Day 27

On Sunday I went to Cardiff by myself and the city was definitely and interesting place. I took a train 2 hours and 15 minutes from Paddington Station to Cardiff Central with a list of places to go and how to get to each one of them. It was a pretty small station considering that Cardiff is the capital of Wales. The sky was gray and the town just looked very run down and dirty. Some man asked me for money about 20 yards outside the station. In order to get to Caerphilly Castle, my primary reason for going to Cardiff, I had to take a bus about 40 minutes north. The land was very hilly and green and the buildings and houses were all a red brick and seemed very old. When I got to the castle, it was set upon a hill with a moat going around it. I paid for my ticket and, surprisingly, the man who administered my ticket knew that University of Richmond was in Virginia. The castle was interesting because it was built in 1280 and was used as a fortress against the Romans. I could go into all the small rooms that had been restored and climb to the top of the tower and see out over the land. I made it through the castle in about 30 minutes because it all pretty much looked the same. However, I am glad that I went because it was interesting to see the ruins of the castle. I then made my way back to Cardiff on the bus. I first wanted to go to the Riverside Market that I had read about online. I walk down and found that street that the market was supposedly on, but it turned out to be an alleyway in what seemed like a bad part of the city. So, I turned around and started making my way back to the next site I had on my list of places to go. It was a cheese shop that had received great reviews. I walked down the main street with all the shops and could not seem to find it, so I continued walking down the street until I arrived at Cardiff Castle. The shops were mostly chains from London and the Welsh flag lined the street lamps. Another interesting thing about Wales is that all the signs are written in both Welsh and English. I had not realized how prevalent the Welsh language still is, especially considering Prince Charles has been the only Prince of Wales to learn the language. I found Cardiff Castle and went on a tour of it. It was similar to Caerphilly in that it was mainly the ruins of a fortress, but this one was to protect against the Normans. The Lord of Brutes had owned both castles. At Cardiff Castle, there was also a section of the building to go inside the Lord of Brutes’ home that visitors were allowed to enter. There was an Arabic room that was intended to be a bedroom and had been described as a visitor as “sleeping in heaven”. There was a fireplace and the angels that came from the ceiling and everything was decorated in gold. Following this, I went to a Welsh giftshop. A popular momentum in Wales is a love spoon. They are spoons usually made out of wood that have intricate designs on the handles and a heart at the end. Since the shop closed at 4pm, I had to leave and I ended up finding the shop that I couldn’t find earlier. However, the café was closed, so I went to Bella Italia for dinner, which is a chain in London. After that, I walked around for a little bit along the main avenue and the shopping area a street over. The stores all closed at 5pm, so I was not able to go inside any of the stores other than food stores. I went back to the train station and waited until my train back to London arrived. Although the city wasn’t that nice and there weren’t too many things to see, I am happy that I went and traveled by myself to a different country and mapped out everything that I was going to do. Overall the trip in itself was a great experience.

Pictures

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Day 19

This past week at my internship I felt like I was able to start working on more substantial tasks. On Wednesday, I spent nearly my entire time in the office working on powerpoints and updating information about market coverage on popular countries where my company partners with a bank. Every day I have meetings set up to meet different people and what role they have in the company. It is interesting to see the various sides to a general category of marketing. On Thursday evening we went to a restaurant called Cubana. We had been trying to make reservations for nearly two weeks, but they are also so busy. It was my first time having Cuban food and I order empanada de vegetables and falafel de cubana, which is a sweet potato base with a crunchy outside, very similar to a crabcake texture. We also had mojitos that were different flavors-- I had a grapefruit and a passion fruit. On Friday we had an English Breakfast from a restaurant called The Breakfast Club. I liked everything in my vegetarian breakfast, which consisted of scrambled eggs, mushroom, tomato, toast, and beans. We then went to Westminster Abbey and it was gorgeous. The ceilings were all adorned so intricately and it was interesting to learn more about the past royalty and see their extravagant tombs. The abbey was a lot bigger than I originally expected. At night we went to a club called Strawberry Moons. It was a lot of fun and they played a lot of fun music like Britney, Grease, and Christina Aguilara. There were a lot of people who were all very sociable and there with big groups of friends.

Today, Saturday, we had a very sports-filled day. First, we took the tube about an hour out to Wimbledon. We first looked at the museum and saw the evolution of tennis and tennis outfits signed by the tennis players who wore them. There was also a display of the trophies that are awarded to the winners of each event. It was pretty interesting to see everything and learned that George VI is the only member of the royal family to compete in Wimbledon. We then went on a guided tour of the courts, which was a great experience even for someone not interested in tennis. There are 19 courts total for Wimbledon and they are used only for the tournament and members of the club. There are exactly 375 members of the club and they partake in planning the Wimbledon tournament each year. We saw Court 19 where the longest game in history took place. It was over 11 hours and lasted 3 days. Islan was ultimately the winner. We also went to the Millennium Building where the players have their restaurant and balcony over the courts. From there, we walked through the tunnel that the players walk through to get to Centre Court where the championship game is played. The court has a retractable roof that cost 60 million pounds to build. The royal family also has their own wooden box where they sit, the Queen attended last year and the time she attended before that was in 1977 when the last Brit won. Beneath the seats, the walls are lined with the winners of each Wimbledon singles for men and women. The youngest person to win was J. Becker at the age of 17 years and 2 months. The player with the most wins is Pete Sampras with 7 wins out of the 8 he attended. In 2012, the tennis component for the Olympics will be played at Wimbledon just 20 days after the tournament. The committee first needed to prove that they could refurbish the grass and did so in just 2 weeks.
We left Wimbledon and went straight to Piccadilly Circus to go to a bar called Sports Cafe that we heard was a lot of fun. It was the UEFA Championship with Manchester United vs. FC Barcelona. We had to wait over an hour to get into the bar and we were let in just as they started role call. It was amazing to see how many people were there just standing to watch the game. All the bars in London had lines outside of them. Everyone was chanting the Manchester United fight song with the lyrics "Glory, glory Man. United" or Barcelona's fight song. Even though Barcelona ended up winning, it was exciting to be involved with the football culture during a major game. To Europe, football is like their Super Bowl. Unless you made reservations beforehand, you had to stand to watch the game. Afterwards we went to get dinner and then headed home. As we walked towards Piccadilly Circus, the Barcelona fans had climbed to the top of the statue in the center of the circus and chanted their fight song. Everyone was crowded around and cheering, and it was just incredible to see how emotionally attached football fans are to their team.

Day 12

Today was a very relaxing day. I looked through my travel book that I bought at the National Gallery on Saturday and saw a picture of the most amazing Italian food. I decided to go there since I didn't have any other plans. After walking what seemed like forever, I finally found it. I had been expecting some little unknown spot but it was far from that. There was a long glass counter of desserts, pizza, pasta, and salad. Everything looked so delicious. I decided on the margarita pizza and primavera side salad. It was so crowded that it was difficult to find a spot to sit. The vegetables in the salad were very fresh and the pizza was definitely one of the best I have tasted. The bread was delicious. After my meal, I walked back to Leister Square and stopped to get tiramasu ice cream on my way. Throughout the day I felt as if I didn't have anything to do other than read my travel book since I didn't want to waste my internet. I went for a walk in Hyde Park for a while. It was so much bigger than I imagined. I tried to find Kensington Palace, but there were so many pathways and when I though I had gotten close, it turned out that I was only about half way. I walked around the half of the lake that I had come to and saw the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. It was such a pretty day out and the water glistened under the bright blue sky. I ended up going back to my apartment for dinner. After dinner, I went on a walk with one of my roommates to Hyde Park again. We discovered a rose garden that had a variety of flowers in bloom and tunnels made out of vines and flowers. It blows my mind how big the park is and what an escape it is from the constant noise of the city. And no matter where I go in the park, I end up seeing something I hadn't seen before because it is just so massive.

Day 11

Saturday evening, while two of the girls were at Wales, another flat mate and I decided that we wanted to go to a club. We originally decided to go to one called East Village that we read about in Time Out, an online guide to various cities. However, a French guy started talking to us about all the posters that lined the escalators. It turned out that when we got out of the tube station, they guy and his 3 friends were there and they started asking us where we were going. They told us to go with them to the club XOYO because they heard it was a ton of fun. We ended up going there and spending the entire night with them. They bought us red bull and vodka and kept offering cigarettes, which they say is the worst habit of French people. The club had a basement level with live jazz music initially and then later a DJ, a ground floor with a bar, and a rooftop for smoking. It was sometimes very difficult to understand what the French guys were saying, but they were all a lot of fun. We ended up leaving at 3am and then befriended someone else on the bus home. He heard us say that we were from New York and started asking us questions about that and how we ended up living on Edgware. We told him how awful it was at night on that street and he agreed. It was definitely an adventurous night.

Day 10

To see the opening ceremony of the keys at the Tower of London, we had to arrive there at 8:45am on Friday morning. We all were sprinting there because we had the vouchers for the other three girls in our class that are from Utah. The girls from Utah seem nice, but they are very interested in what the professor says about archeology and laugh at all his odd jokes—which makes us seem uninvolved. At night, we went to a bar and restaurant on Edgware called Weatherspoon and got ciders, which were very delicious—Pear Cider and Summer Fruits Cider.

Day 9

On Thursday, it was nice being able to sleep in, since our class didn’t start until 1pm. For class each week we have to write a journal entry on a topic he assigns to us. For this week it was to write about a shopping experience and compare it to the US. I did mine about shopping at Tesco. In class he told us some history about London and its relations with Scotland and Wales. That lasted about 2 hours and then we went on a tour of the Museum of London. Most of the Museum of London is about the archeology and what they found about the Romans that had lived there. There were replications of the rooms that the upper class and lower class lived in and the heating system was developed by the Romans. There was also an exhibit about the Medieval Ages in London. It was ironic that the Romans’ homes were much more advanced in terms of number of rooms and heating compared to the medieval homes’ one room. After our class ended, we grabbed some food from EAT, a popular chain in London, and then went back to our apartment to get ready. A girl in our flat works at a PR firm and they were having a premier party for the release of the DVD Love and Other Drugs. It was a short walk from our apartment and it was held in the basement of an old theater. There were endless glasses of champagne, nail appointments, and chocolate truffles. We then watched the movie, which I thought was cute. It was exciting being able to go to a DVD premier.