'...Known unto these, and to myself disguised!'

I'm back from London!

It was an amazing trip, but I'm still on culture and history overload! Everything I crammed into about 2 and a half days could easily have filled a week.

On Friday night, I arrived about 3pm, checked into my hostel and then went for a walk. I found my way to Buckingham Palace and wandered around a bit there. I tried taking a photo of myself in front of it (feeling like a complete idiot as I did so), and then another tourist offered to take it for me. (Unfortunately random offers like this rarely ensure the greatest photography but I'm still grateful.)

That night I went on a Thames Pub Walk - it was led by an American wierdly enough, but he knew a lot about the history of London and it was an interesting walk.

I met two Canadian Girls travelling in their gap year, and we hung around together. Then after the walk we all went together to a turkish restaurant for tea (which was really great food.) The woman they were staying with was with us and at the end of tea she generously offered to pay for all our meals as she said she wanted to do this for us a young travellers to pay back for the same being given to her when she was a young traveller.

It was about 1am by the time I got to bed I think, and I had to get up at about 6am for my tour the next day. So needless to say I was really tired (and I'd only, stupidly, had 4 hours sleep the night before!). Every time I got on the bus during the tour this day i fell asleep almost instantly. The tour was to Stonehnge, Bath and Windsor Castle. It was great to see all these places but a bit rushed all day with only a short amount of time in each place.

But I still really enjoyed it - it was a history lover's dream. Though each place was overpopulated with tourists, it still felt a little surreal when I imagined the people who had put these stones here and stonehenge, and walked in these courtyards at Bath so many years ago. I just wanted to reach out and touch everything and imagine who had touched the same stones before. I don't know what I was expecting, an electric shock or something, but I did get little chills every now and again. Just my over active imagination I know, but I still loved it.

This is a view of Bath from a hill coming down into the town:

And the Baths (another fellow tourist offering to take my picture):

Windsor Castle: (no photos of the inside, sorry - that wasn't allowed.)

A Chapel: (St George's Cathedral was like this inside but even grander. While I was there, the boys choral group was practicing and it sounded beautiful inside the cathedral.)

Saturday night I went an saw The Comedy of Errors at the Globe, which was fun, and appropriate since I'm just studying the same play at uni.

Here's pic of the outside of the Globe:

Okay, I'm going to have to leave it there for now, since I'm tired (Ik ben moe) and lacking motivation to keep going. So there will be a second instalment of my London trip coming soon.

Stay tuned.

Tot ziens. Ik spreek je gauw weer. (Which means, if you hadn't worked it out, 'Bye, I'll talk to you soon.')