6/13/11 Day Something: Quick summary

I'm going to give you all a quick and casual summary of the trip thus far, and Sarah may add to it later.  We spent the first two days in London.  The first day we got in pretty early and had to go through customs and get all our bags so by the time we did that and trained to our hostel it was about early afternoon.  Checked into our hostel and walked around our small suburb of London, got a feel for the place, and had an early night.  The second day we were super tourists and rode on the London Eye, took pictures on it, that was pretty cool.  Walked around Parliament and Big Ben, and around Westminster Abby and such, and saw the British Museum.  Parliament is really an awesome looking building in person.  Anyway that was pretty much those two days.  We got pretty good at riding the tube, which is just an underground train aka a subway, only way nicer and not sketchy at all.  Then we left for Birmingham.  I liked Birmingham a lot.  The city was very industrial and looked very old and you could tell the buildings had so much history behind them, it was great.  Also, apparently the city has more canals than Venice.  They are not as BIG, you couldn't gondola down a lot of them, but there are more!  Kind of interesting. However the heart of the city was very modern, and had a load of shopping.  Their main mall is called the Bullring, because back in the day that area used to be a big open market and I guess where it's built is where they killed the bulls.  Either way the exterior of that building was so cool. ( we got pics)  There was also a food festival on Saturday which was really cool.  They had a beer tent, and dozens of individual food tends marked with a country flag that indicated what kind of food it was.  I ate from an aussie tent, and got a kangaroo burger.

That night the staff of the hostel took us out to a pub crawl, for a safe way for travelers to be able to go out and navigate the city.  I didn't stay out super later but Sarah stayed until bar close.

Then we left for the lake district.  This was our FIRST navigation fail, and it didn't even involve us getting lost. We had a bus take us from Birmingham to Preston, and a train from Preston to Ambleside.  We had 30 minutes to connect these two...The only problem was the bus station and the train station are not near each other.  So we got off the buss, went to the bathroom, put on our rain gear because it was pouring, and asked for directions. We got about one block didn't know where to go next and asked for directions again.  The second person gave us way better directions, "Just go straight on this road for a while."  at this point we had about 15-20 minuets to get to the station, not really sure.  So we walked straight for about 15-20 minutes, found the station, ran to print off our tickets at what is basically an ATM machine for pre ordered tickets, got the tickets, took about five steps and the train left.  We missed it literally by 30 seconds.  So we had to sit around for a while until the next train, not a big deal, just annoying and took us longer to get there.

So now we are here in Ambleside in the Lake District and it is amazing!  Lots of big lakes and hiking trails.  Oh yeah it rains a lot here too.  It has still rained every day we've been in England thus far!  We've got a few more days in this city, so more posts to come.  Comment if you have any questions about what we've done so far!

-Nathan