Warwick Castle and Hadrian's Wall

Those should all be from Hadrian's Wall and Warwick Castle. The one of my foot is from when I brushed up against a prickly plant... I can't remember what it was called! It hurt for about 2 days though.

So... Warwick Castle was definitely my favorite so far. We went there on the way to Oxford from Chester. Chester... ehh... it was pretty, but we didn't really meet anyone nice the entire time. Also, our concert? A whopping two people showed up to the concert and one of them kept falling asleep. Chester was a bit disappointing.

As soon as we arrived at Warwick, Rachel and I ran into the gift shop and bought plastic swords. We had a bunch of duels all over the place, and then once we got into the great hall, we were able to try on some real helmets. It was pretty amazing. I have a video of us fighting on top of Guy's Tower, and I'm going to try to put it on youtube.

Today we went to Bath. It was amazing!! Unfortunately, my camera has been dead for 2 days. I'll have to try to charge it tonight, because we're going to Ireland TOMORROW!! I have to wake up around 4:45 to get everything together... so I'll need to get to bed now. Only a few days in Ireland and then I'm back home!

Just to let you all know...

On my last night in Edinburgh, I ate haggis.

Yes, I ate haggis. Yes... I liked it. A lot. I was actually pretty disturbed by the fact that I enjoyed it so much. I have a picture of it, so I'll have to load that soon. However, the internet in our hotel in Chester is really, really slow. Free of charge, but slow.

I'll update more later, but for now I need to jump in the shower and prepare for our concert tonight at St. Mary's. This is our last concert, and then tomorrow we travel by bus to Oxford for 3 days... then onto Ireland! :)

Random Pictures

I don't have a whole lot of time, but I'm going to post a few pictures from the trip so far! I'm sitting down the street from the hotel in a pub with free wi-fi! Thaaaank goodness. It's so hard to find cheap internet over here!

The concert yesterday went really really well. Here's where we played!



The chapel is being renovated and aired out at the moment. It's surrounded by scaffolding and a huge "umbrella" so it was pretty hard to get a good picture of the outside, but I have a lot of them anyways.

Here I am outside in front of the pretty bushes.



It was nice outside for the most part, but the wind up here is outrageous. We were all freezing, even in the chapel. It was difficult to play our pizzicato parts in the 2nd movement of Hebrew Lovesongs :)


This picture was taken in England, right after we saw the Queen :)



This one is from today. We went to Edinburgh Castle. My favorite part was the prisons where they held American soldiers in the 1700s. I was able to walk through where they slept and ate and I even saw some carvings they did on the doors. They also displayed a lot of really gorgeous, ornate boxes that the prisoners made out of the bones from their food or straw and wood. This is me with two guards outside the castle.



I'm going to make another post now with just pictures, and I'll try to give explanations later for them. It's 5:10 PM here, and I need to go find some food. :)

Edinburgh

So, we arrived in Edinburgh yesterday after hours on the train. It was a beautiful ride, and I must say... the food here is about a billion times better than in London. The mashed potatoes I ate anywhere there were absolutely bland, but we ate at this place called Conan Doyle's (there's a Sherlock Holmes statue on the outside!) and I almost cried when I tasted the potatoes; it was heaven. I had a steak pie as well, no kidney, but it was fantastic.

I'd load pictures up but 1. my camera died yesterday and is now charging and 2. even if I had been able to take pictures, the internet cafe doesn't allow us to connect our cameras and the like. I'll have to steal a bunch of pictures from other people on the trip when I get back, because I was unable to photograph some really gorgeous stuff.

York was fun yesterday. We stopped there on the way to Edinburgh. We only had a few hours, though, and I didn't get to go everywhere I would have liked.

Last night after arriving, we went out and had the amazing food. Then, we walked down to a pub where a bunch of the choir members and people were. It was a fun place and the music was lively, but there was a guy at the bar who seemed to have had a few too many. He started yelling really loud and then a guy came up and got in his face. Angryman was blocked from our view for a few seconds, but when the other guy stepped to the side... well, he must have said something very upsetting, because Angryman was in tears. He kicked the door open and ran down the street.

A few minutes later, he stumbled back in and yelled something completely unrecognizable and then chased some other guy out the door and down the street again. I ALMOST witnessed my first pub fight. I kind of felt cheated when he started crying.

Well, now we're about to walk back to the hotel to get ready for Rosslyn tonight. 8 PM!! That's 2 PM in Illinois, so be crossing your fingers that we sound lovely. I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

Love you all.
Katie

Internet Cafes are FANTASTIC :)

... but UK Keyboards are so weird!

Yesterday was busy busy busy. I don't think I've ever walked so much in my life! I wish I could connect my camera to this computer so that I could show everyone what we were up to yesterday, but I don't think it's possible... and I'm not going to pay again at my hotel to use internet when I can get it down the street for practically nothing!

We woke up and left by 9 AM to go to Westminster Abbey. They had to split our group in two, so my group went with Charlie first to walk around the area and get acquainted so we could go to lunch on our own. We walked through a beatiful park and past Buckingham Palace... down the Pall Mall and the Horse Parade place? I can't remember exactly what it was called. We were pretty sure we saw some important member of parliament leaving the area, but no one was positive.

Westminster Abbey was amazing. My favorite areas were definitely the Musician and Poet's corners, and our guide was just fantastic. I have lots of pictures from outside, but we weren't allowed to snap any shots in the Abbey.

After Westminster, we broke off on our own for lunch. Dr. Mishra(s) Dr. Archer, Jackie, Rachel, Rachel, Beth, Maggie,Dan and I all went to this restaurant and I had stuffed mushrooms and chips. Delicious! Unfortunately, there wasn't steak and kidney pie on the menu... I have yet to try it. But I promise, Dad, I will!

Gosh, we did so much yesterday, I'm having trouble remembering! But THIS was the biggest event of the day.

Jackie, Beth, Rachel G and I all walked down to Buckingham Palace. We were standing around because everyone else was standing around, and I took a few pictures for fellow tourists. Jackie and I were in painful need of a loo after all of that walking, and we ALMOST left when all of a sudden, a bunch of police motorcycles pulled in. We decided to stick around to see who was coming out... but we seriously never thought it would be... THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. We were standing right in the front and she waved at us. It was pretty darn cool. Rachel took a great picture of her in her car.

We went to Queen Elizabeth Hall last night, too. There were people from the Royal Philharmonia? playing a Mahler piano quartet and an Elgar piano quintet. It was beautiful, but the seats really didn't help me to relax after a long day of walking.

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel to change and then decided to go out on the town. Leicester Square was pretty busy, and we ended up having to ask the time (none of us had watches.) Jackie stopped a guy and asked him, and he claimed he didn't speak English. She wasn't satisfied with that answer, so she asked him in Spanish. Sure enough, he turned around and smiled and showed us his watch. I don't know how, because we couldn't understand a word the other was saying, but they ended up coming to our concert today at St James. We also talked to an older couple on the Tube this morning on our way to rehearse, and they came out to see it, too!

The concert was BEAUTIFUL. The church was absolutely gorgeous and the sound was amazing. I wasn't able to take pictures, but a lot of the people from the group have a lot and I'm sure I'll be able to post them once we get home.

I'm going back down the street to the hotel now. I hope everyone is doing well back home! I'm having a great time :)

Windsor!

Here are a few pictures from our arrival in London and Windsor Castle. I'm only going to put a few up because there's not much time until we leave for Westminster Abbey. Tonight, we're going to the London Philharmonic, I think... they're performing Mahler and Elgar, and I'm really excited!

I woke up this morning feeling better all around, really, but my throat is all swollen and yucky. Hopefully, it will all be better by tomorrow.

In London!!!

Amazingly, shortly after my last post, we boarded the airplane. We were ALL on the standby list (over 30 people) and we ALL got on the same flight (which was overbooked!) My seat partner was a lady named Rita from Australia. She was almost 70 years old and going to London for holiday after finishing up classes. The people to the right of me were two boys who didn't say anything, except to make fun of my sleeping habits. Apparently, they were jealous that I could so easily curl up in my seat!

Pretty soon after we took off, I started feeling sick. The icky-ness lasted all the way until landing, where it got about a billion times worse. After getting off of the plane, we headed by coach to Windsor Castle. I made it all the way to Queen Mary's dollhouse and then decided it was time to head back to the bus. As our tourguide Charlie put it so nicely, I was "about to meet my friend Ralph." However, once I made it down to the coach station, I realized that our bus wasn't there. I had to walk ALL the way back up and sit next to the statue by myself for a bit... there was a lot to look at, but then it started to rain. Of course, I had left my umbrella on the bus, so I went and bought an umbrella for 3 pounds. I think it turned inside-out about sixty-thousand times today. I met up with a few people from the group within a few minutes and we went to The Horse and Groom for lunch, right across from Windsor Castle.

Dad, I ate Shepherd's Pie there. Mom... yours is about a billion times better. I'm going to try it somewhere else too, but I'll keep you updated. I have yet to try steak and kidney pie; I think I'll tackle that tomorrow. The string section (Jackie, Rachel, Rachel, Beth, Maggie, Dan, and I) went out for dinner with our tour guide, Charlie. We went to an Indian restaurant, so I suppose I've accomplished my "Indian Food in London" goal as well. I thought of Melissa while I ate there. :)

So much for having a pint my first night in London! We all decided to stay in tonight.

It's 9:09 PM, so 3:09 PM where my family is... I'm thinking about all of you loads. Thanks for all the great comments! I have a bunch of pictures to put up, but only 24 hours to post them; it costs 10 pounds for 24 hours of internet service in our hotel. This post and tomorrow's may be London's only posts, but I will definitely get some internet in Scotland. Hopefully. Maybe I shouldn't have said "definitely."

For now, though, I'm going to bed. I may decide to put those pictures up after all tonight... there are a lot of good 'uns of Windsor. The Queen wasn't home today, though. :)

Love you all!

Chicago

So, our flight was delayed out of Lambert for about... oh... ever! We JUST got into Chicago (about 3 hours late) and now we hear that we aren't going to make this next flight to London. Hopefully, we'll make the 9 pm flight out of here, but chances are looking slim. Cross your fingers for us!!

Lambert Airport

15 Hours Til Takeoff :)

I think I've been dancing all day! I am so excited to board the plane and begin the trek to London.

What did I get accomplished today?

- 3 new pairs of shoes
- 2 pairs of capris
- 4 shirts
- 1 skirt
- Power adapter
- Packed my suitcase and ended up well under the 50 lb weight maximum
- Managed to fit all of my shower and makeup items in the same SMALL bag
- Discovered that my laptop fits really nicely in the front of my carry-on!
- Ate a lot of food (I will truly be enormous by the time I get back home)
- Played with the kids... but forgot to tell them that I'm leaving!

Hopefully, my contact lenses will come in the mail before about noon tomorrow... otherwise, I'm going to run the risk of being blind or having to wear my glasses for a lot of the trip.

I should be able to write from the hotel when I arrive on Wednesday.

Leaving Tomorrow!!

I decided I'd start up a little blog to document my trip to the UK.

SIUE's orchestra is travelling abroad to play in London, Edinburgh, and Chester. We have 7 string players, a choir, and a brass quartet. It's really going to be a great time, but I have a lot to do to prepare still... and I leave on Tuesday!

Tonight, I drove from my parents' house out to Edwardsville to grab everything (hopefully!) I need to pack. It was really difficult to decide what to bring with me back to O'Fallon as far as clothes were concerned. So, I brought pretty much everything. That way, I can pick and choose tomorrow and I won't have to drive back to my apartment if I change my mind about my wardrobe.

It's almost 1 AM, but I'm so excited about getting ready tomorrow that it's pretty hard to fall asleep. I'm going to wake up at 8:30 so that I can start packing... then I've got to go to the bank to let them know that they don't have to block my credit card when purchases come up from the UK! I'm going to go to Target and get some cute, comfy flats to wear, and maybe a few more skirts.

My friend Kelly just got back from London and she says it's pretty warm over there; let's cross our fingers for nice weather!!