Today my photo class took a field trip to Lacock Abbey and Bath Spa. Lacock Abbey is where they filmed some of the classroom and cloister scenes in the Harry Potter movies. For some odd reason, I expected it to be more castle like with ornate furniture and drawings. Instead it was pretty much empty with no furniture, but the cloisters were beautiful. Plus the grounds and gardens were extremely peaceful. Just the kind of place to go to get away from the city. The town there was also quite quaint.

I only wpent about 2 hours at Lacock Village and the Abbey because I really wanted to see the Roman Baths at Bath Spa. So I jumped on the train and went to Bath Spa. My first mission was to search for something to eat, we ended up going to a little sandwich shop and had a veggie burger and chips. All was good until I found a bug in my sandwich and Renia found a live worm in hers. It was too late to do anything since we had already eaten 99% of it. After the bug experience, we went to the Roman Baths. I was quite impressed. The baths are spring fed and come out of the ground at about 80 degrees F. Not all of the site has been restored, but what was there is beautify. The original lead liner and drainage systems are still in use. Talk about some amazing engineering.

Tomorrow is a class day and Thursday will be the first company visit for my eCommerce class. Then I am off to Edinburgh for the weekend.

I promise post pictures tomorrow. I have about 500 to go through.

Today we took a coach (see, I am already starting to understand the language - Jason, are you ready to move yet?) to Stonehenge and Salisbury. The ride was about 2 hours from London. Not that the site is really that far, but it takes a heck of a lot of time to get out of London. They don't have an interstate here. The roads are labeled M, A, and B depending on how hefty it is with M being able to hold the most traffic (3 lanes in either direction).

M: Motorway
A: Auxiliary
B: Byway

The system is quite interesting, but I don't think that I every want to drive here. Everyone is so close and the roundabouts are confuse the hell out of me.

Once we got to Stonehenge, we exited the bus and took the subway under the road (subways are walkways under the ground while the underground is what we could consider a subway) to Stonehenge. My first impression was how small it was. I expected the stones to be larger and take a larger area. Also, it was extremely crowded. I would say that there were easily about 300 people at the site. We spent about 45 minutes at the site and the gift shop. In that time I was able to take about 100 pictures and to buy some postcards. I could have stayed there for at least another 45 minutes. A few of the people on our bus were pissed because we spent so much time there. They weren't interested in a pile of rocks.

I was kind of in awe about the site. It wasn't as spiritual as I would have liked, but then again it kind of hard because there are 300 other people taking pictures with me. If I would have been there alone or with just a few people I think that it would have been an extremely moving experience. The stones are roped off so you can't get within 50 feet, but it is still quite amazing. It would be difficult to construct something like that today let alone 5000 years ago. Our tour guide pretty much labeled it as the first calendar, but he left out the spiritual significance. If you look at it as a great big calendar then you are missing the point. Plus it would be hard to use it as a calendar since it is cloudy so much!

After Stonehenge, we went to Salisbury to see the Salisbury Cathedral. It has the highest and oldest spire in England. Possibly in the world, but I am not sure. The inside is just amazing. It took approx. 40 years to build and is an amazing peace of work. The ceilings and entire church are stunning. Sadly, the ceiling paintings and stained glass windows were removed during the Victorian era since they were considered to be in bad taste. Luckily the cathedral survived and was not modernized like the majority of the cathedrals in the country. Also, it was build in one style which is extremely since they take so many years to build.

Once I sort through my pictures tonight and tomorrow, I'll post some more.

Tomorrow, I am planning to go to Dover to see Dover Castle and the secret wartime tunnels. I'll just use a day of my BritRail pass. The tunnels where used during WWII and as a nuclear fallout shelter until the 1980s.

London is AWESOME and I am having a pretty good time overall. I am a bit homesick and miss hanging out with Jason and my friends. Most of the other CCSA people here want to go out to pubs instead of the places that I want to go to. Guess I am spoiled since Jason makes such a great travel partner!

Just a quick entry to let everyone know that I put up some more pictures from my trip to the British Museum this afternoon. You can view them in the London Photo Gallery or click the link above. The museum was totally awesome and made up for my 20 minute field trip to an internet cafe for my E-Commerce class.

I'll write more later since all I really want to do is to crawl into bed.... So tired! Hope all is well at home.

I finally made it to SOHO in London. This would be consider the "gayer" part of town with a bunch of clubs, cafes, bookstores, bars, and interesting food. Some of the bookstores look like the Pink Pyramid in Cincinnati if it were a Barnes and Nobles. You don't feel dirty looking at gay fiction and CDs. Hell, even the porn section is clean and well lit.

I believe that I have walked at least 25 miles on this trip so far. The tube (subway) is about a mile away from campus. There is a bus that takes you down to the Finchley Road Underground Station, but I just started taking that today. That is a big relief on my feet since I walk everywhere else.

Today was the first day of classes. Everything started at 7:30am with a breakfast (yes, I am getting up at about 6:45am - 1:45am EST) of toast and fruit. I had my eCommerce class first. We are a small group of about 9 people. At first I thought that the class was going to be a total waste of time, but it is looking up at this point. We are going to visit 3 companies and do a final group report. The upside is that the weekly all-day field trips are only going to last for a few hours. This means that I will be able to spend the rest of that time hanging out in London. Tomorrow the eCommerce class it going to an Internet Cafe to look at sites for about an hour. After that I hope to make it out to the British Museum for the rest of the day.

After lunch, my photo class met. The class is quite large with 36 people. We are not allowed to most of the automatic features of our cameras, so I have to learn how to set my f-stop and aperture on my own. The class has one printer to share for making prints, so that is going to be fun. Most of the students brought digital cameras, but didn't bring a computer. They have to share two Apple iBooks to burn CDs of their pictures. I am extremely happy that I brought my laptop so that I can work with my photos and access the internet. Wednesday we are going to Hampstead Heath and Thursday we are going to Hampton Court and Kew Gardens.

My apologies for posting pictures without descriptions. I'll clean up the pictures and post more in a few days. Drop me an email with you address if you want a post card.

Well, I have landed and survived though about 3 days in London now. Over the last three days, I have been through three walking tours and a bus tour. It has all just be totally amazing and I am ready to pack up my stuff and move here.

I'll post quite a bit more later, but so far I am having a blast. I haven't spent too much time downtown at all, but did go to Hampstead Heath and a few other areas right around the dorms. I've posted some pictures in a new London Trip photo gallery.