I Want to Hold Your Hand

Well then. Today was a pretty long day for me. I went for a long walk and I bet you can guess where I went by the title of my post. That's right, Abbey Road! But I also went to Regent's Park which happened to be on the way. Both places were fantastic.

OK, well I woke up pretty late today (10) simply because I could and also because I had not slept that great or for that long for a few nights in a row. It felt realllly good to sleep in. It's always nice to wake up to the sun shining (which I did). So I saw the sun shining which made me think that I had to do something outside today. That lead me to the idea of walking out to Abbey Road. It's on my "list of things that I HAVE to do in London before I leave". So I got showered, ate breakfast (mmm, nutella) and made some PBJ sandwiches for the road. Mom you'll like this, I saw the sun shining and it was pretty warm in our room so I decided to throw on some shorts. Yes, shorts! I was the only person in probably all of London to wear them today but, by gosh, I wore them and it felt great. So there.

My plan was to walk to a neighborhood I have yet to explore, Marylebone (pronounced Marra-le-bun), and a park I have yet to explore, Regent's Park, on my way to my final destination, Abbey Road. My journey took me through Hyde Park and by Marble Arch until I arrived in the neighborhood. Marylebone, like most neighborhoods, used to be a medieval village separated from London, but is now part of the city. It has the highest concentration of real Georgian housing. It also has Regent's Park and the area around it which was designed by John Nash (no relation to Steve as far as I know). You might remember Mr. Nash from when I went to Brighton. He designed the Royal Pavilion (Taj Mahal looking thing) so you know he has something spectacular going on. My first stop off was the only church ever designed by John Nash called All Souls (picture 1). It has a pretty peculiar design (what with the circular thing protruding from the nave) but a very pretty interior. Right next to it is the Broadcasting House which is where radio and tv stations broadcasted from for over 50 years. I walked up Portland Place to Park Crescent. This is one of the grand things Nash had in mind. Two sets of columned, classical facades form to make a giant semi-circle (one half of it picture 2). It was very cool and looked nice with the clouds and blue sky (just like everything does). I walked from there down Harley Street. Harley Street for over 150 years has been the place to have a medical office. It has rows and rows of Georgian houses with their really cool arched entryways (picture 3). It was a really quiet street considering it's in central London. Something to do with doctor's offices I suppose.

I moved on and walked over to Madame Tussard's Wax Museum and Planetarium. £25 for a ticket? Um, no thanks, I'll pass. Madame Tussard was a woman who made wax sculptures of people in the 1800s. Her trade grew to include celebrities. Now, her museum has every single celebrity you could probably think of. Sports, movies, politics, tv, you name it. Not really my cup of tea though. I did take a picture of the outside though (picture 4). Next up was Regent's Park. This whole park was designed by Nash to be like a country estate in the middle of the city. He even included terraced villas! He envisioned having 56 villas and a big palace for George IV (the guy who had the Royal Pavilion built) around the park. Only 8 villas ended up being constructed and no palace. There is a boating lake and an Open Air Theatre where Shakespeare plays are performed in the summer. The crown jewel is Queen Mary's Gardens. They are little pockets of natural looking areas along with flower beds in the center of the park. I (as usual) was too early for all the flowers to be in bloom but it was still nice. But there were still some flowers blooming which were beautiful (picture 5). The tulips in the summer are supposed to be other-worldly. I walked around the Gardens in the natural area for a little bit. There was a spot that seemed kind of off to the side so I walked in and found two people making out quite profusely. Oops! I quickly and quietly made my exit from the area. After that, I went over to the boating lake. My stomach was grumbling so I stopped and ate lunch at yet another postcard worthy lunch spot (picture 6). It felt really to good to sit down and rest for a little bit. I had been walking for a good while. After the nice rest, I walked by the London Central Mosque. A prayer service had just gotten over so I didn't feel all that good about walking in and being touristy.

On the way to my final destination, I stopped by the Lord's Cricket Grounds. I don't know anything about cricket and Phil suggested to us all a while ago about going there and having a tour or seeing a match. I didn't fell like going on a tour so I walked around the outside of it and then made my way around to Abbey Road. It's located in a suburb called St. John's Wood. I liked this area a lot. It really did feel like a suburb (the kind of suburb with nice looking smallish apartment buildings, not big houses with front yards). Abbey Road is just that, a road and a fairly busy one too. I walked to Abbey Road Studios and was surprised at how, I don't know, normal it looked from the outside (picture 7). That ceased when I saw the wall and gate in front of it. All over the wall was writings by people who have visited. I read through quite a few of them and they were all really cool (picture 8). Seeing how people worked in a Beatles reference was fun. The most touching part was all the messages to people back home. It really made me miss everyone so I wrote my own message (picture 9, the blue hand). Make sure you click on the picture to blow it up so you can read what it says. I thought it was kind of clever... I didn't get my picture taken on the pedestrian crossing (picture 10). There was no one around for it and I would have felt completely awkward and lonely doing it alone. It was still nice though. The part that I hope I keep with me about Abbey Road is how the feeling of love for the Beatles but more importantly for all the people who missed people back home was in the air around it.

I walked from Abbey Road, along the Regent's Canal which you might remember from another entry, to Camden Town which I discussed in that same entry. There is a labyrinth of little shops which I perused (I still need a wallet) but ended up not buying anything. No surprise there. I walked from there down the road (picture 11) to Euston Station to catch a bus back. Along the way, I stopped in a couple other shops like "The £1 Store" and Woolworth's (like Target but a smaller selection and without clothes). The bus ride felt really good because I was tired. I came back to the flat and found out that Garrett couldn't get into the Nutrition class. Bummer. So I changed my plans. I was only going to take Nutrition because he was. I changed into a (what looks to be) super easy physics course. My new schedule looks like this:

1-3-5 9:40 Astronomy 212, SJU
2:40 Education 359 (only C Mod), CSB
2-4-6 9:40 Physics 105, SJU
1:00 Math 331, SJU
3:00 Physics 105 Lab, SJU (Day 2 only)
Monday 9:30 am Astronomy 212 Lab, SJU
Tuesday 6:30 pm Education 390, CSB

It's nice only having one full class at CSB (less buses) and now Garrett and I have basically the same type of schedule. I talked to him on Skype which is how I know this. He updated me on all the adventures back at SJU which was nice. Then I made dinner (it was 8:30 at this point) and that was about it for my night. One really important thing before I go. I did an entry for last Saturday which you should all look at here or just scroll down a while. More updates about Spain tomorrow I hope. Um, I guess that's all for now.

Same Bat Time. Same Bat Channel.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

At least, that's what I've heard about the weather back in MN. Someone here told me that it was -45 degrees with wind chill at SJU. Holy crap!! It was like +45 and sunny today but a little windy here in the UK. Some people walking around had like parkas on and stuff. I thought it was kind of funny. I thought of that title because I was thinking of everyone back home but also because I am listening to Rat Pack Christmas as I'm writing this. Haha, what can I say? I like the cd.

The frequent reader of this blog will notice something different about this post from the last few. Could it be the imporved humor? Maybe I changed the format? No and No. I included pictures again!!! YAHOOOOO!!!! Vanessa downloaded her pictures to a computer so I am able to include pictures for this post. I am also going to retroactively add pictures to previous posts so it would be really worth your time to check those out, if only to see my beautiful face in front of stonehenge. All it takes is a little scroll down on this page. Picture 1 of this post is the inside of Our Lady of Victories, the church that Rachelle and I go to every Sunday. I just thought I'd throw it in there for everyone to see. No kids were there when we took the picture so it had a, um, slightly different atmosphere.

I had Senior Sem again today. We spent the whole class reading through the play, "Murder in the Cathedral" by T.S. Eliot. We were continuing it from Monday. I guess I liked the play. I realize that we kind of sprinted through it but it went by really fast. I don't have much to say about the play. Poetry was used in it at times. There were a lot of allusions and stuff that Phil explained. Again, the reason we read this is because we are going to Canterbury Cathedral on Saturday which is where Sir Thomas à Becket was killed. We are also going to Dover (castle and white cliffs included). At Dover, we are getting a tour of the Wartime Tunnels where people hid during war and stuff apparently. We are leaving at 7:30 am which means some people will be late, as usual.

After class, I looked online researching places to go feb 7-10 because it is our first open weekend. I just looked at Ryanair flights that work for when I want to leave and return and are cheap (£10 or less one way). Then I looked up info for those destinations. After doing that for a while and feeling guilty about sitting inside when the sun is shining outside, I got Vanessa and we went for another walk. This time we went to Regent's Canal (picture 1). It's a canal built in 1820 to connect another canal with a port on the other side of London. John Nash (who designed the canal and Regent's Park) wanted it to go through the park but was persuaded not to. Good thing because there have been numerous instances where barges have blown up on the canal (carrying gunpowder). Vanessa and I took the Tube over there and the first half of the walk was just along the canal on the tow-way. This is just a path where a steam engine or donkey or whatever would pull the boats along when the canal was operational. Now its a nice path for a nice day. The canal is now used by little barge type house things. Apparently people live in those things sometimes. There are kitchens and stuff inside them. In the spring, they are covered by potted plants. You can take a canal bus ride for £6 on Sundays.

So we walked along the canal for a while. We walked by a cafe that has a great view down the canal (picture 2). We are going to go back there when they open up the doors over the canal and its warmer. There are 4 or 5 big mansions (picture 3) along the canal on the way to Regent's Park. They are spectacular. We then walked off the canal to Primrose Hill. The Hill was steeper than I thought but it offered amazing views of London. We could see the London Eye and Canary Wharf among others. Picture 4 has the view with Vanessa in the foreground. I loved the clouds and the blue sky in picture 5. On a side note, I don't notice a ton of smog here, a greener city I guess. Then we walked through some side streets. One house we passed by was formerly occupied by W.B. Yeats, the famous Irish poet. We eventually got to Camden Market. Its an enormous outdoor/indoor market with little alleys (picture 6) and people selling mostly clothes but sometimes jewelry or hats or whatever. There were some Chinese stands that were trying to get us to buy some food. One lady called us over and sort of whispered, "It say £3 for meal but I sell to you for £2.50" and winked. Haha. Good times. We, of course, politely declined. I liked the market a lot and Vanessa and I agreed that we would come back some other time (i.e. more money) and buy some souvenirs or whatever. We took the Tube back to our flat.

I read from "Atilla" and had some more pasta for dinner (sausage tortellini with tomato sauce, £1.75, oh yes). That's about it for my day. I was going to go hike along the English Channel coast tomorrow but there's supposed to be 35+ mph winds and rain so I think that that is out (it will happen eventually, don't worry) which sucks. I really wanted to do that. Oh well. I will think of something else to do.

Take Care!