The First Adventure: Museums, Castles and Dungeons Are No Match For: SuperTourist!

So this weekend I had my first real trip in England. The first one on Friday was a school trip through the British Studies course that everyone takes. We left in the morning and were split up into groups so that not everyone was doing the same thing at once. My group was scheduled for self-guided touring first, and so we decided to walk down Steep Hill. That's the actual name of the street, and it's not a misnomer. It is definitely a steep hill. Going down was no problem, it was walking back up that made me want to stay at the bottom. While we were down there we looked around at the different shops that they had, and we were going to go to an archaeological museum, but it didn't open until after our free-time was over. That was disappointing. I almost stormed the place, but then thought better of it. We did get to watch swans fight each other for bread, which was fun. We made up commentary for what each swan was thinking, and it would've made a good movie. It was then time to go back up to the next phase, and so we trudged up the hill like expert-trudgers and met up with the rest of the groups. We were then supposed to go to Lincoln Castle. It would be the first British Castle that I would set foot in. It was a momentous event, marked with trumpeters sounding and people cheering. Ok so that didn't happen, but it was exciting. We didn't get to see the whole castle, but we did see most of it, however quickly. We even went down into a small dungeon and up into an observatory. The observatory was amazing because we could look over the whole castle-grounds, as well as getting a great view of the rest of the city of Lincoln. There was a building within the castle that held one of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta. That was neat, seeing a piece of history like that right in front of me. The same building used to be a prison, and so we got to tour some of the facilities. We got to see the chapel, where the prisoners were basically put in stalls and had to wear masks. They would then be preached a fire-and-brimstone message, to get them to repent. Really creepy. We also got to go up to a small keep up some stairs that would've been the place where the inhabitants of the castle would go if they were overrun, to hold out against the enemy. There was also a small graveyard there, where some of the prisoners were buried. We then left the castle and had lunch for about an hour. We then went to the Lincoln Cathedral, which was absolutely amazing. For one thing, the sheer size of the church is enough to make your jaw drop, but then you see the decorations both inside and out, simply amazing. I took quite a few pictures. Everywhere you would look there was some sort of architectural beauty. We even got to see the Lincoln Imp, which is something worked into one of the decorations on a wall. It is said that a craftsman's apprentice decided to take some liberties and carved a little demon on the wall with it's legs crossed. The imp was said to have caused mischief in the church, until God turned it to stone. Fun story, and the cathedral sure does capitalize on the little guy in their gift-shop. After we were done in the cathedral we went on what was called a Roman Walk, where we went to different sites in the city and saw the ruins that are still left from the Romans. It was interesting, but there wasn't a whole lot left. It was then time for everyone to go back to the manor. From there, Brandon, Dani, Lisa, Ange and I called a taxi and went to Grantham to leave for London from the train station. The train took a little over an hour to get to London, and then we were going to walk to our hostel. Well, it turned out that our hostel was farther away from the train station than we thought, and so we took the underground trains to get closer. We then spent an hour looking for it and getting lost until we actually came to it. We then put our stuff in our room, and met our 6th person (they were 6 person rooms, and we only had 5 people). His name was Santiago and he was from Mexico City. He was travelling abroad trying to decide what he wanted to do in college, being fresh out of high school. He was really fun over the weekend to get to know. After meeting him we got some food at Yellow Belly's (Subway knock-off, which makes me wonder if they have their own Jared, who walked there instead of taking the train). We then turned in for the night. The next morning we got up early and went to a Starbucks for breakfast, and then planned where we were gonna go for sure. We decided that first we would go to the Brisitsh Museum. On the way there we stopped to check on show prices to see if there were any plays or musicals that we wanted to see, however they were all really expensive, so we threw that out. We then went to the British Museum, and let me say, it was great. It was so huge, and it was filled with things that I've always wanted to see. We mainly looked at the Greek, Roman and Egyptian exhibits. We were basically walking from room to room, trying to take in everything. We saw lots of things that we had seen in our textbooks and that our professors had used for slides. That was really neat, seeing something in person that I had only seen pictures of before. We spent around 4 hours there, and I could've stayed a lot longer. I hope that I get to go back again, it was so great. We then had lunch at a small sandwich shop, and then took the underground to go to the Tower of London. It was pretty amazing too, but not as much as the British Museum. The Tower was originally built by William the Conqueror after the initial invasion of the Normans from France into England, which was around 1066. It was originally a castle to live in, but quickly turned into a prison for the enemies of the royalty of England. It was a really big structure, but there wasn't a whole lot to see. The structure itself was the main attraction, and there were little exhibits in some of the rooms that you could go into. It was all very interesting. We also got to see the Crown Jewels of England, which are housed there. After we were done at the Tower, we decided to go a park that was close by to just sit for a little while. On our way we went by Westminster Abbey, and we could see Big Ben in the distance. The Abbey was amazing from the outside, and it'll be great when we see it from the inside on a British Studies trip in November. The females of the group then demanded that we go to a mall close to our hostel to shop. Never, ever come between females and shopping. Brandon and I knew this and so we quickly agreed. While they were looking at clothes Brandon and I went to a bookstore and looked around. We then all met up and ate dinner at a restaurant that was on the 3rd floor of the mall. After that we went back and hung out in the room with Santiago, getting to know him. I was really glad that he was the 6th person in our room and not some psychopath. We then went to bed and got up the next morning in time to get ready for check-out at 10am. We then said good-bye to Santiago and used the underground to get to our train station back to Grantham. We waited for probably an hour for our train, and then it was a little over an hour back to Grantham. We took a cab back to Harlaxton, and then it was back to business with school. All in all, it was a very fun weekend, and I would definitely go back to London again.