Old Buildings & Pretty Rivers

It's Monday again, which means it's time for me to reminisce about the past weekend.  This past weekend felt busier than the last, probably because I was in a different city everyday.  I'm looking forward to the upcoming weekend because I have no travel plans.  Hopefully, I can catch up on my sleep and maybe do some homework for my classes.  Okay, back to this weekend

On Friday, we were up early to eat breakfast and travel to a place called Lincoln for a British Studies Field Trip.  Lincoln is a really historic town that holds a lot of the real life examples for things that we discuss in our lectures (which is why British studies is kind of cool, besides all the reading).

When we first walked into Lincoln, we passed the Lincoln Cathedral, which was built around 1072.  For an American, that is a really old building (we're lucky if we see a building from the 1700s). 

We then walked under an archway to a cute little cobblestone street with little shops that was situated in front of a Norman castle from around 1068. 

We organized ourselves in our tour groups that we had been given.  My honors British studies professor, Dr. Green, was the leader of my group that day.  First, we walked around Lincoln and discussed the outside of the cathedral, saw how high up the town was from the other towns in that area, and saw some old Roman things that were still there.

This included an archway that was pretty cool.  The Romans came to Lincoln in the year 43 AD, which is crazy to me, so that archway was somewhere from that time period, and it's still standing!

After the walking tour, me and my friends sat in the grass in front of the cathedral to eat a packed lunch that the cafeteria had provided us with.  We walked around to the shops after. I also met a horse there on the street,.and Rachel and I found an ice cream parlor.  I had the raspberry pavlova flavor, which was delicious.

 Around one, I had to meet the group back at the cathedral to go inside.  The inside was beautiful, and we also saw a lot of creepy tombs.  They were playing organ music as well, so it made it really authentic.

After the cathedral tour, we were free to walk around in the castle built by the Normans.  We walked up a narrow staircase in a tower to go up to the top.  Once at the top, if you stood a certain way, you felt like you were on the Great Wall of China.

 After we did that, we met a friend and walked down to the Primark store.  We did not know, however that Primark was at the very bottom of a road called Steep Hill.  The were not lying when they named the road this.  On the way back to the top, I swear we were walking on a vertical incline.  It was really bad.

We made it back to the manor that night, and I got to sleep so I could get up even earlier for the Cambridge trip on Saturday.

That morning, before stopping in Cambridge, we stopped at the American WWII Cemetery just outside the city.  There were over three thousand service members buried there, and they had over five thousand on the wall of the missing.  I can't express the feeling of appreciation and gratitude I feel along with sadness.  When your in a place like this, listening to the tour guide tell stories of select people, you get an almost overwhelming feeling that you can't describe.  They also had a museum there with a nice eight minute film about some of the people buried there and what they did for the war.  I remembered one quote from that film that sums up how I felt while there: "Each one paid their price; each one earned our freedom."

When we arrived in Cambridge, we had the whole day free to ourselves.  We went and sat by the river that runs though the town and ate our packed lunch.  It was really pretty and serene out there.

We walked around and explored the city a little bit after that and found a tea shop.  Sara and I split a traditional English Afternoon Tea.  It was delicious!

We went into one of the colleges at Cambridge University because the others were closed, and the grounds were so gorgeous.

Since Cambridge has the river that runs through it, a popular activity is punting.  This means that a person stands on the back of boat and pushes you along the river with a stick.  We just watched the people do it.  It reminded me of the gondolas in pictures that I've seen in Venice (which I'm definitely doing when I go there). 

Saturday, when we got back to the manor, we ate dinner, and a few of us went outside to the front of the manor. We danced, listened to music, and sang obnoxiously loud.  It was probably the most fun I've had since I've been at Harlaxton (not counting Hampstead of course).  We stayed out there until about 9:30, and then we heard a rustling in the woods near where we were and ran inside baecause we got freaked out.  Most of the lights in the manor were out at this time because after nine is quiet hours, so it was kind of creepy.  We went back to Lauren and her roommate's, Sarah, room.  We ate snacks and talked until about 11:30, and it was really relaxing to chat and not worrying about anything else.

On Sunday, Lauren and I went to our Meet-A-Family's house around 11 am.  They picked us up and drove us to their house.  Their one month old granddaughter was there, and she was so cute.  I got to hold her for quite a while.  Then we walked her to her parents house and walked back to have lunch.  We had rolls with ham, British mustard (which is a little spicier), chicken and ham pie, and sausage rolls.  Everything was really good, and I liked it a lot.  We met their two yellow labs after that, and they were sweet.  We decided to watch the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou after that.  While we were watching the movie, we had a slice of cake and this amazing iced peach tea.  We sat and talked while dinner was finishing and had a traditional British Sunday roast dinner, which so delicious, and I was so full (I also had more of the peach tea). 

I'd say that this weekend has been really enjoyable, but very busy, and I'm excited to realx this upcoming weekend.  My next big adventure is the Scotland trip coming up week after next on my birthday! See you soon!

Love always,

Alexandria