Day 3: Countryside Walk

For the Harry Potter Fans.

We started the day off by taking the train out to the small town of Princes Risborough. Small town, but I liked it. From there we started our journey: a ~9mile hike through the countryside to the neighboring town of Wendover. Overall I think today was some of the most fun I've had all trip, just getting to experience the English countryside in the way we did. Plus, having Dr. Burt ( our dean) there to narrate everything (it was his home town) really added a nice touch. On to the pictures.

On the start of our journey. Little did we know how much farther we had to go.



At the top of the first hill. We were starting to get a pretty good workout at this point. You can see the town we originally started out behind me.



While walking towards a church, a we were walking along the base of a particularly steep hill, which just had to be climbed. Anoop (one of our professors)decided it was a good time for a race as well.



Top of the hill. Absolutely beautiful view.



The church we made a quick rest stop at on the way to next town.





A pretty cool barley field we crossed through on the way up to the next big hill. It reminded me of that scene from the movie Gladiator.




Another view of the field we had just come through.



And another view, this time from the top of the hill. You can BARLEY see the path we just came through in the background. Sorry.



Our destination at the top of the final hill, a monument dedicated to the British soldiers who died in South Africa.



That's it for today, we're going to the Tower of London and the Imperial War Museum tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that a good deal.

D-Day Plus 1

My body has finally caught up with the time difference, so today was much more bearable. We started the day off by going to St. Paul's Cathedral, which I didn't know anything about and was ended up completely impressed from it.





The place was massive and very beautiful.



Also the view from the top was amazing.



After, we went to lunch outside the Modern Tate Art Museum, headed over to see Saint Mary Axe, and then went home. All in all a good day.

This is after crossing the Millennium Bridge.



This is Saint Mary Axe.



Finally, the London Tower Bridge.

D-Day

At this point I've been up for 38 straight hours, so please forgive any incoherent ramblings or typos. I've just concluded my first day of my study abroad trip, and it feels like yesterday was ten years ago. The flight over was an absolute disaster. Picture this:



For the entire nine hour flight. Two of those wonderful little devils were sitting directly in front of me, and literally screamed the ENTIRE flight. Just my luck I suppose. And to make matters worse, my in-flight video unit didn't work. Oh yeah, and somehow my ipod how completely ran out of batteries before the flight. Good times. But back to London. I feel like we've already walked the entire city on foot. We set out from our dorms at the John Dodgson House once we had all met up from the airport and made our way on foot over to the mobile phone store to pick up our phones. Along the way, we saw some cool buildings:

We stopped by Trafalgar Square and had dinner.

And icecream:



I just got back from dinner and I'm feeling extremely tired, so I'll continue this later.