Yesterday night I was far too tired to write about the day and immediately fell into my bed into a deep sleep when I got back to the room.
We went to Windsor Castle in the morning. It was incredible! The castle is huge, I don't even know how to explain the gigantism of the place. St. George's chapel was so beautiful, it sits on the property right next to the castle itself. We weren't permitted to photograph in the chapel but the ornate stone work and stained glass windows were amazing. I am always incredibly perplexed as to how people from hundreds of years ago achieved such detail and intricacy in their work. Huge buildings that have incredibly ornate patterns in them seem so hard to accomplish with even machines, that it only seems impossible to accomplish by hand! Not only is each pattern extremely detailed- they're all exactly the same and all symmetrical. Not one piece in the whole picture stands out as off or not the same as the others. It puts me in a complete state of awe.
We toured Windsor Castle and afterwards went to lunch; we all had fish and chips! They were good... not superb and not what I expected but they were yummy. I thought they were similar and comparable to American fish and chips and I really was expecting some incredible London fish (we're still searching for an amazing place to have them.) We walked around the town of Windsor and it really is so cute. There are shops and restaurants everywhere but I really don't like how the Castle has become such a tourist attraction and such an area of commercialization instead of the estate itself. There are stores like Zara and SuperDry that are huge chain stores, not small Windsor boutiques. I believe these large stores don't belong. After finishing touring Windsor, we walked over to Eton College - the college that 18 prime ministers have attended and the royal family boys attend. It's known as the 'famous family' college. On the tour it was interesting to hear how much Eton College costs to attend and the reactions of all the non-Pepperdine tourists... Everyone was shocked at how expensive it was whereas we Pepp students shrugged our shoulders and said, hmm.. pretty cheap actually! It's interesting to see that education is not expensive here, but other things are and in the U.S. it's the opposite. Maybe it shows what we place highest on our lists and what we value.
We all fell asleep on the bus ride back to South Ken and stumbled from the bus into our beds the minute we got back home. We napped for a few hours and then had a night out on the town in Leicester Square. The pub we went to was a lot of fun and what was most fun for me was to see the difference in the alcohol culture here versus the alcohol culture in the U.S. Here, drinking is a social thing where you enjoy one or two drinks and sip them slowly while dancing, talking to people, and having a good time responsibly. In America, the drinking scene is quite the opposite. Many drink for the only purpose of getting drunk to escape reality for a night. Parties consist of taking shot after shot or taking swigs from random bottles of alcohol passed around. And people drink fast - really fast with the intent of getting extremely drunk, extremely quickly. It's quite disgusting if you ask me and makes me incredibly uncomfortable to be in that environment. It's why I try to completely avoid going to parties in the states but why I love the party scene here in Europe. It's healthy, it's happy, it's fun, and it's just a plain old good time.
I'm looking forward to dancing with my friends every weekend in the coolest places in London :)
We went to Windsor Castle in the morning. It was incredible! The castle is huge, I don't even know how to explain the gigantism of the place. St. George's chapel was so beautiful, it sits on the property right next to the castle itself. We weren't permitted to photograph in the chapel but the ornate stone work and stained glass windows were amazing. I am always incredibly perplexed as to how people from hundreds of years ago achieved such detail and intricacy in their work. Huge buildings that have incredibly ornate patterns in them seem so hard to accomplish with even machines, that it only seems impossible to accomplish by hand! Not only is each pattern extremely detailed- they're all exactly the same and all symmetrical. Not one piece in the whole picture stands out as off or not the same as the others. It puts me in a complete state of awe.
We toured Windsor Castle and afterwards went to lunch; we all had fish and chips! They were good... not superb and not what I expected but they were yummy. I thought they were similar and comparable to American fish and chips and I really was expecting some incredible London fish (we're still searching for an amazing place to have them.) We walked around the town of Windsor and it really is so cute. There are shops and restaurants everywhere but I really don't like how the Castle has become such a tourist attraction and such an area of commercialization instead of the estate itself. There are stores like Zara and SuperDry that are huge chain stores, not small Windsor boutiques. I believe these large stores don't belong. After finishing touring Windsor, we walked over to Eton College - the college that 18 prime ministers have attended and the royal family boys attend. It's known as the 'famous family' college. On the tour it was interesting to hear how much Eton College costs to attend and the reactions of all the non-Pepperdine tourists... Everyone was shocked at how expensive it was whereas we Pepp students shrugged our shoulders and said, hmm.. pretty cheap actually! It's interesting to see that education is not expensive here, but other things are and in the U.S. it's the opposite. Maybe it shows what we place highest on our lists and what we value.
We all fell asleep on the bus ride back to South Ken and stumbled from the bus into our beds the minute we got back home. We napped for a few hours and then had a night out on the town in Leicester Square. The pub we went to was a lot of fun and what was most fun for me was to see the difference in the alcohol culture here versus the alcohol culture in the U.S. Here, drinking is a social thing where you enjoy one or two drinks and sip them slowly while dancing, talking to people, and having a good time responsibly. In America, the drinking scene is quite the opposite. Many drink for the only purpose of getting drunk to escape reality for a night. Parties consist of taking shot after shot or taking swigs from random bottles of alcohol passed around. And people drink fast - really fast with the intent of getting extremely drunk, extremely quickly. It's quite disgusting if you ask me and makes me incredibly uncomfortable to be in that environment. It's why I try to completely avoid going to parties in the states but why I love the party scene here in Europe. It's healthy, it's happy, it's fun, and it's just a plain old good time.
I'm looking forward to dancing with my friends every weekend in the coolest places in London :)
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