Coming Back

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 to Sunday, November 1, 2009

The plane right back took forever. Not only was I traveling at night and couldn’t sleep on planes, I also didn’t want to come back. I still had this overwhelming desire to stay home and be with my family. But I couldn’t and Papa wouldn’t have wanted to me stay at home. When I finally landed in London, I jumped on the tube headed home. For the first time in almost twenty four hours, I was able to sleep. Probably wasn’t the safest thing to sleep on the tube but I was so exhausted and I had thirty-five stops on the tube to go so there was no way I was going to make it the whole way awake. Once I was back at Chester House, I took a proper nap on my crap of a mattress. That night, I tried to go see Silence the Musical but didn’t make it to the theatre in time. On the way home, I grabbed a bottle of wine and when I finally made it back in I crawled into bed and watched a movie as I fell asleep.

Thursday morning I decided that I was going to do something with my day. It was the last few days of my fall break and I had to get myself up to do something. With a new found since of adventure, I headed to the city centre of London. My first stop of the day was St. Paul’s Cathedral. It is a huge church in the middle of London that had the best view in London…only after five hundred and twenty-eight steps to the top of the Cathedral’s dome. The church is also full of other cool things to see such as the tomb of the Duke of Wellington, the Whispering Gallery, the American Memorial Chapel (dedicated to the US servicemen based in the UK who died during WWII), and the St. Faith’s Chapel, also known as the OBE (Order of the British Empire) Chapel. After I left the church I headed towards the Thames River to walk the River Walk. I took the River Walk heading in the east and finally ran into the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. I ate lunch at a small café right outside of the Tower of London, next to the Thames River, looking at the Tower Bridge. After lunch I figured that since I was down there already, I might as well do the Tower Bridge Tour. It wasn’t anything too special besides the amazing view from the top and the part of the tour that takes you underground to see the inner workings of the bridge. I walked around the City Hall area for a little while and then headed north toward the Gherkin building in London. By the time I took a few pictures of the Gherkin and walked a few more minutes, it was time to head home to get ready to go out for the night. That night we celebrated a couple of birthdays for the week from Mountview. We went to a couple of different bars down in Soho and ended up having a great…crazy…night!

On Friday I packed up a few things and headed off to Bath, England with Leonie, one of the girls here at Mountview. She actually lives in Wiltshire with her family, a small city right outside of Bath, and that is where we stayed for the weekend. On Friday we took the bus from London to Bath and her dad picked us up at the station. This was the first time I’d been in an actual car here. I’d of course been on the bus to get to and from school but riding in the car was so much different, I actually realized that I was indeed on the wrong side of the road! After a wonderful dinner of fish and chips with the family, Leonie and I headed out to the bar with one of her best friends from home, Ollie. The next day Halloween and was our day out on the town…well, countryside. We went all over the area seeing Lacock Abbey (where the first two Harry Potter classroom scenes where filmed in), Silbury Hill, the locks of Wiltshire, and Avebury Stones. The most interesting part of the day was when we went to Avebury Stones and walking into a cultish gathering of some sort…it was Halloween and they were all wearing capes and had staffs and where all chanting something. They starting out just telling stories and it was very interesting to listen to but as soon as one of the guys said “Let’s all join hands and sing” I decided that we should probably peace out. That night we stayed in and enjoyed the company of her family as we watched The X Factor (Like American Idol…only British) and The Patriot. I would just like to say how much fun and awkward it was to watch the Patriot with a room full of the people pulling for the other side. It is interesting though the things that you end up debating with them but in the end, it is simple: you lost, we won. End of Story. The next day was our last day in Bath and seeing as how we had to leave by noon, there wasn’t much of a day to be had there. But there was still one thing left to do in Bath…the reason for going there in the first place…Stonehenge. When we got there, the weather was crazy! The wind was blowing so hard that it was knocking me over and the rain and hail mix that was coming down at the same time didn’t really help out either but it was worth it. I mean, Stonehenge is just a bunch of rocks and is much smaller than I thought that it would be and we had to stand behind a fence to actually see it, but it was nice to see it. It is one of those things that I wanted to see just to say that I’ve been there, you know? After we finished at Stonehenge, we headed back to Bath to catch the bus home. While I had had a great time in Bath this weekend, it wasn’t enough for me to forget about my journey back home and move forward. This next week of school was going to be rough.