appreciate much about being in London, due to my groggy and grumpy state of being. Luckily, we made it from the airport to our hotel via the tube, got some breakfast at the hotel and took naps. We walked around the East End of London, where we were staying, and checked out a large open-air market where people were selling artwork, clothing, jewelry, food...almost anything you could think of. We ate dinner at a nice restaurant, but as aforementioned I was too exhausted and out of it to really enjoy anything.
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| Old Spitalfields Market |
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| Rainy Sunday in Spitalfields, London |
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London needs a lot of color to make it cheerful because it is
certainly not naturally so... |
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| I guess grey skies do offer a nice compositional contrast... |
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| Not pictured: the barf on the ground that I avoided to take this photo |
Monday, July 30th:
We managed to wake up early and toured the Tower of London, saw London Bridge, ate at Borough Market (my mom and I got Ethiopian food from one of the food stalls and it was really good), walked past Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace and took a stroll through St. James's Park.
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| Me, TJ, and Mom in front of the London Eye (London Bridge, not pictured, to the left) |
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Instead of taking pictures of the Tower of London,
I took pictures of our shoes...Just kidding, I took lots of
pictures of the Tower of London, I just liked this one better
than those. I took this while our tour guide was droning on about
medieval British history (we left the tour shortly afterwards). |
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What they don't tell you about visiting famous monuments is that they never
look like the pictures because of many factors, including: fences, gates, barricades,
traffic, construction, and herds of tourists. |
Tuesday, July 31st:
Oh gosh do I have a lot to say about this day...We woke up bright and early, walked to the tube and took it to another, much bougier part of London where we met up with a tour van that would take us to Stonehenge, Bath, and Avebury. Our guide was named Tom and I listened attentively to his lecture about stones and ancient history for the first 1.5 hours of the drive to Stonehenge but as he kept talking in his David Attenborough's much-more-boring-alter-ego voice, my ability to care greatly diminished until I was doing everything I could NOT to listen to him.
Stonehenge was cool, of course. But the awe of this ancient ruin was a little...ruined...by the sound of Tom's voice lecturing for 30 minutes at each place we stopped around the path that encircled Stonehenge. I just wanted to take a nice slow walk around the stones, stop to take a few pictures, and move on with my life. I didn't sign up for a five hour archaeology lesson.
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Yet another shoe pic taken while a different tour guide
was droning on...this time about...STONES! |
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Okay, this was cool but...somehow not as dramatic as I had
expected??? I guess there's something about seeing something
in broad daylight, in real life, surrounded by a thousand other
tourists that just dulls the brilliance of a thing. |
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| Photo cred: Tour Guide Tom (AKA Mr. Stones). |
After Stonehenge, we got back in the van and drove to Bath, which was really beautiful. It reminded me a lot of Florence: old stone streets and windowsills overflowing with potted flowers, little stores selling gelato and musicians playing indie rock covers in the streets. Apparently Jane Austen set a lot of her stories in Bath, and I could see why. We didn't actually get to see the Roman baths because we only had three hours total in the town and we would've spent that whole time waiting in line if we'd wanted to see the baths. Instead, we ate lunch outside and listened to Vance Joy and the Lumineers covers. After lunch, we split up and my parents went off and did their own thing while John and I walked around Bath taking pictures.
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| Just look at how beautiful those flowers are against the white of the building |
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| We didn't actually go inside here, but just look how quaint! |
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This is the only picture of me I've seen in
which I look remotely tan...(it was the exposure). |
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| Hola. Mi pelo es un poco raro aqui... |
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| Aguaaaa |
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| Candid hipster shot |
After Bath, we were back in the van again, this time headed to our last stop, Avebury. Avebury was another archaeological site (all three of them were; it was an archaeological tour, after all) but I honestly forget its significance (if I ever paid attention enough to know it). Basically there was a big field with a bunch of big stones in it and an old church and a pretty restaurant/tavern with lots of hanging baskets of flowers. Oh and between Bath and Avebury we stopped at West Kennet Long Barrow to admire a giant mound of dirt. But not just any mound of dirt! A neolithic mound of dirt. Oh, and an old tomb...
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@ West Kennet Long Barrow (giant mound of dirt not
pictured). A lot of places in England look just like Maryland
to be honest... |
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| Cute little restaurant where TJ and I split ice cream in Avebury. |
We didn't stay in Avebury too long before piling back into the van and heading back to London. I fell asleep to the soothing voice of Mr. Stones.
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| London knows how to do public transportation. |
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| If only Philly public transpo could hold a candle to the tube... |
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| Rainbow houses! |
Wednesday August 1:
We didn't do much in London this day besides catch a train at Kings Cross station. The train ride from London to Edinburgh was really beautiful and enjoyable, but I had an allergy attack about an hour before we arrived that lasted for several hours, so that was no fun.
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Porridge...mmmh! Ate this British staple at King's Cross for breakfast before
catching the train. |
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King's Cross Station
AKA Platform 9 3/4 AKA how Harry Potter got to Hogwarts. |
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Train from London to Edinburgh...
This photo is very aesthetically pleasing to me. |
And that's about it for our brief stay in England! It was definitely jam-packed but I feel like we got to see a lot of the classic "British" things that people who spend a whole week there get to see (but in a much shorter time span!) Overall, I liked everywhere we went besides London (like Bath and Avebury) much better than London. London just felt too much like any other big east coast city I've been to in the U.S.: dirty, smelly, dreary, and gray, with people who walked too fast and smiled too little. But it was still cool to be able to say that I've been there. Might not ever go back...but still worth a visit.
Before signing off though...I'd like to point out that it's easy to paint any vacation or life event in the prettiest colors and only show the pretty photos. That's fun and cool and all but....the crappy photos can be so much more entertaining sometimes. So here are a few of those:
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Passed out on the plane, about to pass out on the tube, delirious after an
overnight flight, passed out in the hotel lobby, my "don't take my picture" face,
bored at Stonehenge, coming out of an ancient tomb looking like death itself,
can't even explain this face, passed out on the ride from Avebury back to London |
-SE Wagner
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