No Time For Titles

Alrighty! So sorry it's been so long since I have posted. We've been internetless again and that makes things difficult! But now I've got free Wi-Fi so here we go again!

So we took a 6:30 am flight to Manchester, which means I had to get up at 3:15 AM. WHAT?! Well, I was actually ok until the after noon when I like died of exhaustion on the bus. So be forewarned the following pictures were taken under delirious conditions. Oops? So we arrived in Manchester and immediately got on our bus and drove through Wales. First stop, Tintern Abbey.

It was beautiful, although it is just a bunch of ruins honestly. It's probably most famous for Wordsworth's poem that mentions it.

Anyways, it was emptied around 1600 something because Henry VIII was changing the national religion from Catholicism to Protestantism, I think. Like I said, I was half asleep so...

The delirium resulted in experimenting with the unused features on our digital cameras...

After that we journeyed to our final destination of Bath, England. It is a gorgeous city made completely out of one certain limestone.

It is most famous for...the Roman baths that were located there. It's strange to think that people bathed in these actual places and that the water that's there now, still flows from the same hot spring. It was very authentic...

I especially enjoyed the audio tour...

But not as much as I enjoyed my bath!

Then we went over to Bath Abbey. I have now seen like a million churches so they all run together a little bit. One that stuck out about this one was what was carved onto the outside front facade. It depicts Jacob's ladder, the story in the Bible where Jacob saw angels climbing up and down the stairway to heaven. That was pretty cool.

Also, little known fact, Dumbledore's real pensieve is now being used as the baptismal font at Bath Abbey. So, now you know.

By the way, I'm kidding. The church is really old and you can look through a grate in the floor and see where the original Norman floor and columns were built on top of.

Outside of the church there was some street performers. Now in England and Ireland there are street performers EVERYWHERE. And beggars, which is kind of sad. But for some reason these guys caught my eye and I really wanted a picture.

They were statues. The man kept reaching out his hand and I didn't know what he wanted (I had already put money in his cup) so I just shook it?! I wasn't entirely sure what was going on...

Next we hit up the Jane Austen Centre. Ok, every one of us were huge Jane Austen fans, we love her works and the movies etc. Well this place should be renamed the "Make You Pay A Ridiculous Admission Fee To See Nothing That Is Related To Jane Austen". Yes, it was that bad. They had one letter written by her and that was the coolest thing there was. She only lived in Bath 5 years. The "museum" is not even in the place where she lived. I breezed through that place in like 5 minutes. They even had a silhouette that said "probably Jane Austen." I mean, come on.

Mary Helen was not a fan either. The thing that I found most interesting was a letter written by actress Emma Thompson to the Jane Austen Centre. She was Elinor in the movie version of Sense and Sensibility (also Prof Trelawney in Harry Potter among many other things) and she sent them some pictures from the movie or something. So that was the best thing there.

The last thing we did was the Fashion Museum! It was cool. They had collections from lots of British designers as well as clothing from the 1700s. Try this on for size...

They had some pieces that were actually famous. They had a dress worn by Queen Victoria and they had this cool suit that was worn for the coronation of one of the King George's along time ago. Like 1700s maybe? Like I said, I was tired and not paying much attention to dates.

The museum also had a place where you could try on corsets and hoop skirts! I love adult dress up!

Obligatory middle school mirror pic...

Hot.

I am definitely bringing this fashion choice back.

Well that put an end to an exceedingly lengthy day. The next morning we got up and drove to Stratford-Upon-Avon the birthplace of Shakespeare. I spent the day today just walking around but we'll be taking classes here at the Shakespeare Center and seeing lots of plays done by the Royal Shakespeare Company. I am in English major heaven!