Brief Rundown of London

After Brianna finally finished her essay on Beckett, we took the bus to London yesterday.

Brianna's tour included:

• Strolling around Notting Hill and visiting the famous Travel Bookshop that Hugh Grant works at in the film with Julia Roberts.
• Stopping for tea and scones at the pretty blue cafe that Laura and C.B. also visited, but I can't remember the name of and Brianna is at tutorial so I can't ask her.
• Buying orange juice from the stall and Camden Markets and checking out all the bizarre stores. One place (I kid you not) had glow in the dark shopping bags, which made it really tempting to buy something.
• Eating dinner in the East end at Tayyabs. Or at least I think that is what the restaurant was called. I do know that we ordered way too much mango lassi, but it was amazing so I don't regret it.
  

Chelle's Tales: Stories of a Medford Chap in Oxyland

Photo: more.icelandair.is

FACT FROM THE ABOVE CUPS SERVED ON ICELANDAIR: there are 10 ways in Icelandic to say "cup."

So thanks to

Eyjafjallajökull

I had a free tour of Iceland. Yesterday instead of landing at Keflavik airport my plane was diverted to Akureyri airport in Northern iceland. Akureyri airport is small. And it was cold. And we were surrounded by icy mountains with no sign of civilization. It was also 4:00 in the morning.

Buses picked us up to drive all the passengers to Reykjavik. No one was more excited than the man sitting behind me about the FREE TOUR of Iceland.

Conversation overheard between the two men sitting behind me:

Man #1: LOOK! Volcanic Rocks!

Man #2: How do you know that?

Man #1: I'm taking pictures.

Man #2: Stop wasting your film.

Man #1: I haven't used film in years.

Man #2: You don't even know what you're taking pictures of.

Man #1: (insists that Man #2 wakes up their other friends to look at the lava rock).

Man #2: No. They're not even lava rocks.

Man #1: Then why are they black? I know what I'm talking about.



Easy to say I was pretty excited to arrive in Reykjavic. The airline attendants handed out hotel and meal vouchers to anyone who had a canceled connecting flight and gave out a 'hotline' number that everyone needed to call to reschedule their own flights.

This is when Brianna saved the day and called from Oxford to reschedule my flight for me.

I was put up in the sweetest hotel ever. My room had two beds. Excessive? No. Perfect? yes.
Check it out: http://www.grand.is/

The only sad part was when I slept through dinner. The hotel staff was really nice about this and snuck me into the restaurant where I had a candlelit dinner and a rose on my table. Very romantic.

More to come later.....

GROUNDBREAKING NEWS

THERE IS A BUTLERS CHOCOLATE CAFE IN LONDON. I have C to thank for her brilliant investigation and discovery that made the last day of April just oh-so-special.

six weeks

Because a picture's worth a thousand words.

WEEK ONE (WALES - Montgomery, Welshpool) - SEE POST BELOW FOR DETAILS


WEEK TWO (ITALIA - Florence, Siena, and Roma)




WEEK THREE/FOUR (TURKIYE - Istanbul, the coast, cappadocia)




WEEK FIVE/SIX (THE UNITED KINGDOM - Oxford, Scotland, London)

and that's all for now, folks!

compost is lovely

Just back from my favourite little farm in Wales! I'd bore you with all the dreadful little details, but I need to quickly unpack, wash clothes, and then repack before heading off to Italia tomorrow to rendez-vous with C in Firenze. Just rest assured that the past week entailed lots of tea breaks, compost heaving, jostling about in the back of the Land Rover, and bell ringing. You know, just another standard trip to the land with more sheep than people.

goodbye hilary

I'm going to have to invert the typical glass half empty/half full adage, and instead of celebrating that I'm two thirds done with Oxford, dwell on the fact that I still have one third left.

Even then, one third just doesn't seem like enough.

However, that's all still a while off and until then I can just concentrate on sending hilary term off with a bang and looking forward to the infamously long easter break. I've traded in papers for packing, and instead of diving nose deep into critical theory or Frankenstein I'm rifling through hostel reservations and flight confirmations. What they don't tell you is that Oxford is actually travel agent training. These six week breaks are just made for it. I can't think of a better place to read Waiting for Godot then on a train from Rome to Florence. But then, maybe that's just me.

So, if you begin to miss me in the next six weeks (inevitable) and wonder where I may be (which will be highly variable), feel free to pick and choose from the projected selection of my wanderings below:

-up to my knees in mud at a farm in Wales
-eating gelato outside the Pantheon in Rome
-cruising on a bike through the streets of Siena
-haggling at a bazaar in Istanbul
-flying above the cave dwellings in Cappadocia
-celebrating C's twenty-first, Turkish-style (don't worry, I don't exactly know what that means yet either)
-punting along the Thames with the Ps and Gs
-tracing the steps of William Wallace through the Scottish highlands

See ya on the other side.

more marginalia discovered in the english faculty library