I have a little free time on my hands as I am still grounded in Sweden (... stupid volcano) so I will try to remember my spring break trip in which I went to Derry, London, and Paris.
The day after classes ended I took a bus up to visit Joe in Derry in Northern Ireland before we headed over to London. Although the town has quite a bit of history, it did not take us long to fit all the sites in in under one day. Of course we missed some museums I am sure.
We took a walk around the city walls the afternoon I arrived for a bird's eye view of both the bogside where the catholic community lives and the gated protestant area of town. From the walls we could see the graffitti on both sides, murals, and the damage from the ongoing conflict.
The next day we walked in the bogside and spent some time looking at the murals and the Museum of Free Derry. The museum and surrounding area were definitely moving. We walked right through where Bloody Sunday happened and the wall of the house on which was written "You are now entering Free Derry." It was definitely and experience I will not forget. The protestant area showed many of the same signs of violence as the bogside with graffiti slogans and broken windows etc. but also had curbs painted with red, white, and blue for the Union Jack.
The wall of the house on which "You are now entering Free Derry" and a mural on nearby apartments.
A Protestant muralWe got up nice and early to catch our flight to London and did not have any problems reaching our hostel. This is the best hostel I have EVER stayed in. There was free breakfast, a cheap pub in the basement, a cheap restaraunt, a place for laundry, trunks where you could lock your valuables, and free internet. The hostel also had events pretty regularly and was right on the metro line, close to Abbey Road Studios, and close to parks as well.
We hit up Abbey Road Studios that afternoon before hitting up the park. The building was nothing special, but the wall infront was covered in writing etc. Not too impressive but hey, everything can't live up to your expectations. Hyde park was very nice and had man made ponds where there were tons of birds and cute people feeding them. I still cannot get over the fact that they actually call a kind of cookie a Digestiv... they are definitely tasty, but I get nervous eating tasty things called Digestivs.
We covered London in a couple of days and ground our knee and feet joints into dust. Westminster was amazing as it contains a ton of tombs and beautiful architecture. I kept expecting Robert Langdon to pop out or ask me to him him solve the mysteries of the world. The London Eye was cool and Big Ben as well, but every time we passed a HP site that's all that I could talk about. The HP was most potent at the pedestrian bridge that the dementors twisted.
King's Cross Platform and Joe holding onto the bridge while I shot my Patronus
Besides awkward HP pictures, I made Joe trek to Wimbledon Village and the Wimbledon Tennis Club... !!!!!!!! I am sure I almost passed out a million times. The season was not starting for a few weeks yet so many of the outside courts did not have the painted lines. We did get to visit court number two and centre court which was really fun! The whole place was smaller than I had expected but very fun to walk through anyways.
Wimbledon Center Court
The whole trip we kept trying to get into King's Cross for some Harry Potter action BUT, we found that the movie actually filmed the scene at platforms four and five as platforms nine and ten are actually in a separate terminal thing. J.K. had forgotten this so they had to film it at different platforms in the main building. We did not get to the spot though because we were running late before we caught the tube train to Paris. I did get pics of the station though which was beautiful.
We tried to watch the changing of the guard, but there were just too many dang people in the way. We were there, but we didn't see jack.
On one of our many accidental detours, we stumbled across the Sherlock Holmes museum, a Sherlock Holmes pub, and frequented the Baker Street metro stop often. London was a winner even though it did not feel what I refer to as "Londony."
ugh, I just looked out the window and saw the whirling ash... barf!
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