Monday, November 24, 2008

More tales from Canters...and Windsor too!
















Hello all!





Hope everyone is staying warm back home-I hear that it's pretty chilly. It's gotten pretty cold here too, usually highs have been in the mid-40s. Yesterday morning I actually woke up to snow outside my window! They told us it hardly ever snows in these parts, but I guess they were wrong. I just loved seeing the beautiful big flakes coming down, just wished it would have stayed around a bit longer. It was all gone in about 20min when it started to rain really hard. It cleared up later in the day and was actually quite pleasent. Ok, back to last Friday and the very last of our fieldtrips. This time we went to Windsor Castle, about 2 1/2 hours from Canterbury by bus. I wasn't looking forward to this one as much as I had with the others, but it turned out to be a great time. We did a audio tour of the castle, which was interesting, but I was having a hard time absorbing all of the info and made it through the castle with Shanna in a relatively short amount of time compared to the rest of the group. I did get to see St. George's Chapel where Prince Charles and Camilla were married. That chapel is also were the Queen Mother and George VI are buried, so that was very interesting. Shanna and I sort of wandered around Windsor and found a café called Cinnamon. Shanna had a really yummy looking toastie and I had a toasted bagel that was very good...and some tea to warm me up because we were freezing! Did some gift shopping around the castle, then met up with Nikita, Gracie and Christina and had tea and some snacks at a little tea room/restaurant that was really old...like from the 17th century or something. Very cool and good tea! Did some more wandering a gift shopping until it was time to get back on the bus. It was another long bus ride back to Canterbury and we were all ready to get off. Beth, Laura, Katie and I stopped by Sainsbury's on our way back to Parham to get some pasta for dinner. We all come back to my house and made dinner, while listening to the soundtrack from Anastasia..yes, we are cool kids. :) Dinner was good and we sat around chatting it up and drinking Kopparberg cider...mmmm. Nikita came back with her mom and sister who are here visiting for a few days. Saturday Jordan came at 2:30pm and I met her at the bus station. It was so good to see her after not seeing her since a week before I left to come to England. We walked down High St., looking at all of the vendors set up with the Christmas Market that's going on now. So many wonderful things to see, smell and taste, it's sort of overwhelming! Got Jordan settled in and then took her on her first trip to ASDA. We had to get some food for dinner and the like. When we got back, I started making a cake for one of my housemates, Rick, whose birthday was Sunday. I made a homemade chocolate layer cake with yummy chocolate cream icing. It looked pretty good I must say. I decorated it with blue icing and put 20 candles in it. It was a lot of fun to make and Jordan helped so it was even better! We had a good dinner, Skyped with Matt (Jordan's boy) and I made Jordan go to bed early because she was so jet lagged. Sunday we got up late and went shopping at Whitefriars just off High St. Came back once it got dark and made dinner again. I had to finish a paper for my history class, so Jordan finished reading Twilight. Rick and his girlfriend Emma got back from his birthday dinner and they dug into the cake I made. We had to light all the candles and sing to him too. He loved the cake and even though I couldn't eat any myself, it was nice to see them enjoy it. Nikita and her friend from home Sarah came back later from London and we didn't go to bed until late. Today I showed Jordan the university and we did some more shopping around High St. We got baguettes at the little baguette shop that I love so much and had a really intense political conversation with one of the owners. It was sort of fun though, it's sort of like a bit of home going in there since the owners are both American. They are both really nice and I love being able to talk with them. Got back in the late afternoon, it had gotten really cold. Made some tea and soup to warm us up. Now I'm sitting in the kitchen while Jordan is taking a nap upstairs because she couldn't fall asleep until 4am. Tonight we might be going out to celebrate Rick's birthday at a pub on Orange St. that I can't remember the name of. I have class on Wednesday and Thursday, so Jordan gets to explore by herself and on Friday we are going to London. That reminds me, I have to go get out bus tickets online! Saturday is a Christmas market up in Whitstable that we are going to try and get to and then Jordan leaves early Sunday morning. Not sure what we're going to do tomorrow, but at some time we'll probably be checking out the cathedral, this time not just taking pictures of the outside. Hope everyone is well and that you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!





Cheers from across the pond!





e

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Larvik and Stavern, Noway
























































Sunday after a wonderful breakfast, Jens-Henrik showed us around the old part of Larvik where the house is and where he grew up. The houses in Larvik are so pretty and some of them were painted with really beautiful colors. Most of the houses were white, but they were all so different and unique that the whiteness didn’t matter a bit. Jens-Henrik knows so much about the history of the area and he filled us in quite well. When we got back to the house we then went with Mona to Molen, just about a 15 minute drive from their house. This area is where the glaciers stopped thousands of years ago and deposited all of the rocks it had been carrying with it. All of the stones were very rounded and smooth & there were so many different types of rocks along this beach. There was even a few Viking burial mounds made from the stones on the beach. It was a really beautiful area, as you will see by the pictures. We all really enjoyed simply sitting on the rocks and listening to the waves crash into the shore…and taking lots of pictures of course. We were able to see the sunset from this place and I just marveled at the beauty of God’s creation in this place. It was truly stunning. That night, Mona made us a traditional Norwegian meal with Norwegian meatballs, potatoes, something like sauerkraut (but it actually tasted good), pickles, carrots and lingonberry sauce…yummy! Mona and Jens-Henrik wanted to be able to speak with my parents, so we got Skype to work and were able to webcam with them. They left me alone to talk to my parents and Dave came over to talk too. While I was Skyping everyone else dug into the chocolate hazelnut cake that Mona made for us and started watching Lord of the Rings. When I came down they had saved me a huge piece that was delicious, especially with vanilla ice cream and a fresh pear! We watched LOTR for a bit longer then headed to bed.
Mona had to take Tryve to school the next morning so we were alone again on Monday morning for a while. While I was in the shower the doorbell rang and Amy answered it. I found out later that it was some guys working on the sewer system in the area. They were surprised to find a house with three Americans that didn’t speak Norwegian, just as we were surprised to have Norwegian construction workers at a house were the people who live there weren’t home. When Mona came home she thought it was pretty funny, but wished she would have known they were coming. After another wonderful breakfast (we ate so well on this trip, it’s ridiculous!), we went to Mona’s hometown of Stavern, the next little town over from Larvik. There are a lot of pretty buildings including the church that Mona and Jens-Henrik were married in and a former military base. They also had a harbor, of course, and we enjoyed the beautiful views. I don’t think that this country can have a bad view after all I have seen of it! We then went downtown Larvik to do a little shopping and it was fun to wonder around the shops. I found some things to take home as gifts and bough a pair of mittens for myself. We had lunch at this little bakery that was really good and cozy. Since we had decided that Beth, Amy and me were going to make tacos for dinner to sort of repay Mona and Jens-Henrik for all their hospitality, we went to the grocery store to pick up what we needed. I love going to grocery stores, even in the States, but the ones in other countries are even more fun, because there are so many different and cool things to see. We bought the stuff for tacos and then some Norwegian chocolate to take back to our families (if it makes it back). Jens-Henrik wasn’t going to be home until 6pm, so we had some time to relax and visit…and Amy wanted to watch some more LOTR. :) Making tacos together was fun and they were so good, we were all stuffed! After dinner we visited some more until it was time for us to get to the airport. We said our goodbyes, promising to not let it be another 18 years before we saw each other again and took some last minute photos. Mona drove us to the airport and we were off to England once again. We had a taxi waiting for us when we got there and the driver was hysterical! Got back to Canterbury around 1:30am and went to bed. Spent yesterday resting up from a busy weekend. Norway has been one of my most enjoyable trips, although they have all been great! I hope I get to go back soon! Winsor Castel field trip on Friday, then Jordan comes on Saturday! Will update asap!
e

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Oslo, Noway
























































Just got back early this morning (around 1:30am) from Norway, but we had an amazing trip to Oslo and Larvik. I’ll break up the post between Oslo and Larvik for easy reading and pictures.











We left Canterbury by taxi a little after 7am on Friday morning to get to Stanstead airport for our 10:35am flight to Torp, Norway. Surprisingly there was no traffic on the way to the airport, normally at the time the M2, M25 and M11 are packed, especially because of construction, but we had a straight shot all the way there. Our driver was nice and interested in why we were going to Norway and only for the weekend. The flight was a little less than two hours and we were in Norway, where it was a lot warmer than we expected it to be. Once we got through customs (where I was informed I was not wanted by the police by the really nice customs officer :)) we had to find the bus that would take us to the train station, where we would then need to get on the train to Oslo. We asked at the information desk and were told that the easiest and cheapest thing to do was to take the bus directly to Oslo. We got tickets and got a hold of Mona to let her know that we would be arriving at the bus terminal, not the train station. The bus took about two hours and we were able to find my mom’s friend Mona after a quick call to tell her what platform we were on. For those of you that don’t know, my mom studied in Oslo for a year with Rotary and while she was there she became friends with Mona. Her and her husband, Jens-Henrik, came to our house in 1990 when I was one year old, so it had been a lot time since we had seen each other. We were staying the night in Oslo at a really nice hotel downtown called the Hotel Royal Christiania. We dropped our packs in our room before we went out for a night tour of the city. We got to see the government buildings all lit up and the harbor with the fortress on the other side lit too. Around 6pm, we ate at this Italian place near the harbor called “Eataly.” I thought it was a pretty clever name. The food was really good and we sat and talked there for about two hours. Went to bed pretty early because we were going to have a big day on Saturday. The next morning we had a wonderful and HUGE breakfast at the hotel. There was all of this wonderful and warm bread with loads of raspberry jam. Needless to say I ate way too much and wasn’t hungry until about 4pm. Our first place of the day was Vielandsparken, a sculpture park that we got to by cable car from downtown Oslo. It was an amazing park with all of these human sculptures. All of the figures were naked and the detail was amazing, especially the faces of the different figures. My favorites were the ones of the couples, especially the one where they had their noses and foreheads together and then there was one of this little boy throwing a fit. It’s pretty famous and the detail of the face was just so alive! We took lots of pictures, because there were so many different statues! It was a great day to just walk around and enjoy all of it, especially since the weather was so great. The cable car got us back downtown again and Mona showed us were the Norwegian Resistance Museum was on the grounds of the fortress in Oslo. She left us there to catch a train back to Larvik so she would have time to get ready for her mother’s 70th birthday party. We went through the museum and we were very impressed. There were a lot of original artifacts and very interesting exhibits which were thankfully in English as well. After the museum, we walked around the fortress and had a great view of the other side of the harbor. Once again, the weather was perfect, even though it was quite chilly and the pictures came out great! We found our way down to the harbor where we were the night before and then walked around the downtown area. Since it was a Saturday there were a lot of people about, but it was still fun to see the city life. We figured out what train we need to go to Larvik that evening at the train station and had a while to wander some more in the dark before it left.










The train was packed when we finally got on and we each had to sit separately. I ended up sitting next to this young Norwegian guy who was very friendly. We ended up talking the entire two hours from Oslo to Larvik about everything. He told me about his job at a refugee camp outside of Oslo, his wife and son and we talked about what it’s like for Christians in Norway. Christians, like Muslims here, are the minority and they are really looked down on by the general public, not taken seriously as he said. It was really interesting to be able to talk to him about all these things and before I got off we exchanged e-mail addresses, hoping to maybe stay in touch. I just thought that was such a neat experience to meet someone, randomly on a train like that, just added to the fun of everything. We got to Larvik around 8pm and took a taxi to Mona’s house. They were gone at the birthday party, so we had to let ourselves in. Mona had left us some snacks (which we devoured) and pizza was supposed to be coming at 8:30pm. After the pizza came we sat around, talked and I tried to get caught up on my journal. Mona and her family got home close to midnight and we stayed up talking for a while. It was so neat to get to talk and share stories with someone that I didn’t really know, but I still had a connection with. We got to sleep in until 10am on Sunday morning, because we were all tired out from the day before.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

"There's no place like London.."
























































Ok so I really, really should be writing my short paper for my British History class, but motivation to write that particular assignment is pretty low right now. Instead, I’m going to finish up my updates on what I’ve been up to in this crazy country. I left you with the end of our trip to the Emerald Isle and the Land o’ the Kilt and Sporran ( haha Clyde! :)). We recovered from our adventures and headed out again on Friday for the University sponsored field trip for us ‘mericans to the Tower of London and the Globe Theatre. This was my first trip to London since I was gone for the first field trip and hadn’t ventured there on my own time…because I haven’t had much to spare. Clyde was able to bum a ride on the coach with us because there was one open seat. I was pretty excited to see London and really glad that we got to go to the Tower. The Tower was really cool, although the guide we had was not the most entertaining and I would rather have taken one of the Beefeater tours instead, but oh well. We saw The Bloody Tower (very sad & sort of creepy), the White Tower (lots of guns and sharp, pointy things), the Crown Jewels (ooo sparkly!) Overall it was a good visit and I took quite a few pictures. Clyde and I ended up breaking away from the group, got some lunch and started walking towards St. Paul’s Cathedral which wasn’t too far away. I loved walking in London and seeing all of the cool buildings. St. Paul’s was gorgeous and I couldn’t help, but think of Marry Poppins the whole time I was there. We were going to try and go inside, but they weren’t letting anyone in, possibly because they were going to be having some sort of speech for Remembrance Sunday, which they celebrate all week long in London. I got some good pictures and we kept moving. Since we didn’t go far enough west, I wasn’t able to really see Big Ben, Parliament, etc. but I did catch a glimpse of the London Eye. Walking along the River Thames was really, nice with great views of the surrounding city. We had to meet the group at the Globe around 3pm for our tour there. We got to walk across Millennium Bridge, which pretty much brought us straight to the Globe. The tour of the theatre was really interesting, even though I already knew about the theatre from British Lit. classes in high school. Clyde and I walked back down the river, this time on the south side, back towards the Tower and Tower Bridge. It was getting dark, but I still snagged a few good pictures of the bridge, the Tower and the HMS Belfast that is anchored near there. I really enjoyed my first visit to London and can’t what to go back to explore all of the things that I didn’t during my first trip. Jordan comes on Nov. 21st until 30th and we are planning on trying to make it to London a few times. Well, I guess I’ve procrastinated enough and should probably get that paper done. I need to try and get ahead of my work before I leave again on Friday. Beth, Amy and I are leaving Friday morning for Oslo, Norway and staying with my mom’s friend Mona and her family until Monday night. I’m really excited to go to Norway, although I don’t know what possessed me to want to go to Norway in November where it will be freezing cold. I really don’t care though, I know it’s going to be a great experience in a place that not a whole lot of people can say they’ve been to and we get to meet some new friends. I’m pumped!











e

Monday, November 10, 2008

Whew...

...so I would post about my first trip to London, but I'm way to tired of typing. This business of updating has pretty much taken me all day. I'm so glad I got it all down, but I'm exhusted. Clyde left yesterday which was very hard to say goodbye again, but in a bit over a month I'll be home. Felt pretty down today and the weather is pretty crummy, so it was a good day to update and stay in my pjs all day! Hope you enjoy the updates and pictures. I enjoyed all the adventures and taking the pictures! Wish everyone well back home and I miss you all terribly!
e

Emmy and Clyde-EDINBURGH & STIRLING
























































Edinburgh was definitely a highlight and trip full of wonderful highlights. It was another gorgeous day (the weather was exceptionally good throughout the whole trip, if not a bit nippy). Took the bus to the city centre and began wandering down Princes Street, eventually making our way to the Royal Mile and the castle. I loved hearing the pipes everywhere we went, although we did hear some pretty poor play as well from a guy on the street corner. The castle was amazing and we ended up spending over four hours exploring the castle alone on Sunday. There was so much to see and the guided tour we took was really good and informative. There was the prisons, the memorial chapel, the Scottish crown jewels, Mons Meg, and to top it all off the National War Museum of Scotland which was fantastic! There were lots of exhibits about how bagpipes have been used in war throughout the centuries and Clyde enjoyed all of the weapons. We probably could have spent even more time than we did, but it was off to see other things. We needed to find a hotel to stay in for the next two nights, so we went to the TI centre and found one close to the Royal Mile. We really wanted to get rid of our packs, we knew what it was like to literally carry them all day in Dublin and knew that we didn’t want that to happen again. So after getting rid of the packs we had supper at a nice little Italian place called Bella Italia that was not far from the hotel. We both had wonderful pasta and even some wine! :) I love being legal in Europe :) We went up to a store to see if we could book a bus tour up to Inverness and the Highlands, but they were all sold out, so we decided that we would just go to the train station and see if we could just take a train up there. The next morning we got up and had breakfast at a place called Chocolate Soup. It was sooooo yummy! We had bagels and porridge (this is what they call oatmeal…so cute). At the train station we discovered it would take four hours on the train to get to Inverness and four hours back, so we looked at some other options. Stirling was only 40 minutes by train and it has a castle (always a hit with Clyde :)) so we got tickets, found the train and we were off. The train ride was another beautiful one- Scotland is absolutely gorgeous, especially in such beautiful weather.




















Stirling was a neat little university town situated at the foothills of the Highlands. We walked around the main shopping area and found the TI centre for a map and made our way to Stirling castle. The castle, like in Edinburgh sets up above the town and is beautiful. It actually is a lot like Edinburgh castle in many ways. We did another guided tour and our tour guide could not have been better. Before the tour started I saw this guy who looked like he worked there and I turned to Clyde and said, “If that guys is our tour guide I’m going to be so happy.” And it turned out that he was! He was wearing trews and a glengerry (reference the picture posted) and had the best Scottish accent ever! He was so passionate about the castle and you could tell that he loved his job. The only bone I have to pick with him is that he stabbed Clyde 27 times, chopped his head off with a poll ax and threw him out a window several stories up. What a meany. :) He was actually talking about a man who was killed in that manner by a king and used Clyde to demonstrate. We had a blast with this guide and really enjoyed the castle. For lunch we got big bowls of really, really good soup at a place called Creama, then since we were still hungry got Subways. It took us three times, but we finally got onto a bus that would take us to the Wallace monument…well, you see the bus didn’t go directly there and when we got close the bus driver stopped and yelled at us from the front to get off if we wanted to go the monument. We walked off that bus with ever pair of eyes from the full bus on us. To top it off we walked up to the monument and found out that it had closed an hour ago. Oh well, it still makes for a funny and memorable sorry.




















Caught a train back to Edinburgh and went on our long awaited search for Belhaven, a really good Scottish beer. We found it at Deacon Brodie’s tavern on the Royal Mile. We both got pints and it was good, but Clyde had to help me finish mine. Got some pizza at Pizza Express and called it a night. Tuesday was the last day of our trip, since we had to fly back to England that evening. There is a very large hill/mountain thing in the city of Edinburgh, almost like a really big park for hiking and such called Arthur’s seat. We decided we would take part of the day to climb to the top. We fueled up at Chocolate Soup again for breakfast before walking to the base of the big hill thing. We ended up by the Queen’s Scottish palace and the Scottish Parliament building. Note about the parliament building, the architect must have been on crack when he designed it, it’s crazy! Cool, but crazy! The hike started with a really, really steep climb and by the time it leveled out we were complaining about how out of shape we were. Then we discovered that we had gone up the wrong way and there was still the whole of the Arthur’s seat to climb in order to reach the top. Instead of killing ourselves we just climbed around the area we were and sat at the top for a while to take in the breathtaking view. We hiked back down into the city and wandered around some shops looking for Ghille brogues to add to our pipe band uniforms, but no luck. I was able to get a kilt outfit for the bear I’m going to make at Build-a-Bear in Canterbury, it’s super cute. After eating subway..again (twas yummy though) we hopped on the bus back to the airport. We both could have stayed in Scotland a lot longer, but we have to save some things for next time…

Emmy and Clyde-ANTRIM COAST
























































Our drive up the Antrim Coast was beautiful and makes me want to live in Northern Ireland so bad! There were the prettiest little farm houses with sheep everywhere and lovely, rolling countryside and I decided that if I ever have a farm I want sheep. Anyway, the first coastal town we came to was Portrush and started to follow the coastal highway. We stopped at a beach that was actually having a surfing competition. It had to be freezing for them, we felt how cold the North Irish Sea was and I knew you couldn’t pay me enough to do that, but they looked like they were having fun. The next spot we came to was the Dunluce Castle ruins that are located on a cliff right by the sea. In the 1800s part of the castle fell into the sea when the cliff gave way and Dunluce Castle was left to ruin and they moved further inland. It was really neat to walk around there was actually a place where you could walk into this tunnel under part of the castle that led into the sea, all the time being amazed by the beauty surrounding us. Our next stop was Bushmill where we took a tour of Bushmill’s Distillery, the oldest licensed whiskey distillery in the world. The tour was interesting, but when it came to the free sample of their whiskey at the end, we both discovered that we really, really don’t like whiskey. Both of us really wanted to get to the Giant’s Causeway and Carrick-a-rede Rope Bridge before it got too dark, but thankfully both things were close together. The Giant’s Causeway was amazing and obviously created by Finn MacCool, the giant, and not all that volcanic nonsense that the scientists talk about. :) In Rick Steves’ Ireland travel book he describes the causeway as “the earth offering God 60,000 cigarettes” and that’s a pretty accurate description. We played on the rocks for a bit then walked back up the long path to head on to the rope bridge. I’ll admit I was a bit apprehensive about crossing this bridge, it wasn’t the height thing, it was the ROPE bridge part. Well, it was about a kilometer walk to get to it and by the time we got there I had decided that I would do it. I did and was just fine, felt pretty accomplished too. The water was so pretty and blue and you could see Scotland! It had started to get sort of dark on the hike back to the car and we decided to take a different route back to the airport so we would be able to catch our flight to Scotland with plenty of time. We stopped in Ballycastle to find some food and ended up buying PB and J fixin’s at a grocery store. Clyde drove while I made us sandwiches on our map…it was pretty comical I must admit. Our flight was at about 9pm and we were in Scotland before 10pm. We took a cab to a hotel near the airport and rested up for our first full day in Edinburgh!