Final Days at Harlaxton

At this point, we have all just been trying to savor our last days in England.  Plus, now the weather is unbelievably lovely here and everything is blooming so it's hard not to love it!  Here is some of what I've been up to lately.

Burghley House: This was a free trip we could take on a Wednesday afternoon.  It just so happened that the day we went was absolutely gorgeous (warmest day of the year at that point!)  We explored the house, which was used as Lady Catherine's house in Pride and Prejudice the film.  It was grand, and very beautiful!  Then we ventured out to the gardens for some spring fun!  They had a lot of really cool fountains, flowers, and even a maze!

Capture the Flag:  This was awesome!  We played outside around the manor after dark and my team dominated--well sort of!  It reminded me of playing games back in youth group during high school.  It was kind of dangerous though because there is so much to trip on, etc. 

Costume Ball:  Once again, really really great way to end the semester.  I dressed up as James Bond, but the girl version.  It was cool to see what everyone else came up with.  We had a nice dinner and then a dance in the Great Hall.  That night Amanda met some Bobby's as well (police officers) and they were nice (we got to take our picture with them!) 

Fair in Grantham:  This was really fun.  They set up a fair inside the streets of Grantham and it reminded me of the one they have every May in Mt. Vernon.  It was fun, Amanda and I both played a game and she won a goldfish named Algae and I won a banana!  We also got some doughnuts (we wanted funnel cake but I guess that isn't popular here?!)

Valedictory Dinner:  Bittersweet.  Last day of classes!  But it also meant that things were coming to a close.  It was a lovely dinner and afterwards we all headed out to the bistro for the last time.  It was a great night hanging out with Cara and Kelsey.  We made plans to meet up at Holiday World this summer so I hope we can make that happen.

Packing:  Ughh--not fun.  I had to pack stuff take to Italy, and also pack everything that was left in my suitcases to meet me at the airport.  This was a process, and I had to give some things away.

Bakewell/Chatsworth House Trip:  On my final Friday my English Novel class took another trip out to Bakewell and Chatsworth to see the home that Jane Austen based Mr. Darcy's house, Pemberley, after in Pride and Prejudice.  It was magnificant.  We started our day in Bakewell where we went to a tea shop for some tea and a famous Bakewell Tart.  As a group we trekked on public footpaths across sheep pastures to find the Chatsworth house.  The view approaching the house is iconic, but in our experience we got to come over the hill and see it "shrinkwrapped" essentially.  They were doing construction on the front of the house which was a bummer but it was still really magnificant.  The inside of the home was spectacular, so ornate!  Some of the rooms have been used in filming of Pride and Prejudice so I can't wait to get home and watch it again!  My favourite part was going out to the gardens.  These romantic style gardens are built to impress you and make you think that you are in the middle of nature--it worked!  So pretty, and so full of fountains!  Unfortunately, I ran out of camera battery so I don't really have picture evidence :(  This trip was really really rewarding and I had an amazing time.

Belvoir Castle Adventure:  On Monday Amanda and I had a day off from finals so we decided to take a walking trip to Belvoir Castle.  On a clear day I can see it from my bedroom window, but it is a good five miles away.  We brought directions, but we decided to meander around and take the wonderful public footpaths they have in England (I wish the US had them, you can walk right through ppl pastures and yards using styles to climb over their fences and such--very neat!)  We left at 9:30 and finally arrived at the castle at about noon.  Unfortunately, it was closed!  We did get some Belvoir springs juice that was delicious!  On our way back we decided to just go south because that was the direction that Harlaxton was in relation to the castle (I used my compass so that was cool).  We kind of got lost, went to Knipton and Croxton Kerrial.  We saw a LOT of English countryside that was very lovely.  Lots of flowers and lots of animals-sheep, ram, white horse, chickens, birds, cows, and so much more!  We even fed an apple to Steedy-our white horse!  Amanda found a magic feather and we literally walked out feet off!  We were sort of lost, and eventually we had to call a cab to pick us up because we needed to make it back for Amanda's checkout time.  It was a really fun adventure and I had a really goood time exploring!

Final Exams:  Not so fun, and took up a lot of my last time in England so I wasn't so happy about that.  It also made it very difficult to concentrate knowing that I had to get packed, say my goodbyes, and get ready for a trip to italy.  But I got through them thank goodness!

London- Round III

Last weekend Amanda and I set out to London to meet up with one of her high school friends and show her around the city.  We did a lot of the same things as before, but here is a little description about the things we did while visiting.  It was an absolutely GORGEOUS weekend--no rain which is not normal!
Camden Town- We went bargain shopping here and found some cool clothes.  We grabbed some dinner and sat by the canal to eat it.
Oxford Street- We took Nicki here to introduce her to Primark.  Primark was crazy busy, but not the busiest I've seen it!  We found some great deals and I picked up some more 1£ sunglasses to replace the ones I broke in Spain.
10 Downing St.- This is where the Prime Minister lives so that was kind of cool.
Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace- Wow there was a LOT of people there.  The crowd was quite overwhelming, but we got to see the famous ceremony that was full of fanfare. 
Portobello Road- The street where the riches of ages are sold.  Anything and everything a truck can unload, are sold by the barrel on Portobello Road! This is the largest street market in the world and they sing about it in the classic movie "Bed Knobs & Broomsticks."  It was pretty awesome, I bought a cool vintage necklace and some frozen yogurt (it is just sooo good!).
Oh and we ran into a interesting guy in the lobby of our hostel who used tarot cards to read our fortune.  It was free, thank goodness because apparently my life is so confusing that it isn't really in the cards.  We had a laugh though and pretty much tried to avoid him the rest of the weekend

:( Last Day in Spain

Spain has been my favourite trip so far, so it was sad on the final day to say goodbye.  The last day we slept in as late as we could because of how tired we were from Granada the day before.  Plus, we changed time so we lost another hour (it was very hard to figure out what time we wanted to get up when you had to figure out the time change plus the fact that Spain is already an hour ahead!).  We left and went straight to the beach for the last time and spent some time just laying out and soaking up the rays.  I had fun making words in the sand with the rocks i found on the beach.  We decided to attend mass at the big church in Malaga so we headed out there.  It was definitely an interesting service because A. I'm not catholic so it tends to get confusing for me B. The mass was in Spanish so I didn't understand what they said C. there were tons of kids running around and crying D. Some lady fell during the mass so that was scary E.  The frequency of the priests microphone was picking up some random lady talking on the phone or something and apparently what she was saying was funny.  It was a cool experience though.  Afterwards we found a restaurant to eat at because everything else in town was closing up for the siesta hours.  I ordered a Malaga salad that was pretty good.  It had potatoes, olivves, oragnes, etc.  We ventured over to visit the Picasso museum and luckily it is free on Sundays.  It was cool to see some Picasso art in real life in the city where he was born.  We still had time to kill so we ate some more deliecious frozen yogurt from LlaoLlao and people watched.  We decided to move over to the pier where the cruise ships come in to do the same in order to kill time waiting to head to the airport.  They had a cool pirate ship there so of course I pretended to be a pirate in front of it.  We made a secret hiding spot to leave our towels behind for Emily to pick up too so that was exciting.  At about 8:30 pm we headed over to the airport to get ready for our flight at 10:50pm.  When I was going through security they made me search through my entire bag to find this really cool shiny rock that I found at the beach and was going to use as a paper weight :(  That was really frustrating, and then my sunglasses broke so I was just having a hard time for a bit.  I got on the plane and zonked out all the way back to London.  We arrived at Gatwick and picked up some food to eat while we waited the 4 hours until the first trains go on monday morning.  We tried to sleep, but it was freezing and there was only enough room to sit.  This part of the trip is always annoying , but we save money by taking the late flights so it's give and take.  I arrived back at the manor at 7:30 am with enough time to shower, eat breakfast, and then go to lecture at 8:30.

Granada!

Granada by Frankie Laine

Saturday we woke up really early to head to the bus station to catch one to Granada-about a 2 hour bus ride from Malaga.  This was a great day trip and when we arrived we met up with Clare's friend from high school who agreed to show us around for the day.  We headed out to the city centre and right away I could tell that it was quite different from Malaga.  Mainly, it wasn't quite so tropical as Malaga because it wasn't on the beach.  Granada was much more brown and not quite so verdant---but also very beautiful!  Our first endeavor was the Alhambra.  Once again, it involved climbing up a giant mountain/hill!  Here's some info about it--""literally "the red one"), the complete form of which was Calat Alhambra (الْقَلْعَةُ ٱلْحَمْرَاءُ, Al-Qal‘at al-Ḥamrā’ , "the red fortress"), is a palace and fortress complex constructed during the mid 14th century by the Moorish rulers of the Emirate of Granada in Al-Andalus, occupying the top of the hill of the Assabica on the southeastern border of the city of Granada in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia.  It had some pretty spectacular views of the city!  And you could see the Albaicin which is a hill that led up to our next stop and lookout point.  Following is info about the Albaicin--a district of present day Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain, that retains the narrow winding streets of its Medieval Moorish past. It was declared a world heritage site in 1984, along with the more famous Alhambra.

It rises on a hill facing the Alhambra and many tourists journey into the Albayzin primarily for the spectactular views of the Alhambra from the viewing point by the church of San Nicolas". Next we made our way back down to the city center to visit the Cathedral.  It was pretty spectactular, but what we really wanted to see was in the Capilla Real, so we had to pay twice unfortunately.  In the Chapel, we saw where Ferdinand and Isabella are buried.  They were the spanish monarchs who gave Christopher Columbus the ships for his journey to the new world and they also are the parents of Catherine of Aragon.  Furthermore, they also re-seized southern spain back from the moors who had taken over.  After we got some more frozen yogurt (our new favourite!) and did a little shopping on the Albaicin where you can buy all sorts of souvenirs.  We ended our day of sightseeing with some tapas (appetizers--ours were tiny sandwiches).  In Granada, you get free tapas with the purchase of a drink, so we drank some delicious tinto de veranos and rested our feet!  All of spain is full of brick roads so my feet were TIRED!  We headed back to the bus to head home and made our journey back out to the hostel.  When we arrived we were hungry so we had some paella which is a valencian dish popular in spain.  There is a picture below because it is hard to explain--it was delicious!

Spain: Day 3

The next day we spent in Malaga and it was really fun as well!  After a late night, we had to drag ourselves out of bed to get out on Friday morning but it was another lovely day in Spain!  Today I set out with a bit of a sunburn, so the locals kind of looked at me funny b/c A. they didn't think it was warm enough to go to the beach and B. they don't get sunburns---but I had fun so that was all that matters!  We met up with Emily and Clare again to explore the Alcazaba (fortress) and the palace.  It was absolutely beautiful as well, and I especiall liked the flowers beginning to grow there.  After that we all went to the Cafe de Madrid and Emily introduced us to churros con chocolate.  Amazing!  It was just like "american" churros except there was no sugar and cinamon and instead you dip them into this really thick hot chocolate stuff!  Muy sabroso!  Oh and we learned the "spoon test" which is to test the thickness of the chocolate.  You see if you spoon floats on top and if so it is perfect for this dessert!  I liked it a lot, but it was really intensely chocolate!  We went back to the Mercadona (grocery store) and picked up some more crackers, cheese, and mandarinos and then headed to the beach.  We all enjoyed another siesta on the beach.  That night, we met up again to hang out again in the city and try some more "spanish" food.