so begins the telling...

I was originally going to backdate the entries where I talk about the trip, but I decided not to and instead I will just put in italics what I wrote in my celtic journal, but I'll make a separate entry for each day, including pictures that illustrate what I'm talking about where relevant. I'll probably also make sufficient grammar corrections as there are a lot of mistakes because my brain was going faster than my hand. That always happens, which is why I like the computer. Anyway, here I go:



( airport extravaganzas )

through the plains on a train...

the next of my journal entries from my vacation:

13 April --

The bus was really late to the Leeds airport. And we had to walk a good distance to Sara's flat, but her peeps are really nice. Shaun is a sweet boy, indeed. It was bloody cold last night. I felt bad too because I fell asleep RIGHT away and snored because I was so tired. I think it was a good 32 hours that I had been awake. When I was taking a shower, I closed my eyes and it felt like the shower was going up and down. So trippy. That's the most sleep deprived I've ever been. Now we're on the train going to Oxford. Yay! More old stuff! We're passing through the countryside and it seriously looks like the Hetty Winthrop or Keeping up Appearances shows and its as green as I expected it to be. All the houses are that brick and they are smushed together.
It was good to see Shawn (first cousin who visited) last night. He had an Abraham Lincoln beard and was the most hyper I've ever seen. He's normally very subdued. I think it's so funny that we're related to him. We're like total opposites, which him being a tree-hugging vegan and me being a honey-ham-chicken-fish-steak meat eater. I do like trees though.

Oxford

14 April:

It's good friday and so I guess most things will be closed. Yesterday was fun. We walked all around Oxford and saw really old stuff. It's a great city. We went punting:

with Sara's Tolkien friends and I tried to punt but gave up when I almost lost the pole. The Russians (Maria and Nicolay who are in the above photographs) we are staying with are very nice. It's funny/cool because they are both studying Old English and they have Tolkieny things like maps and insignias all around their house, which is very cosy and British-like. What's fascinating to me is that they have this row of single pine cones in jars all along the window sill in their sitting room. I haven't yet figured out what it means or signifies. ( more in cut )

Warwick

15 April:

Just got done with the Warwick adventure which turned out to be the busiest weekend ever for Warwick Castle. They were having this special siege with a trebuchet (Figure A) and other crazy things so it felt like disneyland but with really old stuff, because of the lines. We climbed up this mound built in 1068 by orders of William the Conquerer to look at the trebuchet firing a fireball (Figure B, but unfortunately you can't see the fireball)
A B
I like writing the word trebuchet. I would like to start it at the beginning of a sentence so I could capitalize the T, but then that would be silly.
We climbed up over 500 steps to look atop the walls of the various towers (Figure C).
C
Man, I would not like to have been the paige boy or whoever had to make those stairs their daily commute. Warwick Castle is probably the most quintessential Medieval castle, which means it's heavily touristized. Yes, I did just use "tourist" as a verb. Right now we are waiting at the Laemington Spa train station to catch the train back up to Leeds. There's this old broken down office building across the street with graffiti on it where some gang or group of homeless people is hanging out. From what I can gather with this observation, Laemington Spa isn't much of a tour destination. But then, towns are never very seemly by train stations or highways.
Had a steak and onion pie for dinner and it was delish. It was at this small little place in Warwick where my head almost touched the ceiling. It was cute.