Slow Weekends

In order to prepare for the big trip to York, Scotland and Amsterdam that will start this Friday, I took the last two weekends slow. This helped three things: My wallet, my academics and my body. It kept me from spending too much money after the financial crisis of Sweden, gave me time to shore up for mid-terms, and let me catch up on a little sleep.

That's not to say nothing interesting happened. In order to keep you up on the latest, here is a quick rundown of the last two weekends.

10/5: Hampton Court

Friday two weeks ago was the date for my trip to Hampton Court for my Law Makers & Law Breakers in British History class.

Now, if I told you that I got a free coach ride and free admittance into a palace built my Henry VIII without even having to put down the usual £10 reservation deposit, you might think it was a pretty good deal. You might think that, except for the fact that this trip was on the same weekend as the school's Istanbul trip, which, although significantly more expensive than Hampton Court, was a bargain for traveling to Turkey.

Nonetheless, I tried to shrug off my disappointment and enjoy the sights. Unfortunately, there really wasn't much worth mentioning. It was a drafty palace of relatively modest size. The most interesting point of the palace itself was the large kitchens that had to put out enough food to feed two meals to roughly 800 people daily. Aside from that, we got to take in some very old tapestries hanging on the wall, but were not allowed to photograph them.

The gardens were really the best part of this trip. They weren't particularly large, but it is always nice to see some green after trooping down Oxford Street daily.

And that was the most interesting part of the weekend, unless you count Sunday's nail-biting weekly trip to the grocery store.

10/12: Cambridge

Another Friday, another school-sponsored trip.

This time I didn't have to shrug off the blues of not being in Istanbul. Possibly as a consequence, I enjoyed this trip a lot more than Hampton Court.

That might have just been because of the delicious fish & chips I got toward the end of the trip from The Eagle Pub. The pub's ceiling is decorated in etchings from WWII airmen. Those that were stationed near Cambridge used to take cigarette lighters and burn their names or other messages into the ceiling. Those marks are still there today. In addition, when DNA was discovered in the mid-1900's, the discoverers went to the Eagle to celebrate. A note in the corner marks that, too.

Other than that, we really just walked around a quiet university town. The streets were narrow and filled with bikes, yet the cyclists didn't have a penchant for nearly clipping me, ala London. It was just nice to get out of the rat race for awhile, even if that did mean a ninety-minute bus ride.

10/13: The Tate

Saturday Deb and I headed over to the Tate Museum of Modern Art. There has been quite a fuss in the papers about a new exhibit they have that is a large crack in the floor.

Yes, a crack. The artist says it is supposed to convey the divided issues of race in a post-imperial world, or something like that. Either way, it is quite impressive. The Tate is in a big old power plant, and the crack runs the entire length of the exhibition hall. I'm no prospector, but I would guess that was at least 200 yards. You could walk right up to the crack, step over it, peer into it -- whatever you wanted. I thought it was neat.

As for the rest of the modern art ... well, some of it was nice. I found a little bit to go a long way, so we headed over to check out the nearby Borough Market.

There's nothing like a touristy market to make you feel poor. It's not that I don't want to spend £10 on a slice of fine cheese, it's just that I'd rather head to Somerfield and spend £2 on a similarly-sized hunk. Even so, it was fun to walk around and take in all the different meats, cheeses and other various goods being peddled.

And that is about all I have to say about the last two weekends. England surprisingly advanced to the finals of the Rugby world cup, which is exciting. Sadly, we'll be in Scotland when the final is played against South Africa. I'm wondering who the Scots will be rooting for.

Ramadan ended on Friday, and there was lots of celebrating on Edgeware road, which has a large Lebanese population. Nothing got out of hand, though. The biggest activity was cheering and revving your car's engine like you were in The Fast and the Furious.

The next post should be a little more exciting. It won't be about biding time and resting up. My last mid-term is Wednesday. Actually, I'd better go study for my history test. Yes, the same history class that took me to Hampton Court and kept me from Istanbul. Sometimes academics just ruin all the fun.