Tips for Passing Time and Making/Saving Money During Spring Break (Read At Your Own Risk!)

I have been on Reading Week/Easter vacation for the last three weeks. That time was partially spent on a literary trip with my twin where we were "carpetbagging" across the English countryside, staying in a different hostel every night, catching buses and trains every couple of hours. Consequently, we had a lot of free time on our hands waiting for certain forms of transportation, during which I brainstormed the following video idea for my blog. Forgive the poor quality of the videos; they were taken on my digital camera and I couldn't figure out how to upload them straight. Just cock your head sideways or something. Furthermore, I advise you to pay close attention to the disclaimer. This being said:

Tips for Passing Time and Making/Saving Money When Carpetbagging
CAUTION: Reading the content of this post has been known to destroy brain cells.

"PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narra-tive will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
-The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Tip #1: Stealing hubcaps



Tip #2: Stealing hubcaps that aren't already in motion

(Don't laugh, that got us 50 pence!)

Tip #3: Enjoying nature



Tip #4: Participating in local festivities
(This one took place in the village of Lacock, where the kids of the town were on a Scarecrow scavenger hunt, running 'round town looking for different scarecrows to identify. I made special friends with The King)


I don't think I have a shot at a career in movie directing, do you? Ah, well. I warned you that this post was pointless and stupid, but it was a good way to alleviate the boredom while we were waiting for the bus. I promise, the next couple of posts will...actually make sense.

Stops in the Road

Here are our intended destinations for the literary trip that will begin in less than two hours. When Jenn and I put our heads together to plan a strategy for spring break, we decided we'd rather stay in England to see these places than to travel to another country. All of these cities and places have literary merit of some sort, specifically associated with my favorite authors and settings from favorite books.

1) Chawton: Jane Austen's House Museum. 'Nuff said. I know, I've already been there, but Jenn hasn't and it's a sight that no true Austen fan should miss. Plus, I've been dying to go back and read Pride and Prejudice in the garden.

2) Winchester: Winchester Cathedral. The gravesite/memorial for Jane Austen. It's not quite as cool as her house, but it's only a fifteen minute bus ride away, so it's worth the journey. It'll be one of the shorter stops on the trip.

3) Bath: Jane Austen Centre, plus all sorts of other attractions. Are you starting to notice a pattern here?

4) Lacock: a cute little village located near Bath which was used for scenes in the film versions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Also, I've found out that it was J.K. Rowling's inspiration for Godric's Hollow in the Harry Potter series.

5) Oxford: The house of J.R.R. Tolkien and The Eagle and the Child Pub. The former is self-explanatory; who wouldn't want to visit the house of such an awesome writer? It's one of my favorite series. The second attraction is the place where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to meet with their literary group, the Inklings. It was rumored that they would read their manuscripts aloud in the pub, but I've found evidence to disprove this. Either way, it's still awesome. Also, if we have the time, we'll go exploring around Oxford College. Besides being incredible, it was also used to film many of the scenes at Hogwarts in Harry Potter, including the Great Hall and the entrance hall.

6) Bakewell: Chatsworth House. One of the most beautiful estates in England and also used as Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice.

7) Manchester: the hometown of Elizabeth Gaskell, author of North and South. Another one of my favorite books, adapted into one of my favorite movies.

8) Haworth: The Bronte Parsonage Museum. The childhood home of the Bronte sisters, turned into an attraction for all lovers of their books. I'm hoping this will be somewhat like the Jane Austen House Museum. This is also the last stop on our trip before heading home.

So there you have it: eight different cities, eight different attractions. But did I mention that we'll be seeing all of these in four days? What a marathon!

The Most Famous Address in the World

Today was the first stop on our literary spring break trip. I will explain more about this later--preferably at a more reasonable hour--but suffice it to say, Jenn and I are acting like complete dorks during spring break by visiting all of the literary sites around England that we've always wanted to see.

We went to London. Untold possibilities open when you step onto the train...oh, sod it. Sorry, but it's too late for me to try to write anything remotely poetic about my trip today. You'll just have to be satisfied with blunt facts.

Our list of stops may seem random on first glance, and they probably are: The Australia House, a red telephone booth near Scotland Yard, Charing Cross Road, King's Cross, and 221b Baker Street. However, they all have some literary merit or were used in a film adaptation of a beloved book. Most of them have roots from the Harry Potter series: Australia House was used to film Gringotts, Charing Cross road was Diagon Alley, the telephone booth was seen in the fifth movie, and of course Platform 9 3/4 is at King's Cross Station. Though most of our stops were Harry Potter-related, the majority of the day was monopolized by a different literary character.

Sherlock Holmes. The consulting detective. According to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, this fictional character lived at 221b Baker Street with his trusted associate, Dr. Watson. Not only has this address become one of the most famous in the world, but devoted fans have turned it into a museum of the fictional work. Fantasy becomes reality on Baker Street. It was astonishing to walk into this museum, which is set up exactly as the books describe. It was one thing to visit the home of Jane Austen, where there was historical documentation of how the house might have appeared. But at 221b Baker Street, an entire residence was created solely from the descriptions of Doyle's imagination, right down to the hat and pipe resting on the armchairs by the fire. They had even set up several figures to represent certain scenes from Holmes's cases, such as The Speckled Band or The Red-Headed League.

And the museum wasn't all. Hidden down Northumberland Road is a restaurant with a theme devoted to Sherlock Holmes.

I know what you're thinking: Surely not. It's such a tourist attraction! Surely they wouldn't...

Of course we did. How could we resisit, especially when we saw that the items on the menu were named for the books and the characters within. Jenn, of course, ordered a dish of Hound of the Baskervilles, which turned out to be a common English dish usually known as toad-in-the-hole. This is essentially sausages, broccoli, carrots, and mashed potatoes in a bowl of Yorkshire pudding. Though the dish was good, she admitted to only ordering it because the name was so appealing. And who could blame her?

I ordered a vegetarian dish of mushrooms stuffed with two different kinds of cheese. What was it called? Moriarty's. For those of you who don't know, Moriarty was the Napoleon of crime in The Final Solution. He was thought to have killed Sherlock Holmes and was considered as the evil equal to Holmes' ingenuity. Some may recognize his name as the mysterious "M" from A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a connection that never fails to annoy me. As much as I like Sean Connery's character, there is no way that the criminal equal to Sherlock Holmes would have ever been outsmarted or defeated by the likes of Allen Quartermain.

But I digress. I blame it on the lateness...or earliness of the hour. There's not much else to tell, especially considering that Jenn forbade me from writing all that much about going to see Phantom of the Opera tonight as well (whoops, did I just accidentally mention that?) I'll make sure to post a lowdown on our literary trip plans soon, since we're getting started bright and early tomorrow.

P.S. Between you an me, POTO was amazing! Absolutely breathtaking, awe-inspiring, the works! But you didn't hear it from me! ;) For more details, check Jenn's blog on the side, the one written in French.

An Entire Week for Reading?

They call it Reading Week.

By "they," I mean the professors and students at Kingston University.
And when I say "Reading Week," I am referring to a week-long break given to British university students in the middle of each semester. I've been told that this is implemented so that students can catch up on any reading, writing, or studying that might have piled up during the endless slog of college life. This probably works quite well during the Fall Semester, when there is such a long stretch of classes without any extended breaks; I know I always feel burnt out come November. But during Spring Semester, Reading Week falls directly before Easter Vacation, essentially giving us a three-week spring break.

I see no problem with this whatsoever. Personally, I will be spending my time in Angers, France with Jenn. She'll still have classes, so I'm anticipating spending a relaxing week in the French countryside, reading The Mill on the Floss for my 19th Century Novel class, sampling new cuisine and getting some top-notch studying done for my French exam. The relaxation of the week will be a perfect prelude to Spring Break, when Jenn and I plan to hit nine English cities within five days before Mom arrives. But more about that in a different post.

I will be flying to Tours late Sunday afternoon. Jenn is going to meet me at the airport (I don't have much faith in my French-speaking abilities, so I insisted), then we'll catch a train back to Angers. In the meantime, I will be fighting the temptation to take the week's name at its word and purchase two books from Border's that have caught my eye.

They call it Reading Week.

I call it one of the most wonderful ideas I've ever heard of. Why haven't they thought of this in the U.S.?

Hide and Seek: Just a Small Blurb

After returning from Liverpool yesterday afternoon, I was able to spend the remainder of the day relaxing, working on homework, and recovering from my trip.

And I wasn't the only one. My landlady's cat, Poppy, seemed to enjoy cacooning herself in my rolled-up duvet. After a while, all I could see were a pair of green eyes and some paws sticking out of the mound of white. That wasn't as disturbing as the purring, though.

Regulars at the Cavern Club

I've just gotten back from a weekend in Liverpool, albeit a day early. We were able to take a complete bus tour yesterday and found an extra day to be surplus.

When I say "complete bus tour," I'm referring to the Magical Mystery Tour, the tour mentioned in and made famous by the Beatles' song. It took us around to all the famous sites related to the band--Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, the Cavern Club, and the original houses of all four of the members. Needless to say, it was sweet. I can't even claim to be a huge Beatles fan, yet I still had a blast!

The best part about the weekend was definitely hanging around the Cavern Club. It was dark and...well, cavernous. Elle, Rebecca, and I went there several times in the two days we spent in Liverpool. You could say we became regulars at the place. Rebecca sometimes ordered a Guiness, but Elle and I mainly stuck to the less expensive drinks...tap water, for instance, or a Coke if we felt more experimental.

The trip was awesome, but it definitely had its downpoints, too. For one, the hostel room we stayed in smelled like sweaty gym socks. Try going to sleep when you feel as if your nose hairs are being singed! Also, I was sick on Saturday, the day we took the tour. I forced myslef to go and ended up having fun anyway, yet the pain ruined parts of the experience for me. Oh, well.

We said goodbye to Liverpool this morning with one last trip to Albert Dock (where the wind is strong enough to blow you off your feet) and to the Cavern Club. The club was closed, since it was barely ten o'clock, but we did get to visit my ol' pal John leaning against the Wall of Fame. One trip I'll never forget!

Expectations

I know I haven't updated for a couple weeks, and this can't even be considered a true post. It's more like a blurb. I've had ideas, just not the time to write them. I'm going to Liverpool tomorrow for the weekend, though, so I expect to have stories to write about when I get back. Meanwhile, you'll just have to wait!