Christmas vacation 2011-2012 Part 1: England

(Disclaimer. This post is very long and it's been taking me a while to write, so I have divided it into two parts. This is Part 1)

My two week Christmas vacation was filled with both ups and downs, but ultimately, it was a great adventure.

Since it was about two weeks long, I'll try to just give highlights.

12/26
To start it off, Robby and I flew out of Málaga on Monday morning, the day after Christmas. It was a very comfortable flight and we landed in London Luton airport at around 9pm. Going through immigration took forever since they only had one person checking all of the non-EU or UK passports and since it's England, they drill you with many questions each. On our flight, the guy next to us informed us of the strike that was currently going on in England. Since it was Boxing Day, all of the train drivers were going on strike since they did not get their requested triple pay and extra holiday. This of course affected us since the majority of people going to Luton, usually take the train into the city. But today, everyone was forced to take the bus. Which leads us to the next line. The bus queue. They told us it would probably be about an hour and a half, but luckily they were quick with bringing the busses around so it probably only took an hour.  Unfortunately, we only had directions to our hostel by way of the tube, so we took this bus all the way to the central bus station to figure out how to get to our hostel. We hopped on the night bus and took it all the way to the end of its line and finally got to our hostel after 2am.

12/27
We had to sleep in the next day, but we also didn't want to waste our first day in London. So we got up fairly early and took the bus into the city to start our vacation. We walked along oxford circus down to Trafalgar square. There were tons of people on the streets since it was still so close to Boxing day, all the stores had their big sales.  We saw Big Ben and the London Eye and then I went into Westminster Abbey and a guided tour took me along the huge church. It was really quite fascinating. My favorite part was probably the "poet's corner" where they have a statue to Shakespeare and a lot of writers and musicians are buried.  Another great part was at the end of the tour where they have buried an Unknown Warrior, whose body was brought back from France. His grave reads as follows:

 BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK
BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND
AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY
11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V
HIS MINISTERS OF STATE
THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES
AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION
THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914-1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE

Then after getting some coffee, Robby and I went back into Westminster Abbey to partake in the Evensong service. The choir sounded magnificent and the service was lovely. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Tonight Robby and I made dinner in our hostel's kitchen. While we were there, our roommate in our dorm room came in to cook also. He's from Barcelona, so we were all speaking Spanish together along with a couple other people.  Robby and I sat down at one of the tables to eat our meal and one of the other people asked if he could join us since all of the other tables were taken. We got to talking and we come to find out that he isn't actually from Spain as we had assumed since he was speaking Spanish. He's actually Italian. And he actually made the exact same assumption about us. He thought we were Spanish since we were speaking in Spanish. But it was really cool to have that common language even though it wasn't any of our first language.

12/28

Today we did more touristy things of course. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral, we walked down the Thames river past Shakespeare's Globe and the National Theatre where we saw some fun street performers in that area. Then we checked out the Camden market where there were a lot of cute little stalls.

But the highlight from today comes in the evening. During the day, Robby and I "shopped around" for day-of tickets to see Wicked. We got some cheap tickets even though they were crazy high up and far away. The cast was amazing. Although I had already seen it, it was great to see it a second time. I caught a lot more of the foreshadowing and the characterizations. I also was able to focus on more of the background activity such as the outstanding choreography. Coming back from Wicked, I just had this craving to start choreographing a musical or something again.



12/29
Today we got up early to catch our train to Bath. Bath is a small city outside of London situated on an old Roman bath that draws water from the local hot spring. Robby and I walked around the city, saw some of the architectural sights and then went to the Roman Baths. It was cool to be walking around in such an old and historically important place.




12/30
Today's highlight: Stonehenge. This morning we got up early and took a short train from Bath to Salisbury. Once in Salisbury, we got on a bus tour that took us around Salisbury (although this was very small), through the countryside to Stonehenge and then on the way back, stopped at Old Sarum.  Stonehenge was very impressive. Although you couldn't really get near the stones, there was a really cool audio tour that talked about the different stones, the different stages of Stonehenge and the different mysteries surrounding the structure. What really impressed me was that the stones were alligned so that you could tell the month  depending on between which slit of rocks the sun rose and set, going between the winter and summer solstice.
On the way back from Stonehenge, we stopped at Old Sarum which was the old castle fort of William the Conqueror that existed before the city of Salisbury. There wasn't much left of it since the rocks of the castle were recycled to build the city, but it was still an interesting old site.
The last big stop of the day was visiting the Salisbury Cathedral. The Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest church spire in all of England. So tall, that the supporting beams buckled a little bit and the spire is now crooked. It's not very noticeable, but still a cool fact.









England has been incredible and it really is nice to be in an English speaking country again.  This was our last day in England. In the next post I'll recount our journeys through Ireland and Scotland.