Stonehenge/Day 2 Continued

Hello,

So after Stonehenge we took another 2 hour bus ride back into the City of London.  I actually stayed awake for this ride and I'm glad that I did. We ended up seeing all of the designer shops (Brittney Reissman would've appreciated this just as much as me) such as Burberry, Gucci, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton and of course Tiffany and Co. Sadly Jacob and I never actually walked down the street but atleast we drove by them. Maybe this weekend in Paris I'll be able to go into some designer shops.

After we got dropped off at the Victoria underground station, Jacob and I decided to take the tube to the Camden Market. We heard some good things about it but nothing could prepare me for how awesome it was. The Camden Market is a million tents set up with people selling everything from clothing to trinkets to souveniers and so many other things. They had some amazing food booths there where you can mix and match everything you want as long as you can fit it in the container and it's only 4 pounds. Most of the food was asian based therefore I couldn't convince Jacob to do that with me so we resorted to a slice of pizza for lunch. After lunch we explored some more and I'm so thankful we did because we found the best doughnut cart in the entire world.  If you think that a Krispy Kreme doughnut is a treat, you have no idea. We stood at the stand for probably 15 minutes trying to pick which doughnut we wanted. I chose a Black Forest with cherry filling doughnut which had chocolate chunks on top (my Dad's favorite cake is Black Forest so I chose it because it reminded me of him and it was the perfect choice) and Jacob chose a vanilla creme filled doughnut with a caramel glaze. Both were amazing and probably the size of 2 fists. They were 1.50 each which we thought was completely worth it. Anyways, the Camden Market is somewhere where I could spend days upon days at and never get bored. The people walking around were very eccentric and at times it was congested but it was totally worth the experience.

That night Jacob and I decided to celebrate Valentine's day since actual Valentine's day was going to be spent riding the bus back to Scotland. We chose a restaurant in Covent Garden called Paradiso Inferno and was mainly Italian food. The interior was similar to Victoria's in Appleton or Green Bay and they had fabulous service. We ordered some bruschetta as our appetizer and Jacob tried red wine for the first time. (We're legal here). Let's just say that he isn't a fan of wine at all, he took one sip and never touched it again. I ordered ravioli and Jacob ordered chicken which has this butter garlic sauce on the inside. Both of our meals were delicious and 45 pounds later we were ready to leave.

That was basically our conclusion to day 2. The next morning was going to be an early one!

I will write about day 3 either tonight or tomorrow.

Jacob and I are leaving for Paris saturday morning and we couldn't be more excited! :)

Love,

Hayley and Jacob

Stonehenge

Hello,

The next day we took a day trip to STONEHENGE! It was completely amazing to see something so structurally sound.  We took a bus there which was about a 2 hour trip. We weren't allowed to walk up to Stonehenge like people used to be able to but we still got to see it and I remember learning about it in history class. I feel as if my history teachers would be pretty proud of me! I guess there's not much to say about Stonehenge except for it was gorgeous.

Well I got interupted by Skype so I will continue this tomorrow.

Goodnight,

Hayley and Jacob

Lion King

Oops, I forgot to mention that the first night we went to the Lion King on London's "broadway". It was an amazing show and in my opinion very similar to the one shown in New York City. Jacob even enjoyed it to my surprise and maybe that had to do with us having very good seats. We were on the ground level so we felt very involved in the story since the actors walk around and sing on the ground level as well as the stage. Needless to say the show was amazing.

We're Back From London....

Hey Everyone!
We finally made it back and I have a lot of things to share. We will see if I can remember everything but I guess I will just start from the beginning.

We left on February 10th at approximately 10:15 p.m. to start our 7-8 hour coach bus journey down to London, England. Started off pretty tired but with the help of snacks provided by the house we stayed awake a little longer. We were offered soda on the bus, I chose Dr. Pepper and Jacob chose Fanta. Halfway through the bus ride Jacob took his shoes off so he would be more comfortable while attempting to sleep. We finally arrived at a rest stop and Jacob realized his feet were soaking wet along with his shoes. We were both complaining about who's soda was spilled all over the floor, etc. We assumed that it couldn't have been ours since we didn't want to drink them because of the caffeine. We looked around and sure enough, Jacob's orange soda which was sitting in between us somehow got a hole in it and was leaking all over the floor and Jacob's feet/shoes. I guess it was our own fault and he finally got his shoes to dry provided the hand dryer at the rest stop. We finally made it to London around 8 a.m. and pulled up to what seemed to be a great hotel. To my sadness we weren't staying at the gorgeous President's Hotel on the left hand side of the street, we were staying in the complete dump called the Smart Russell Square Hostel on the right hand side of the street.

(Now, I could go on and on about the hostel and how much I hated it, how gross it was, the terrible beds, the bloody sheets, the crusty pillows, the showers that shut off if you took your hand of the knob.....and so on and so on, but I figured I would spare you the complaining. So minus the terrible hostel experience the entire trip, everything else was great. And I'm now glad that Jacob and I booked hotels instead of hostels for our springbreak and Paris trips.)

We learned how to ride the Tube (London's Subway system) that morning and I didn't realize how easy it would be to use. We each received a card called the Oyster Card which has 20 pounds worth of money on it. Each Tube ride costs 1.90 pounds so we had enough money to use for the weekend. The maps to use the Tube are so simplistic and it would be hard to end up not catching the right tube. I will admit that I was a little scared to ride them since they are so far underground, most needing to take an elevator up when you arrive at your destination. I was worried about terrorist threats and I know that may sounds stupid but there's so many people and no security whatsoever. Anyone could bring anything down there and not a soul would know. But to my relief nothing happened and after a while I didn't even think of things such as that.

That first morning we were there we left the hostel and went on a free tour through the NewEurope Tour Company. They work on a tip-based pay so at the end of the tour we were supposed to tip the tour guide whatever we thought the tour was worth. Our tour guides name was Ben and he was from Canada, so definitely relatable. He was great and took us to every main tourist site around London such as Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Changing of the Guards, Wellington Arch, and Big Ben of course. I was pretty impressed with the tour and we got to see everything that would've been on my list if I would've had one. At the end of the tour Ben took us all to this pub where they would give us a discount for being on the tour. We decided that we would eat lunch there and was that a bad decision. Everyone at our table (6 of us) hated our meals, the service was terrible such as no one got their drinks until after they received their meal, and we would ask for refills and they would never refill them. So we were pretty bummed out about that so Jacob and I went in search of somewhere that would satisfy us. We came across a pastry shop in Leicester Square called Patisserie Valerie, which must be a chain because we found more than one, and decided to get some dessert. Jacob got a cinnamon roll and I got some mandarin gelato both of which we enjoyed very much. 

I'm pretty sure that that consisted of our first day there. I will probably write some more tonight about our second day but we will see. If not then you'll just have to wait until tomorrow!

The Wellington Arch

Jacob and I at Buckingham Palace. Some people watched the Queen leave the Palace, sadly we missed it.

Jacob and I with a guard. They didn't seem very happy. They looked as if they were in their 20's.

Trafalgar Square.....amazing

Something significant.....hahahaha

Westminster Abbey where Prince William and Kate Middleton are getting married on April 29th. Also where Princess Diana's funeral was held.

Parliament

And of course Big Ben

And again

Below is a picture of where we went the next day. Can anyone guess?

Love,

Hayley and Jacob

I've Never Been So Happy To See The Sun

Hello,

Today the sun has been out all day and it's been a completely gorgeous day out. Jacob and I took a couple walks today including a walk to the atm (sigh) . We leave for London, England tonight around 10:00 pm. The London trip was planned through the house and we will be getting back late on Monday night. It should be a good time and we aren't bringing our computers so there will be no updates until we get back. Just wanted to inform what's going on with our weekend and hopefully you guys are all bundled up in Wisconsin, I hear the weather is ridiculous!

Love,
Hayley and Jacob

For Dad

2 more days

Two more days until the trip to London! :) Yeah. I guess some people are asking for a little bit of background so I guess I'll fill some people in.

Jacob Peebles is my boyfriend of 3 years. We are studying abroad here together in Scotland and we are having a great time. He isn't some random boy I met three months ago and decided to study abroad with :)

The program here is not the "typical" study abroad program. The program is called Wisconsin in Scotland and has been in session since 1986. Basically Wisconsin/Minnesota students come to this program where they bring in Wisconsin professors to teach us classes. So all of the students here are from Wisconsin or Minnesota, and so are the professors except for our Scottish history classes we have a Scottish professor. We live in this huge mansion called the Palace, and our professors, cooks, etc live here as well. It is kind of nice because we get to know our teachers on a level outside of the classroom. They eat meals with us and go on trips with us. One of our professors has her younger daughter here with her and our other professor has his wife here with him so it's like one big family.

We do recieve host families but we do not live with them. The purpose of the host family is to get to know the Scottish culture and be introduced to new things and ways of life. I am going to my host families home tomorrow for a homemade meal which I cannot wait for. They will spend days with us and show us around and basically be our Scotland parents. My parents names are Rachel and Michael Wilson. One of their sons actually married one of their host daughters from a previous year. They are both retired and have been host parents for our program for a very long time.

Also we only have class Mon-Thurs. This leaves ample time for traveling around Europe and within the UK. We leave for London (with the house) on Thurs., we leave for Paris (Jacob and I) next week, then for spring break we are going to Rome, Pisa, and Florence Italy, and we are hoping to squeeze in an Ireland trip and possibly Switzerland (just Jacob and I). We will see if we can accomplish the last two. We also have a trip to the Highlands planned at the end of April with the house so that will be fun.

Hopefully that clarifies some things.

Love and Miss you All,
Time to start reading my Jazz book,

Hayley and Jacob