Wales Travel Weekend

Wow. I remember thinking at the beginning of this program that the travel weekend and my race day would never come.

My family, almost every time we've skyped for the last three or four weeks has kept asking me, "did you do your race yet?!" And I've had to say, no, that's in a few weeks, no, that's next week. But, huzzah! it finally came!

Let me start at the beginning.

Me in front of the causeway leading to Worm's Head

Before even coming out to the London program, I knew that I wanted to run a race in the UK. How cool would that be? Awesome. First one in my family to run an internatio

nal race. So, I started looking online to find a race that met my requirements. First, it had to not be on a Sunday. I don't run on Sundays. Second, it had to be within a time slot of four days; November 9th,10th, 11th, or 12th. One of those four days I could do, but any other time and it might be tricky (unless the race was in London itself). Our professors told us that those days were a weekend that we would be allowed to travel (in groups of 3 or more) anywhere we wanted to go. So, that weekend was ideal for a race; I could travel to the location, hang out, stay the night, and then that next morning, go run the race.

The trail leading down to Worm's Head from Rhossili village

Well, these requirements were harder to meet than at first I had anticipated. I searched hard and long, but it's really difficult to find a race that isn't on Sunday. Most races (at least Half-marathons and marathons) are on Sundays because... well, I don't know why, but they are. And fewer still tend to land on the exact day that you need it, just because... idk, murphy's law maybe?

Finally, after trudging through mounds of internet data, I found the gem. The CTS Endurancelife race series; a series of 7 trail races that include 10k, half, marathon, and ultra races at each Race. They are located all along the southern coast of Wales and England, in some of the country's most beautiful areas. And one of them just so happened to fall on November 12th, the Saturday of my travel weekend!

So, it was decided. When I got to London, i found two other girls, Carolyn and Nicole, who volunteered to go with me to Wales (my race was in Southern Wales, on the Gower Peninsula) so I could run my race.

So, before we could go on the trip we had to figure out transportation (we took the train), a place to sleep (Southmead Bed and Breakfast, a quaint little B&B that was clean, friendly and had a good continental breakfast), and then how to get around once we got there (the bus system). After many hours of planing and preperation, we had tickets to travel, a reservation at our B&B in Llanelli (a little town nearby Swansea, the town which is at the neck of the Gower Peninsula), and we were ready to go.

So, after much planning, preparation and training, we made it out to Wales.

The first day was a little bit stressful because we got in to Swansea in late afternoon, just as the sun was setting. So, we were wandering around the city, looking for the bus to take us to Llanelli, with a map printed out from google maps and carrying all our stuff in the dark. It was great. But the people were really friendly and we finally made it to our B&B after asking directions from the nice lady in the Newspaper store.

So, the next morning, we made the hour bus ride from Llanelli back into Swansea, and, noticing that it was actually a really nice, sunny day, we changed our plans (to explore the city that day) and instead headed to the bus station and found a bus to take us down to Rhossili (the little town where my race was to be held!) down by the coast in the Gower peninsula. It had been forcasted to be a nasty, wet day, but it turned out to be, surprizingly, a gorgeous, 60 degree weather day.

My wellies!

We had a great time down in Rhossilli. It took about an hour to get there, but the landscape was beautfiul, all the oranges and browns and reds and golds forming a leafy blanket over the land as we drove past sheepfields and up and over hills and down into shadowed vales, thru tiny villages of sandstone and stucco, and finally, emerging from the hills to see the ocean, a grey-blue mass broken by huge waves that roared silenetly as we viewed from behind the mud-streaked plexiglass windows of our creaky old bus.

We drove further until we got to the coast itself, and meandered through a skinny roadway, hills on one side, cliffs, and the occasional hamelt on the other, dropping down into the sea. Finally, we curved into a little village full of cute little white stucco houses, a tiny church spire rising up amid the sloping roofs and brilliant green grass patches, neatly trimmed and gleaming with dew, adding color to the scene.

Rhossilli is a beautiful little village that starts higher up in the hills and then migrates downward, till it hits a flat slope that snakes out to a point and then drops away into the ocean. And then, your eye jumps to a double-island (two huge hills that are connected by a tiny strip of rock down the center) emerge from the waves like the loch ness monster rising from depths of the ocean. It's called the worm's head (worm being an old english translation for "dragon," which, when you see it, it makes perfect sense to call it the dragon's head).

The Worm's Head, the far end of the island with it's own secret bay

To the right of this little peninsular-type geography is a huge, sandy beach forming a crescent-shaped bay. Surfers bob up and down in the surf, waiting patiently for the waves that march towards the sand like an army coming in from the horizon-line, continuous and massive and imposing. This area of Wales is apparently the best surfing spot in the whole UK; which, by the size of the waves and the amount of surfers still around during early November, seems to be pretty on the spot to me.

The Beach at Rhossili Bay

We wandered through the village for a little bit and then walked down to the Worm's Head. You can access the island(s) by walking over a rocky causeway that emerges during low tide. Sort of like St. Michael's Mount, but the causeway isn't paved, it's a natural rocky reef of some sort. We scrambled over sharp rocks and around tide pools, crunching mussel shells beneath our wellies, for about half and hour, finally reaching the island on the other side, tired, sweaty and ready for a rest on the grassy slopes.

We passed an older guy on the way over, just before we got to the island, who said there were "quite a few seals" on the right side of the island. When we went over there really were "quite a few" seals playing in the surf and sunning themselves on the rocks below, just up against the island's base. We sat and picnicked for a time, watching the seals, the sun warming our backs and the wind tousling our hair.

After a while, we got up, though, in a hurry to try and reach the worm's head (a good twenty minute walk to the far side of the island, across the rocky strip of land to the "second" island). We had to get there fast before we had to head back, so we wouldn't get cut off by the tide closing in. It was 1pm and we had to get back to the other side of the causeway by 2pm. So, we hurried, but we didn't make it. We chose to head back instead of getting caught with the random dozen sheep (how those sheep made it over to the island I have no idea; that causeway was

treacherous!) overnight.

After returnign to the village we went to the one little cafe and had tea and scones and then took the next bus back to Swansea.

The next day was wet and rainy and cloudy and I was so glad we had decided to go to Rhossilli the day before. We spent the morning wandering around town (Swansea). We found the National Waterfront Museum and explored that for an hour or so. It was actually quite a nice little museum, recently redone, so it had a bunch of techy gadgets and interactive little exhibits which were pretty neat. My favorite was a big screen projected onto the wall that displayed a geological map (showing hills and trees and water, like a picture) the city and the surrounding lands on it. You sat at a little desk in front of it and moved a little ball with your hand. That moved a glowing strip of color across the projected screen, highlighting different places. You could touch a screen on the desk infront of you then, and a little movie about the place that you had just highlighted would tell you all about it. It was pretty neat.

Me coming in towards the finish line

After the museum, I was getting pretty hungry, so we left and, right across the street was a glowing orange and red sign for the local movie theatre. Food forgotten, I dragged my friends over to the theatre and got us in for the next showing of TinTin (actually, a pretty awesome movie!). After the movie, we got lunch/dinner, walked around, went shopping (i got some sweet new clothes), and then went to bed early in preperation for my race the next day.

Race Day: I am converted to trail runnning. Best kind of running ever. Imagine running through open feilds with no track, no concrete, not even a trail to follow, just the churned up, muddy grass in front of you. Imagine running along a cliff, glittering grey waves crashing beneath you, stony rocks climbing up on your right, breaking the cloudless blue sky. Imagine scrambling up hills and dancing down the other side, trying to do it like a mountain goat, with light, but firm feet, not too fast, but not too slow or you'll trip and tumble down the slick, muddy, hillside. Imagine running up a mudslide, through streams and marshes in a scraggly, prickly moorland that goes on forever in an upward slope that finally curves back around to a little village and you break out of the grasses onto hard, black asphalt and then hurtle down the road to the finishline, located beyond a farmer's feild and back through the mud and grass and wet.

Nicole, me and Carolyn (left to right) after my race

Imagine running a race like that and you've got my race.

It was awesome. I loved it. It was one of the hardest races i've ever run, but it was also one of the most fulfilling. Before the race started I wasn't even a tiny bit nervous. I was prepared. I had no fear. I had run hard and worked up to a half-marathon distance before the race, so I was ready for anything. I was really glad I had done that too, because the race took me 1:43 hrs/mins to finish. The longest I had gone before in training was 2hrs. I was so glad. That is about half an hour longer than any other 10k i've ever done, but then again, this 10k was actually more like an 11k, cus it was 6.8ish miles instead of 6.2.

So, that was our trip. After the race we went back to Swansea, took a train home to London, took a bus to our house and hit the sack.

Paris!!

The Eiffel tower at night during the 5 minutes (every hr on the hr) it sparkles

Alrighty, so, I have to write a blog post about Paris. Well, we did soooo much in Paris, I just don't even think it would be fair to split it all up into five huge posts; too much reading. And, since I've already written about it all in my own personal journal, I'm kinda averse to writing it all again, the exact same way that I wrote about it before. So, I think I'm going to list off a bunch of the things that I did, and then tell you all a few short, sweet (and sour) stories about Paris instead!

me in front of the palace of Versailles

Things I Did in Paris:

walked up the first two levels, and then took a lift to the top of THE EIFFEL TOWER

went to NOTRE DAME

THE LOUVRE

took a solo picture with THE MONA LISA

took a BOAT TOUR on the river Sein

walked down the CHAMPS DE L'ESSAYS and went into a huge Sephora store (make-up paradise!)

paid 2 EUROS FOR A BATHROOM

ate the best patisseries ever at the BEST PATISSARIE IN THE WHOLE WORLD

went to MUSEE D'ORSAY

admired and ogled at the Dying Slave, a SCULPTURE BY MICHELANGELO

went to the POMPIDOU CENTRE

walked around a RODIN SCULPTURE GARDEN in the rain

saw THE THINKER a sculpture by Auguste Rodin, a modern day Michelangelo (look it up, you probably know this one, even if you think you don't)

saw NAPOLEON'S TOMB

went down the creepy underground tunnels of the famous CATACOMBES

climbed the ARC DU TRIOMPHE at night

went to the L'ORANGERIE an impressionist museum that houses some of MONET'S WATERLILIES

went to the MARMOTTAN, another museum, which has the LARGEST MONET COLLECTION IN THE WORLD

getting followed by a CREEPER GUY on the metro

walking through VERSAILLES a huge, grotesquely ornate palace where Marie Anttoinette did her “let them eat cake!” thing

looked out from SACRE COURE, a cathedral on a huge hill and saw all of Paris spread out beneath us

saw the famous SAINT-CHAPPELLE stained-glass windows, whose brilliant colors have never been able to be recreated

had a friend, Sarah, LOOSE A SHOE in mud, trying to cross a ditch and climb a wall (ILLEGALLY) at Versailles

ate lots of delicious CHOCOLATE MOUSSE and CREPES

BREAKING CURFEW FOR CRAPPY DESSERT

tried on MAGIC LIPSTICK that later got us HIT ON BY WAITER AT ITALIAN FOOD (yes, we ate Italian in Paris)

could find NO SHOES IN SIZE 42 which is a size 9 in the US

ate a lot of FRIES which are just called “fries” cus, well, we were in France

ate some ONION SOUP (WHICH IS ALSO FRENCH)

and BOUGHT CHEAPO SOUVINEERS

Me and Travis the Traveling Frog in front of a frog water fountain at Versailles

okay, so, that's pretty much all. Sweet. Got a whole week covered in a single list.

So, overall, I have to say that I LOVED seeing all the attractions (the Eiffle tower, Notre Dame, the museums, etc), but I did not really love the city of Paris itself. Paris is dirty, rough, and most French people really did not like Americans (or any english speakers). It was really hard not speaking the language- not that I talk to people in London all the time, but it is nice to know what the annoucner guy is saying over the intercom on the Metro or being able to read and understand all the signs around you.

Pic of me taking a pic in the hall of mirrors :D

I also felt afraid almost continuously all week long- either I was afraid of speaking the language, or of getting pick-pocketed, or of the people around me on the metro. One night we did have a crazy old french dude follow us in the metro; he followed us onto the train, all the way through the train (we walked upstairs and then downstairs in an effort to loose him but he stuck to us like a piece of gum), and then got off with us at our stop. The whole time he was cursing at us (doing some sort of witchcraft curse, with hand motions and everything) and it was just really unpleasant. When he followed us off the train I got really mad and scared and turned around and told him, “Stop following us— Stay on the train!” Really loud in a firm voice, and then turned and pretty much ran, but not before I heard him laugh at me and keep following us.

The only reason we got rid of the guy (yeah, nobody tried to stop him or help us either!) was

because he didn't have a ticket to get through the turnstiles and exit the metro station.

That was pretty creepy. That night we went home and just ate dinner at the hotel cus that was the only place we actually felt safe.

Going to Paris really put things into perspective for me. I didn't realize how awesome it is to be here in London, where I understand the language (most of the time :D) and where everything is soo clean, and so much brighter and well lit. I feel safe on the streets and I don't feel like everyone hates me because I'm American.

Before going to Paris, though, I didn't really realize how good we had it. I even compared Britain to the US, thinking that, man did we have it good in the United States. Now I'm even more grateful for the United States and our government and the way things are run there. There may be some good things here, like awesome public transportation and stuff, but along with that comes creeper guys that follow you around and nasty urine puddles on the ground and gross trash all over and little mice and rats scampering between the rails, and dingy hallways and tunnel-systems that you navigate like little moles underground, popping up, blinking in the sunlight from spending too much time underground.

So, there are pros and cons to living in different places, but, I think I've definitely decided that the United States is the place for me. It truly is the promised land.

Notre Dame!

Friday: Stourhead Gardens, Stonehenge, and Jane Austen's House

"This landscape I'm looking out onto is totally manmade, but I feel like it does a fabulous job at inspiring the beautiful and allowing it to thrive. It may have once been more apparent that this place is totally fabricated, but over the years and generations the land has reclaimed much of its own, growing into a mesh of the two kinds— natural and manmade— a whole new beast.

"I'm even now sitting on the steps of the temple of Apollo, a constructed granite column edifice not for the gods but simply for the beauty of Roman looks and a display or “shoutout” to the Roman culture. Likewise there is a constructed grotto (beautiful!) with statues of a river nymph and Neptune, the water god. Again, tributes to Rome and Greece, planted long after the actual people who worshiped these beings ceased to walk the earth. But yet they are beautiful and mystical and they please and entice the eye. I know they are fakes, but cannot help enjoying looking at them nevertheless.

"I gain such great peace from sitting in nature— contemplating these things. I feel that this trip has allowed me to experience life and many new things/situations, allowing me to fully understand (or at least better) myself— my likes, dislikes, my opinions. It has been a blessing, though sometimes a hard blessing to experience mentally and emotionally; turbulence is how we learn; without friction we would never get anywhere!”

The three paragraphs above are a direct excerpt from my journal. I wrote that as I sat in the temple that overlooked the ground at Stourhead Gardens. That temple features in the new, short version of Pride and Prejudice, in the scene where Darcy first asks Elizabeth to marry him and she refuses, and it's raining and sad and so dramatic! We took a lot of pictures up there, trying to look like Keira Knightly did in the movie, but I'm sure we all failed to reach the perfection Hollywood cameras achieve.

After visiting Stourhead gardens, we drove to Stonehenge. If I could say one thing about Stonehenge it is that I really liked it. Yeah, it was a rip off paying seven pounds to get in just to see the thing close up, and yeah, there were like a million people all walking around, taking pictures like mad, but at the end of the day, I spent about twenty minutes sketching it and, like nothing else does in the world, sketching something makes you either love it or hate it. I really enjoyed just looking at the stones and sketching them. It was fun. Maybe I liked it more because I had had a hard time sketching anything worth even looking at the day before, so my success with Stonehenge (I guess anyone can sketch some rocks though... hmm), made me feel better about myself or something.

It was definitely an experience, and I had almost as much fun in the gift shop afterwords as I did while I was out there looking at it. PS, it was a lot smaller than I expected it, but after staring at it for a while, I realized that the reason it seemed smaller to me was because in all the pictures, the camera somehow makes the stones appear more spread out, forming a circle with a larger circumference. However, in real life, the stones are all squashed together more, pretty close together without such huge gaps between each stone and the next. They were pretty big though, probably 15 or 17 feet tall, I don't think they went up to twenty feet, but maybe. Cool to think that people could move such massive stones into positions like that with just ropes and horses.

After going to Stonehenge, we drove to Jane Austen's house in the city of Chaucer. It was really fun to take a tour of the house and there were a bunch of old ladies inside ready to answer any questions we had about the house or the authoress. It was very fun, probably even more so because we were a group of 40 girls and going to visit Jane Austen's house is just such a girly thing to do.

Well, after the house, we drove another hour and a half back to London. And that was the end of our Southwestern trip! And our next big trip is Paris! Then we have three more small trips- two overnighters and one day we go to the Temple. And then I'm home. The end of this trip marked the half-way point of the semester. Halfway there. We've already done so much, but at the same time, there is so much we aren't seeing- that we have missed. I guess it's just a good excuse to come back, eh?

Thursday: St. Michael's Mount in Penzance

St. Michael's mount is a gorgeous rocky island off the tip of Penzance, reachable by boat in high tide and by foot along a cobblestone causeway during low tide. We walked on the pathway, just wide enough for a car to drive on, as the water was still receding from the bay. I took off my shoes and waded in the inch or so deep water at one point. The island is a beautiful silhouette against the sky. I love it— it has been painted and drawn many many times by hundreds of artists for this very reason. It was very foggy the day we were at St. Micheal’s mount. As we crossed over to the island, the sun had started to peak out and heat us up, but, after hiking up to the castle and walking inside for a bit, we emerged and the whole bay was covered in thick, white fog.

The island is it's own little fortress city. There are about 8 houses where people actually live, a tiny little dock and a little restaurant and a gift shop for tourists. And then there is the castle, which is the heart of the island. Touring inside the castle was nice— very interesting. St. Micheal’s Mount has a long history of being captured and sieged and such. It is su

ch an enchanting place and has many stories and legends. One legend says that St. Michael, the archangel, came to the island and appeared to the sailors who lived there. And that's it. Funny little story. I kept thinking, and then what? Why did this angel appear to the sailors? Sounds a little fishy to me. :D

The pathway up to the castle at St. Michael's mount. The island has hundreds of tropical plants growing there that have been imported from as far away as Madagascar. Even in the middle of October, the flowers were still blooming.

After touring the castle, most of my time there was spent writing in my journal and sketching and trying to think up ideas for a short story I have to write for my Creative Writing class. I wasn't very successful at any of these. But, after about two hours, my friends and I decided to head back to the coach. This time, as we went back to the base of the island, we saw that the tide had receded so much that we could walk down into the dock area and through what looked like a boat graveyard, all the boats sitting in the sand, beached like small whales in the low tide, or lack of a tide I guess you could say, and then make our way across the beach that was now exposed to the air, all the way to our coach.

A sweet car in the car park by the beach at St. Michael's Mount.

This was awesome, because, as we walked, our bare feet squelching in the soft, wet sand, we found dozens of sea-shells. I soon began gathering all that I could find and the trip back to the coach ended up taking about twenty minutes for every other step I was bent over, pawing at another sea shell I spotted in the sand. It was great fun, and as I collected I knew that I wanted to use these shells in a sculpture or a project for art, so that was my reasoning behind being such a shell-glutton.

The giant's heart stone on the pathway up to the Castle at St. Michael's mount.

We were supposed to go to Stourhead Gardens this day as well, but the timing of everything didn't work out properly, so, after returning to the coach, we just drove to Salisbury, dropped our stuff at the youth hostel, and took a walk to the Salisbury Cathedral to see it lit up in the dark of the night.

It was quite beautiful, and some of our group were sad that we weren't going to be able to do a tour of it the next morning like we had scheduled to do (instead, we were going to the gardens in the morning because of the time mix-up, so the cathedral tour got booted) but just seeing the outside was enough for me.

Wednesday: Tintagel Castle and Penzance

Tintagel Castle (or, King Arthur's castle) – a mere ruin of rocks on the cliffs. Beneath it, by the sea and reachable by crossing the beach, is Merlin's cave, a hole in the rock that spans the peninsular island. You can walk into the giant cave from one side and cross out to the other, stepping from stone to stone, avoiding tiny pools of water and emerging on the other side in the fresh sea air and blinding sunlight to see a new landscape of jagged black crags that emerge from the ocean waves like teeth from some great monster foaming at the mouth.

The land here is so beautiful and grey. It is somber and melancholy and mystical— I can perfectly see why the natives of this place believe that it may have been home to the mysterious King Arthur and his wizard, Merlin. As we climbed from the beach and Merlin's cave, up the cliff-side to the top of the peninsula where the castle ruins were, my professor, John, standing high up on the steps, pointed down towards the bay and the warm grey water. There was a seal playing in the waves.

Well, after returning to Tintagel, we crowded back into the coach and drove down into Penzance, stopping briefly at two neolithic standing stone structures on the outskirts of the city. The first one was basically Aslan's stone table— in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if really was :D

And the second (called a men-an-tol) was a circular rock with a hole in it. I really liked that one. There was a story that went along with it saying that back in the day people would crawl through the hole nine times and it would heal them of their back problems. Yeah, nine times crawling on the ground thru a tiny hole would do that I suppose. :D

After stopping at the two sites we took a two mile hike across the beach and up a hillside to Land's End, the Southernmost point in England.

By the end of all this, though, everyone was tuckered out. I believe we all had windburn and or sunburn because we'd been outside practically all day with the wind blowing in our faces. At our youth hostel we got a surprise free dinner— I was so happy. We were going to have to go into town to get food— a 15 min walk in the dark at 6:45pm after a long day to get (probably) expensive food, but instead we were able to sit and relax and just hang out at the hostel the rest of the night after a good hot dinner. That was a happy occurrence.

After exploring the top of the peninsula for about an hour, stopping to write in our journals for about half an hour, we headed back to Tintagel. The wind was strong up on the top of the cliffs and many of the girls were getting cold. It was so beautiful. I cannot capture the beauty of God's creations either in written word or in drawings or in paint or sculpture. I am nothing compared to Him and to the immensity of his power. I even try to mimic and fall vastly short of even coming close to the majesty He creates in even the tiniest flower bud or smallest drop of water. So, why do I try? Why do we even try, us makers? For that I am— I am a maker of things. I create. Just like a dog barks or a drinking fountain spews water, I am made to make things. So, I guess it's simply in my nature. I cannot help it— or if I can, I don not wish to help it. I merely can express it.

Tuesday: Glastonbury Abbey and Boscastle/Tintagel

Glastonbury Abbey

Day number 2 on our Southwestern tour. We were determined to make the most of every minute. Wow, looking back at everything that we did in a single day, it's no wonder I felt justified in just skipping out on running all week long. At least we hit the ground hard in the first half of the trip and then it wound down a little bit more near the last day or two.

The second day we drove to Glastonbury Abbey in the morning- located in Glastonbury. The tour here may be my favorite tour yet. The abbey is just a remnant of what it once was- vast walls, ruined archways, weather stones, lonely pillars scattered among flat green fields. I thought it would be boring, but I was wrong. Those ruined stones are a monument and a layered tapestry full of colorful, mystical and mysterious stories. Stories dating back to Jesus Christ and Joseph of Aramathia and the Romans.

Our tour guide was a skinny older man with a spring in his step and a crooked smile. He was full-out decked in period clothing from Henry the 8th's time, including a short sword and a knife. Our group was broken up into two separate halves, half going with our guy, and the other half with a younger woman also dressed in period clothing. We got the better guide by far, I

discovered, after talking and comparing experiences with other girls who had the woman. I felt grateful because I thoroughly enjoyed our guide's excited take on the whole experience. Though it was a windy, overcast day, none of that touched us as we listened to our guide tell us stories interlaced with true facts known about the abbey.

Glastonbury Abbey may have been founded by Joseph of Aramathea in 60 AD ish- making it one of and perhaps the 1^st place of Christian worship made after Christ's death. (our guide, at this point, made it very clear that the founding of this abbey is so laced with superstitions and stories and is so old that no one knows for sure how or who actually founded it, so these stories of it's founding are all just that: stories— which we could choose to believe or not believe). Later on, King Arthur may have lived in this land, for it is speculated that it could have been Avalon

because of the Tor here. A Tor is a tower on a great big hill (sometimes man-made). This land, way back when, was probably mostly under water, and the Tor, being so high, would have been

an island— Avalon. Also, some monks “Found” king Arthur's grave and his and Guinevere's

bones (supposedly). It's said that Joseph of Aramathea brought the holy grail here with him and if that's so, then it figures that Arthur would be drawn here too.

It's all superstition and myth, but it's really neat and fun to think about. Even today lots of people (hippies and spiritualists,etc) come on their own quests for King Arthur.

The guide told us a story that there's a well on the side of the tor that has a spring running out of it that turns the rocks around it red (probably from minerals in the H2O) but he said people thought this well might be the place where Joseph of Aramathea buried the holy grail and the two jugs (one of Jesus' blood, the other of His sweat) to hide them from conquering Romans. The red rocks were believed to be red from the water running over the blood and then staining the rocks. A neat little story.

Also, it is said that the Tor is where Joseph landed when he sailed here and he planted his staff on the top of it and it grew into the Holy Thorn, a tree which blossoms in April and in December, 2 times a year— one time near Easter, and one time near Christmas. Soo, the stories as well as architectural and historical facts, made the abbey come alive.It's neat to believe in King Arthur. I'm not a devout “Arthur follower” or anything, but I do think it's nice to have a great mythical person to believe in, to cater to the idea that he actually existed. I mean, I do that with Jesus Christ (except that I know He's real and He lived and walked the earth). It's interesting, because, after I thought about this very thing, our class had a discussion on how cultures around the world and in every generation, have this need to form some sort of hero/king figure to believe in.

We talked a little about it what it means, and I personally came to the conclusion that it is merely a testimony that we all have the light of Christ in us and that because of this, we unconsciously (or consciously) seek out the giver of that light, our creator. And, also, it just shows how the truth from the beginning can become watered down and transformed and changed until it's unrecognizable, but that some key elements always stay the same.

Boscastle and Tintagel— two sea-side towns located in the Cornwall region of England.

We drove first to Tintagel (emphasis on the “tag” when saying it out-loud), which is a little town filled with white-washed stucco and slate cottages poking up like stray sugar cubes in a green, weathered wilderness that falls off into the sea, giant ragged grey cliffs yawning and slashing at the frothy white waves that break against them.

On the hike between Tintagel and Boscastle

Beautiful. Awe-inspiring, grey solemn place, where the colors are very much subdued— expect for the yellow scrub-brush flowers that grace the hillside, and the clear, turquoise water near the cliffs (as the water gets further out into the Irish sea, it greys).

The group of us (49) split into two separate bands— one hiking from Tintagel to Boscastle and one from Bostcastle to Tintagel. I was in the former.

So, we made our way to Bostcastle. The hike was about 5 miles and took us 2 and a half hours, but that was with a lot of picture taking and slow-going because the views were all soo beautiful.

I loved it. I discovered that I am obsessed with rocks with holes in them. I just find them so aesthetically pleasing. I'm obsessed. The hike was wonderful, refreshing, and every time you came up and over a hill, the whole landscape was completely changed and a whole new picture-taking opportunity!

When we finally reached our destination, though, we were thoroughly worn out- we started at 3 pm and didn't get to Boscastle until 5:30.

Boscastle!

Boscastle is adorable. You know those figurines of villages and people that come out at Christmas? People collect them and they're so cute and some light up or move around and stuff and they create little villages with them, etc? Well, Boscastle looks just like that, except it's for real.

It is hidden in a little inlet that comes from the sea, piercing the cliff-faces and creating a crevice. The little town sits at the bottom of this, and as you approach, you see only a sea-break wall, then the path turns a corner, and the pictures que cottages come into view.

Emily (bottom) and Me (top right) in the Irish sea at low tide!

Later, after a delicious homemade meal Peter cooked for us all (a pasta dish with garlic bread, fresh green beans and grapes), my friend Emily and I went out to the harbor, in the dark, at low tide, and waded in the Irish Sea! It was really fun but rather scary because we were barefoot with no light. It was cold but not freezing— I think much warmer than the pacific ocean.

Southwestern Tour; Part 1- Bath

Emily, Nicole, Me, and Lynne (in order left to right) in front of Bath Cathedral.

This is our first stop on our southwestern trip. We got our good old bus-driver back , Tony! And a nicer, more luxurious bus— way more leg room! We drove about 3 hours on Monday, October 10^th, and got to Bath at 11am, dropped our stuff (which, I am proud to say, I was able to consolidate everything into one backpack!) and hiked downhill from our youth hostel to the Holbourne museum. There is a great little exhibition there by Thomas Gainsburough, a famous English portrait and landscape artist. The show was lovely and I really enjoyed it. I feel

like I learned a lot from just looking at his compositions and brush strokes, etc. I think I want to use him as inspiration from some later paintings/art.

Bath is where Jane Austen lived for a time, and right outside the Holbourne museum is the house where she lived, #4 Sydney Place. We actually had plans to see another of her homes later in the week (a house she spent the majority of her life and her writing career in).

Lynne and me at the Roman baths

The whole city is built out of yellow sandstone, so it's quite pretty, seeing as all the buildings match, in a way. Some are dirty though, the stone blackened with soot and pollution; those are sorta gross to look at. But, overall, the whole is very pretty. It's fairly hilly here— the town is nestled in a sort of valley and sprawls onto the hills around it too. It reminds me of ski towns in the summer, a little bit, oho it looks. Except no pine trees or ski runs making slashing crisscrosses over the hillsides— just yellow stone houses, Romanesque colonnades and pillars bedecking their porches which peep out from the trees.

Roman Baths— we took a tour thru the Roman baths located in Bath. The city used to be a Roman outpost way back when, like 400 AD or something. It fell into disrepair and was buried though, over time. Then it was rediscovered in 1727 and unearthed. It was a really neat place— it has a hot spring that bubbles up from the beneath the earth- the only one in all of England. Interesting, that, because we have so many in the western US. It was also kinda funny because, when the people in the 1720s unearthed the place, they commissioned sculptors and artists to specifically redo a lot of the place, like put in fake Romanesque statues and carvings around some of the baths that were really worn down, though there are still some original carvings from the Romans.

The Fashion Museum— after the tour in the baths (and no, we didn't get to go in the baths; they even told us not to touch the water :P ), we went up (hill) to the Bath Fashion Museum. It's a museum entirely dedicated to fashion. And when I say fashion, I mean clothes— dating from the 1600s all the way to the latest scraps of cloth they call “clothing” that came off the runway this spring, in the 2011 Spring European fashion shows.

Me participating in the interactive exhibit :D

It was really fun— they had a wedding dress exhibit and an interactive exhibit (which was everyone's favorite) where we got to try on corsets and hoopskirts. We all bonded over that one— huffing and puffing to get the corsets round our ribcages.

After dawdling in that room for about half an hour, we finally dragged ourselves from the strangely attractive (strange because, really, if you think about it, we were starving our lungs of oxygen on purpose!) act of corseting ourselves and went to go explore the remainder of the museum. This being our second museum, with an audio-toured ruin exploration of two hours in between that, I feel justified in saying that at this point my attention and faculties were beginning to tire and wander.

We wondered 9physically :D ) upstairs to the Assembly rooms— rooms in Bath which feature in several Jane Austen books I believe— and sat for a little bit before we went to go meet up with John and Peter at the Royal Crescent.

The Royal Crescent

The Royal Crescent is a little col-de-sac type deal— except way cooler. The houses, tall and skinny, are all connected in the front facade so that it appears to be one big house in a half-moon curve. The only thing separating the houses are the picturesque pillars that flank the front doors.

This place is home to some celebrities, including Nicolas Cage, who ons one of the flats/houses. It also featured in the BBC movie, Persuasion, at the end of the movie as the main girl character, Anne Elliot, runs towards her love to try and get him back.

Well, we had a meeting there and talked for all of 5 minutes because the wind really picked up and we were out in the open and in the cold. So, we split up and went our separate ways— some off to dinner, others to the giant Sainsbury grocery store to get food for lunch the next day (I was w/ the latter group). After our trip to Sainsbury's, we made our way back into the city's heart, guided only by a print-out map. We were looking for a shop that supposedly sold really delicious buns0 but after a half hour of getting lost, backtracking and finally finding a nice man who gave us directions,w e got to the palce and discovered they had run out of buns hours before. Luckily, we had a back-up plan. The guy who gave us directions had also told us abut an Indian food place, family-owned, near-by. So, we went there— the food was great, probably the best Indian I've had yet— and they even gave us warm damp towels (real hand towels!) to wipe our hands on after we finished eating. Pricy, but really nice and delicious. Jamuna's, I think it was called.

By the time we finished, it was dark, so we made our way back to the Youth Hostel and that is the end of my stay in Bath. We really lived it up— we did a lot, maybe too much. Our professors always plan more for us to do than we have time for, but hey, I guess I can sleep when I'm dead, right?