Day 22: Paris!

Currently watching Disney channel in French! Today hasn't been very eventful. We took the Eurostar train into Paris at 2 today. I slept most of the way so I missed the excitement of going under the water. When we got here we took an hour bus tour around the city and saw a lot of famous museums and sights like the Louvre, The Muse D'Orsay, The Arch of Triumph, and the Eiffel Tower. Our hotel is down the street from the Eiffel tower on the Seine river. It's very nice, and the tv is all in French except for the news so we have been watching Disney with French voice overs. We wandered the city a little tonight and ate Italian food which was very good. Other than that we have been hanging out in the hotel doing research on what we want to do the rest of the weekend.

The Louvre

Sights on the bus tour

An ex-palace that is now a museum

Eiffel tower!

Day 21

Today Meggan and I visited the V&A (Victoria and Albert museum). It was really cool, the museum is just a collection of random artifacts from all over. There is a special exhibit on architecture right now so there are seven different houses from all over the world in different places around the museum. After the V&A we got crepes for lunch (seriously I think we have a crepe addiction) and I met my class to go out to Freud's house. We toured the house where he spent the last year of his life after moving from Nazi occupied Vienna. In the house you can see Freud's artifacts from all over the world, his famous therapy couch, a large book collection and his daughter Anna's office and place where she conducted psychoanalysis. It was cool to see the house and it's located in a cute neighborhood. When I got back from Freud's house Meggan, Ashley and I went to Lillywhites which is a HUGE (6 floors!) sporting goods store. I bought a new pair of Nike tennis shoes for 30 pounds since my old ones are pretty trashed and keep getting holes in them. I also got a pair of Nike shorts for 12 pounds. That night we went to Texas Embassy for student night. They gave Baylor the entire top floor and really good deals on drinks and shots.

V&A

Alter cross and other stuff from Renaissance churches

A cross from 1250

Stained glass

Tabernacle 

One of the seven houses

Meggan inside the house. It was really cute and even had a tea set

The Top of the Pops British Rock exhibit. It's photos from all the artists who came on the show like The Beatles, The Who, The Beach Boys, etc

More photos

The book house :) My kind of place

Inside one of the houses, this one had a tree in the middle of it and is one people actually live in

The inside/outside tree house

The V&A

Another house

Freud's house

The famous couch

Ready for Texas Embassy!

At the bar. Taking tequila shots

Meggan, Ashley, and me

 Trying on costumes at the V&A. Fat suit.

Day 20

Today we traveled to Greenwich to see the Royal Naval Observatory and the clock that sets the world time. We took a boat down the Thames river and saw a lot of London including City Hall (for the City of London which is a 1 square mile radius that is the original city with St. Paul's at it's center. It has it's own police force and government) and Canary Warf (where the ships used to come in, it's now luxury homes). The hike to the observatory was probably one of the hardest climbs I've ever done. It's not a very long walk but about half way up the hill goes practically vertical. I literally thought my legs were going to give out by the time we reached the top. At the top you can see the worlds largest telescope, exhibits on Naval clocks, telescopes, astronomy and maritime equipment, and stand on the prime meridian. So today I stood in two hemispheres at once, it was pretty cool. You also get a good view out over the city and of where the Olympics will take place in two years (two years from today actually).
This evening we went on the Jack the Ripper Walk. Probably one of my most anticipated events of the trip. It didn't disappoint. We walked through the City of London, down old streets and alleys to follow the Jack the Ripper story. We saw the crime scenes where his five victims were found and attempted to follow in his footsteps from 1888. It was a lot of fun, and the ripperologist was a great speaker.

City Hall, there is another egg shaped building by the same architect in London, and these are very controversial buildings with the Londoners

Greenwich!

Heading to the Prime Meridian

World's clock. In the building behind are a lot of old telescopes

Standing in both the east and west hemispheres

A cool old telescope and star charts

Looking out off the hill

The city

The four towers sticking up on the right are at O2 stadium and where a lot of the Olympics will take place

The observatory

Largest telescope in the world

Astronomy building

The oldest rock I've ever touched, a 4.5 billion year old meteorite

The egg building by the same architect as City Hall, this one is an insurance company

The prostitutes church where Jack picked up one of his victims. The women used to circle the street around the church looking for customers

Apartments where a victim was found, the only additions are street lights and the roll top doors on the bottom floor.

The pub all the victims and Jack the Ripper frequented

The Ten Bells

Some interesting street art by a reformed criminal/ graffiti artist. The Prime Minister just brought the Obama's one of his pieces

A for Ashley

C for Caitlin

Random Funny photos from today

This boat eats trash, do you?

A funny sign.

Day 19

Today we only had an hour of class before we headed out to catch a train to Salisbury. The town alternated between being really cute and really sketchy in some parts. We had about 40 minutes to kill there so we grabbed pizza for lunch before meeting to get on buses to go out to Stonehenge. It looks exactly like the pictures. It was cool to see, but a bit smaller than I was expecting and it gets kinda boring after about 30 minutes there. While at Stonehenge Michael and I tried to pet a sheep. We ended up chasing them around a field and not petting a single one, turns out sheep are faster than they look. After Stonehenge Ashley and I took the tube to Pax Lodge the Girl Guide center in London. I picked up an official Pax Lodge pen there. We also stopped at Giraffe for happy hour, I think it's my favorite place to eat in London, it just has a fun atmosphere and a lot of really good food and drinks. We came back and got tickets for the London Eye, which is the giant ferris wheel built for the millennium that overlooks the Thames across from Parliament. We went up right at sunrise so we got to see all the buildings light up as we rode. It was really cool. Ashley and I grabbed hot dogs on the street for dinner and took a short run when we got back home.

  Stonehenge!

Me and Meggan in front of Stonehenge

Meggan, Me and Aineta 

We were disappointed you couln't walk up to it

Jumping picture!

Adpi's at Stonehenge!

All of the BGB 2010 group

The sheep we tried to catch

In the London Eye

View of Parliament

Other side of the river

Nearing the top of the wheel!

Such amazing views of London!

All of us in the Eye

Parliament up close

Sitting along the south bank

Parliament from land

All our pictures look like we photoshopped ourselves into them!

Looking back at the south bank all lit up