beyond jolly 'ole england (but still in the UK)

wales! first country to visit outside of england, and quite a successful day trip. we left bath around 9 and traveled by train to cardiff, the capital of wales. it was only about an hour and 20 minute trip to cardiff, and then we caught a bus straight to the museum of welsh life just outside the city. it's an open-air museum, with a beautiful old tudor-style country house/castle and wonderful gardens. we also got to see a line-up of houses you would see in wales over a span of about 200 or 300 years. 

after a couple hours there, we hopped back on a bus and returned to the city to immerse ourselves in more welsh history - cardiff castle. 

we paid the extra 2 pounds for the legit tour, and it was SO worth it! we learned a lot that we'd all never have learned otherwise. like how the days of the week are named after pagan gods, the general history of the wealthy in wales, and other interesting things about the castle history. the castle is so ornate inside! one room's ceiling was actually painted with gold! the castle is actually built inside a norman defense built in the 1100s, and we got to go up in the keep which gave us some spectacular views of the city and the country to the north. mid-october i'll be returning to wales to do some hiking in the brecon breacons with ASE. so that took up most of the day and we returned to Bath absolutely exhausted, but very happy we had made the trip.

My "18th Century House & Garden" class has a ton of reading already, but we have a study trip this coming friday to Stourhead and Wardour. classes are so much more interesting when you can apply what you've learned on a daily basis...

my "In The Courts of Princes" is going to be great! We talked about the basics in English royalty during our last class, and some English history...all that I learned in AP euro at ETHS is coming back to me, ha. We have a study trip to Hampton Court in November for that class.

the last two days have been great, partly due to the fact that i've exhausted my debit card paying for flights across europe :)

yesterday elizabeth and i sat down to start planning our break, which is the last week of october. aaand we're flying into Nice early morning on the 23rd and spending the first 4 days there. we'll probably do a day in monaco and then another trip inland, but suggestions are welcome! so then we'll try and do an overnight train to florence, spend 2 days there totally immersing ourselves in art & wonderful italian food. then we'll head over to rome (not sure how best to do this yet, so please more advice!) for the last 3 days of break. on sunday, november 1st we fly back to london, also early in the morning. so we have the entire day to get back to bath, and might chill out in london for a bit before catching some kind of bus back. 

hold on, not done yet!

today i booked a round-trip flight to paris to visit carly! yaaayyyy francais! i'll be going oct 15-18, so the second half of october is going to be insanely amazing. i've already done most of the big touristy things in paris, so i want to get out to versailles and then just walk around and explore more of paris....and brush up on my french of course.

so those are the travels i have booked so far, and i'm sooo excited. hoping to stay after my program ends on dec. 19th, but i have yet to figure all of that out. 

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” - Cesare Pavese

xx