I feel calm and reflective right now. I think this post will be calm and reflective to match my mood. Today's been a good day. 'Good' isn't a very academic adjective, but I think it's the appropriate word for today. God made the world and it was good, and today was good. The weather is uncharacteristically mild with a little splash of sunlight, the house is quiet, I'm well rested, I'm in England, and Adam Young is playing through my speakers. Peace.
I've done a lot of activities here in Oxford and in the nearby cities; things that I've never experienced before, or at least never experienced in this unique style. Public transport has been one adventure--a battle might be a more appropriate term--that I've adjusted to, the ever-exciting pub life is always an opportunity to never miss, and just gazing open-jawed at the stunning architecture is inspiring. I've found my midnight snack equivalent to McDonalds: Ali's Kebab stand. Ali's serves kebabs which are not skewed surprisingly enough. This is probably obvious actually, but I've always associated kebabs with a metal spear through them. Ali's is only five minutes walking distance away, and I can get a whopping portion of chips and lamb kebab meat for £3.50. On the Hoof has become my Little Panda equivalent for a quick, cheap, delicious meal. They serve hot and toasty baguette sandwiches there for under £4. Mainly I 'cook' up pasta and rice and chicken with various sauces on top, or I let the master chef Hutton Brown cook for me.
If I had to pick my absolute favorite part about England though, I would have to say I've enjoyed the Gothic churches, namely St. Paul's Cathedral. St. Paul's is... astounding. No, astounding doesn't quite do it justice. Hutton said it the best:
"I could spend hours describing the intricately carved statues and moldings that permeated the towering structure. I could strain the English language to attempt to give you the experience of gazing up at murals so real and so poignant. I could search for hours for adjectives to adequately describe the magnitude of the structure, but even more shocking was the walls that were covered with beautiful paintings showing scenes of the Bible in an artistic perspective. One could sit and gaze for an endless amount of time and still miss a detail of a painting that made it all the more beautiful. I could attempt to string together a list of adjectives to describe the experience of sitting in an ancient, wooden chair and listening with eyes closed to the choir weaving melodies so flawlessly it seemed to come as natural as breathing. Sound echoed of the walls of the tower mixing songs of praise with glorious murals devoted to Christ welding both sound and sight into a worship experience that overwhelmed the senses. I could attempt to do all these things, but there is no way to describe the experience."
And that's really how it is. I can't really describe the beauty of this awesome feat and encompass the magnitude of its architecture. You have to see it to believe it. The building itself was a worship to God. Even if your like me and think that God isn't interested in big and expensive buildings, it's hard to escape the worship that reverberates off of the painted dome.
There was a strict no camera rule, so I had to be sneaky with this video. Sorry that it's not the best shot!
Blog on France coming soon
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
These Lights Will Inspire You
For the most part I consider myself a level-headed person, especially when the pressures on. In fact when the clock is ticking, that's when I'm in my prime because it's do or die time. I also consider myself to be a patient person--now before you object let me explain. By patient I mean that I'm not really in a hurry. Admittedly I am prone to agitation and frustration which I blame on the Thibodeaux's. Finally I like my sleep. Nay, I love my sleep. Mornings and I have never really seen eye to eye. Oddly enough I am prone to phases of insomnia where I hardly sleep at all. Now that you have this background, I would like to welcome you on board to the virtual ride of Nathan's trip to York. We woke up at 4:45 Friday morning so we could catch our 6:00 train out of Oxford to London. If this wasn't bad enough, I had a stint of insomnia the previous night so I had no sleep. My friends, I was one sleepy hombre. Anyways we make it to the train station and we go up to order our train tickets. A couple of weeks ago we all got return tickets plus and all-day underground pass to London for £12.50, so we were expecting the same today. I found out just how inexperienced I am with the rail system in Europe. When we went to London it was a Saturday and it wasn't at 'peak time.' This was a Friday, right smack in the middle of peak time. End of story was that we got one-way tickets with a one-way underground for the gutting price of £30. Ouch. But whatever. We were going to York and it was a cheap trip anyways.
Our confidence in getting to York quickly started to dwindle when we got on the train, as we watched the clock tick past 6, and then 6:15, and then 6:30. We had a bus to catch out of London to York at 8:15 and it takes over an hour to get to London, and then we had to find where the coaches left and all that jazz. And I had no sleep the night before. I was uncharacteristically pessimistic and characteristically pissed. How can a train already be delayed that early in the morning?? But finally we pulled out at 6:45 and arrived in London at 7:45. But by the time we got off the underground at King's Cross where the coaches took off, we had five minutes to figure out where the heck we were supposed to go and then actually physically get there. AHHHH. Things looked grim and it didn't help that the staff at King's Cross kept pointing to the trains and telling us that we had to get on. I'm practically yelling trying to explain that our tickets are for a bus and not a freakin' train! But since we weren't getting anywhere we went ahead and hopped on the appointed train that was heading for East Midland Parkway--with 30 seconds to spare. At this point I'm positive that we are not going anywhere close to York. But this story turned out to be a Comedy and there was a bus (delayed) to pick us up in East Midlands to take us to York. I just wish our ticket would have said that we had to take a 2 hour train ride in the middle of the trip!
York was excellent. We got an awesome hostel that was spotlessly clean, provided a complimentary yummy breakfast, and had nice staff. And nobody was raped.
It was interesting though. Since we had hardly slept the night before we were all exhausted, so we went to bed early around 9 o'clock, and it was just us four in the room. When I woke up in the morning, I rolled out of bed to find six strange men sleeping in the previously empty beds. I've never slept in a hostel so I was a bit taken aback, but I guess that's pretty normal.
The city was awesome. York used to be controlled by vikings. We visited a viking museum that had an actual ride built in that took you through an average day in the life of a viking. There were even specific smells during different scenes, like fish by the river and stew in the huts. We went to Evensong at York Minster Cathedral. Cathedrals never cease to mesmerize my brain, and York Minster was no exception.
Clifford's Tower was incredible too, and it gave an excellent view of the entire city center. Castles are just so majestic and mighty. We also got to walk around the original castle wall the encircles the city center! Legit.
York has tons of posters that advertise ghost tours at night. What sounded cool quickly lost its appeal when we saw about the seventieth unique ghost tour sign. However we did find one sign promoting a Viking Walk around York, and the tour guide was some published author. Eh, why not? It ended up being awesome. This nutter dressed like a Viking gave us an incredible tour of the spots in York where the Viking invasions and defeats took place. The guy really knew his stuff. Keith would have been proud to hear the story of one of his relatives who stood alone and defended a bridge from the Anglo-Saxons; cutting off 42 heads in the process.
That about sums up our trip! York's a sweet place. I wish I would have gotten an 'I Love York,' shirt. But yah York is definitely worth your time if you ever find yourself in the area!
Oh yah, I did promise:
Our confidence in getting to York quickly started to dwindle when we got on the train, as we watched the clock tick past 6, and then 6:15, and then 6:30. We had a bus to catch out of London to York at 8:15 and it takes over an hour to get to London, and then we had to find where the coaches left and all that jazz. And I had no sleep the night before. I was uncharacteristically pessimistic and characteristically pissed. How can a train already be delayed that early in the morning?? But finally we pulled out at 6:45 and arrived in London at 7:45. But by the time we got off the underground at King's Cross where the coaches took off, we had five minutes to figure out where the heck we were supposed to go and then actually physically get there. AHHHH. Things looked grim and it didn't help that the staff at King's Cross kept pointing to the trains and telling us that we had to get on. I'm practically yelling trying to explain that our tickets are for a bus and not a freakin' train! But since we weren't getting anywhere we went ahead and hopped on the appointed train that was heading for East Midland Parkway--with 30 seconds to spare. At this point I'm positive that we are not going anywhere close to York. But this story turned out to be a Comedy and there was a bus (delayed) to pick us up in East Midlands to take us to York. I just wish our ticket would have said that we had to take a 2 hour train ride in the middle of the trip!
York was excellent. We got an awesome hostel that was spotlessly clean, provided a complimentary yummy breakfast, and had nice staff. And nobody was raped.
It was interesting though. Since we had hardly slept the night before we were all exhausted, so we went to bed early around 9 o'clock, and it was just us four in the room. When I woke up in the morning, I rolled out of bed to find six strange men sleeping in the previously empty beds. I've never slept in a hostel so I was a bit taken aback, but I guess that's pretty normal.
The city was awesome. York used to be controlled by vikings. We visited a viking museum that had an actual ride built in that took you through an average day in the life of a viking. There were even specific smells during different scenes, like fish by the river and stew in the huts. We went to Evensong at York Minster Cathedral. Cathedrals never cease to mesmerize my brain, and York Minster was no exception.
Clifford's Tower was incredible too, and it gave an excellent view of the entire city center. Castles are just so majestic and mighty. We also got to walk around the original castle wall the encircles the city center! Legit.
York has tons of posters that advertise ghost tours at night. What sounded cool quickly lost its appeal when we saw about the seventieth unique ghost tour sign. However we did find one sign promoting a Viking Walk around York, and the tour guide was some published author. Eh, why not? It ended up being awesome. This nutter dressed like a Viking gave us an incredible tour of the spots in York where the Viking invasions and defeats took place. The guy really knew his stuff. Keith would have been proud to hear the story of one of his relatives who stood alone and defended a bridge from the Anglo-Saxons; cutting off 42 heads in the process.
That about sums up our trip! York's a sweet place. I wish I would have gotten an 'I Love York,' shirt. But yah York is definitely worth your time if you ever find yourself in the area!
Oh yah, I did promise:
Monday, February 7, 2011
Mind the Gap
It's way too hard to find time to blog up here. The past couple of weeks have been chocked full of tons of awesome things, but also full of a ton of homework and planning.
Seriously, I think that the Morgans have forgotten that we're here on vacation, not to study! Each week we've been assigned over 300 pages of reading, and we've written 10 pages of various assignments. The upside is that 200 of those pages are from Lord of the Rings, so at least the reading is worthwhile. But I've read LOTR multiple times, and I want to read some of my own stuff... oh well.
I've drank so much tea here.
Where to begin? How about London? London it is. Last Saturday Caleb, Bailey, Lizzy, Ashley, Tanner, Allye, Amara, and I hopped the train to London for the day. This was my first train ride, and it really wasn't that exciting. We got to London and immediately my adventure with the Underground began! I don't know how many tubes we got on and switched, but I felt like a cowboy wranglin' some calves, the way we were just hoppin' on and off like we owned the place. We started off at the British Museum, which is enormous. They have over 7 million items on display. We spent a couple hours, and I feel like we barely made a dent. My personal favorites were the mummies!
It was bitterly cold and drizzly, and we travelers were starving. We ducked into a Mediterranean restaurant because it was the closest place with central heating. It ended up being pretty tasty and I got some Turkish coffee that was delicious. After our meal, we walked by parliament and Big Ben. Big Ben is indeed quite big. It's... Well I'll just let Caleb and Tanner tell you:
It was tough to fight the urge to pull a Guy Fawkes, but overall I think it was wise that no attempts on the destruction of Parliament were made. Real talk though, Parliament and Ben were stunningly beautiful, as is all of the gothic style architecture in England. It never ceases to amaze me how impressive these feats were without all of the modern technology that we have today.
We joined a protest in the streets of London for a while because it was taking up the street on the way to the Underground. That was fun. They were pissed about education cuts, hence their chant, "No ifs! No Buts! No Education Cuts!" Interestingly enough, the more people I talk to, the more I get the feeling that the Brits like to hate on their government as much as American's do.
We wrapped up the day with evensong in St. Paul's Cathedral, which was by far my favorite part of the day. Stay tuned for a post in the near future for more details on Cathederals. After St. Paul, we grabbed some dinner at a bar which is actually a funny story. Here's the thing about London, and really England in general. England is small. It's roughly the size of Texas, but with the population of 50 million. That is roughly twice that of Texas. Therefor London doesn't have a whole lot of room. This has been a cultural adjustment that I've had to make, because in Abilene, Texas, there's always room. Except for a few exceptions, you can always find a seat in a restaurant. But in London, well, the space is small, and the crowd is huge. Every place we went to was packed to the brim, and it was only 7 oclock. So we find this bar that has a lot of empty tables, but they are all reserved. Dejected and hungry, our moody troupe troops out. I however ask the bouncer outside if he knows of any restaurants nearby that can hold all 8 of us. He smiles and says, "Let me see what I can do." He then preceded to go to a table and kick a couple out, telling them that we had a reservation. It was priceless. If I wasn't so hungry, I might have felt bad.
I almost forgot! We also went to Buckingham Palace. Besides sounding like an awful swear word, it is better known as the not so humble abode of the Queen. Or one of the places she calls home. Apparently she has lots of houses. And it would behoove you to know that her last name is not Buckingham, though I'm still skeptical about that. The guards were less than exciting...Yes they stood quite erect and never cracked a smile, but honestly I kind of pitied them. I'd go crazy just standing there.
Only a few days from this London adventure, our entire Oxford group went back to London. We went to the British Library, which was awesome! They had all kinds of original manuscripts such as the Canterbury Tales, ancient bible scripts, and the original Magna Carta. They also had this neat little display:
Later we went to a Candlemas service at West Minster Abby, which was again incredible. Lastly we went to a Premier League Soccer (Football) game, featuring NewCastle and Fulham. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I had a blast standing with the drunk NewCastle fans, cheering and learning all of their chants.
Before the game:
A lot has happened! I must never fall this far behind again. This weekend Amara, Caleb, Bailey, and I are going to Old York, which I'm fairly certain William Wallace sacked, though it's never wise to count on Hollywood history. In a couple of weeks, a huge group of us is taking a bus to Paris. Yes I said bus, and yes I understand that there's a body of water between the UK and France. In a month or so, we're going to Venice, Rome, and Athens for Spring Break. A couple weeks after that our Oxford is going to Ireland for a week, and a couple of weeks after that a few of us are going to Spain and Moracco for a long weekend! Whew! That's alot of traveling.
Goodness we covered a lot of ground. I work too hard for y'all. This wasn't a typical insightful or funny blog, but I just had so much to catch all of you up on! More posts soon-- I promise. Also, prepare yourself for another Stanky Leg in the very near future.
Seriously, I think that the Morgans have forgotten that we're here on vacation, not to study! Each week we've been assigned over 300 pages of reading, and we've written 10 pages of various assignments. The upside is that 200 of those pages are from Lord of the Rings, so at least the reading is worthwhile. But I've read LOTR multiple times, and I want to read some of my own stuff... oh well.
I've drank so much tea here.
Where to begin? How about London? London it is. Last Saturday Caleb, Bailey, Lizzy, Ashley, Tanner, Allye, Amara, and I hopped the train to London for the day. This was my first train ride, and it really wasn't that exciting. We got to London and immediately my adventure with the Underground began! I don't know how many tubes we got on and switched, but I felt like a cowboy wranglin' some calves, the way we were just hoppin' on and off like we owned the place. We started off at the British Museum, which is enormous. They have over 7 million items on display. We spent a couple hours, and I feel like we barely made a dent. My personal favorites were the mummies!
It was bitterly cold and drizzly, and we travelers were starving. We ducked into a Mediterranean restaurant because it was the closest place with central heating. It ended up being pretty tasty and I got some Turkish coffee that was delicious. After our meal, we walked by parliament and Big Ben. Big Ben is indeed quite big. It's... Well I'll just let Caleb and Tanner tell you:
It was tough to fight the urge to pull a Guy Fawkes, but overall I think it was wise that no attempts on the destruction of Parliament were made. Real talk though, Parliament and Ben were stunningly beautiful, as is all of the gothic style architecture in England. It never ceases to amaze me how impressive these feats were without all of the modern technology that we have today.
We joined a protest in the streets of London for a while because it was taking up the street on the way to the Underground. That was fun. They were pissed about education cuts, hence their chant, "No ifs! No Buts! No Education Cuts!" Interestingly enough, the more people I talk to, the more I get the feeling that the Brits like to hate on their government as much as American's do.
We wrapped up the day with evensong in St. Paul's Cathedral, which was by far my favorite part of the day. Stay tuned for a post in the near future for more details on Cathederals. After St. Paul, we grabbed some dinner at a bar which is actually a funny story. Here's the thing about London, and really England in general. England is small. It's roughly the size of Texas, but with the population of 50 million. That is roughly twice that of Texas. Therefor London doesn't have a whole lot of room. This has been a cultural adjustment that I've had to make, because in Abilene, Texas, there's always room. Except for a few exceptions, you can always find a seat in a restaurant. But in London, well, the space is small, and the crowd is huge. Every place we went to was packed to the brim, and it was only 7 oclock. So we find this bar that has a lot of empty tables, but they are all reserved. Dejected and hungry, our moody troupe troops out. I however ask the bouncer outside if he knows of any restaurants nearby that can hold all 8 of us. He smiles and says, "Let me see what I can do." He then preceded to go to a table and kick a couple out, telling them that we had a reservation. It was priceless. If I wasn't so hungry, I might have felt bad.
I almost forgot! We also went to Buckingham Palace. Besides sounding like an awful swear word, it is better known as the not so humble abode of the Queen. Or one of the places she calls home. Apparently she has lots of houses. And it would behoove you to know that her last name is not Buckingham, though I'm still skeptical about that. The guards were less than exciting...Yes they stood quite erect and never cracked a smile, but honestly I kind of pitied them. I'd go crazy just standing there.
Only a few days from this London adventure, our entire Oxford group went back to London. We went to the British Library, which was awesome! They had all kinds of original manuscripts such as the Canterbury Tales, ancient bible scripts, and the original Magna Carta. They also had this neat little display:
Later we went to a Candlemas service at West Minster Abby, which was again incredible. Lastly we went to a Premier League Soccer (Football) game, featuring NewCastle and Fulham. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I had a blast standing with the drunk NewCastle fans, cheering and learning all of their chants.
Before the game:
A lot has happened! I must never fall this far behind again. This weekend Amara, Caleb, Bailey, and I are going to Old York, which I'm fairly certain William Wallace sacked, though it's never wise to count on Hollywood history. In a couple of weeks, a huge group of us is taking a bus to Paris. Yes I said bus, and yes I understand that there's a body of water between the UK and France. In a month or so, we're going to Venice, Rome, and Athens for Spring Break. A couple weeks after that our Oxford is going to Ireland for a week, and a couple of weeks after that a few of us are going to Spain and Moracco for a long weekend! Whew! That's alot of traveling.
Goodness we covered a lot of ground. I work too hard for y'all. This wasn't a typical insightful or funny blog, but I just had so much to catch all of you up on! More posts soon-- I promise. Also, prepare yourself for another Stanky Leg in the very near future.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)