We have been in London for about 11 days. To be honest, managing your time is hard. I thought I would have more than enough time to go and see all of the monuments, museums, shopping malls and famous eateries I had wanted to see, but really the time flies. We have less than 10 days left and I’m realizing I had better start checking things off on my to-do list. So, if you do decide to study abroad keep in mind that you might think you’ll have time to do everything but it goes by so much faster than you’d think!
This weekend is “the long weekend” which means we have Friday, Saturday and Sunday off of classes and tours. Most of the group has decided to do a weekend trip. I am going to Paris with some people from my flat and a few students from the other group studying abroad here from Towson. Others in the group are going to Rome and Barcelona. We kind of slopped the plans together for the trip and ended up having different train times and hotel reservations. We also realized that we should have pre-booked all of the tours we wanted to see there like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame to avoid long lines. We failed at doing that, so we will be looking forward to a three hour wait in front of the Eiffel Tower in the cold on Sunday morning. But if you want to do something, then just do it!
Last weekend was a lot of fun. A couple of people from my flat and I booked a trip to the English country side with a tour group called Evan Evans tours. I really recommend booking some kind of trip to see life outside of the city. We got to see Warwick Castle, a medieval castle built in 1068, which is now owned by Madame Tussaud’s (they own the wax museum here in London). It was awesome because we had a chance to walk around the entire castle where they had installed wax characters that brought it to life. It was incredible, probably my favourite part of the trip so far.
After Warwick Castle we got to go to Stratford where Shakespeare was born and see his actual house. This was also quite a bit of fun because we got to stand in Shakespeare’s footsteps and look around the town where he grew up. The food there was also amazing. We went to a small cafe and got the most amazing scones and jams. Then we went to Oxford, where Oxford University is and got an awesome tour through the colleges there. It was an awesome experience seeing all the students coming home from break and hearing about how their studies in school are.
I really can’t recommend enough that you should go and see the country side! Also, if you are planning a trip away from London, plan as soon as you can!
Laura W.