borough market

There are few things I love more than colorful markets. On my flight to London from Milan, I met the nicest British guys (Alex and Max) who gave me a slew of suggestions despite the fact that I'd studied abroad in the UK the year before.

Thankfully, their Borough Market tip was spot on. Along with great produce that I've come to expect at all food markets (it's the California in me), they had other unique things like mushroom pate and micro growing gardens. Even though the market was a side of London I hadn't seen before, I felt right at home.

clivedon

Earlier this evening I decided to finally make a travel index to group each city I've visited by country. Although this was an embarrassingly long process, it's done and I'm quite proud. However, this index now highlights my laziness because it now shows everywhere I've visited abroad- including places I kinda sorta forgot to blog about. So to begin the catch-up series, this is Clivedon, England:

In May, our program took a trip to Clivedon because its grounds used to host the Stanford in Britain program prior to 1982. Seriously? The gardens are massive- The building in the fourth picture is where the students slept and had their classes... and now it's a 5 star hotel. As much as I loved Oxford, it would have been so cool to have lived in this mansion/manner/monstrosity of a residence for a few months! It would have been like living in Pemberley.

english polaroids

even though i brought a polaroid camera with me during my travels, i hardly took any photos. to me, polaroids are like gold, so it sort of distresses me if i take a lot of them. hence, i only really have two of oxford and two of london. when i decide that i take a polaroid of something, it takes me a good 5 minutes to compose the picture in my head and when and only when i think the picture will come out perfectly, i snap the photo. one thing i really need to accept is that the beauty of polaroids is the fact that you can't change them. without editing and multiple takes, you really only have once chance. they come out the way they do, and with all the "imperfections" they have, they're actually quite perfect.

clockwise from top left: oxford punts, the oxford university corpus christi college library, david with the thames and the london eye, and big ben.

strawberries and pimm's

a few weeks ago i posted about going punting, where my friends and i drank pimm's-- a traditional british summer drink. it's a sort of liqueur (?) that's fairly sweet, but then you mix it with "lemonade" (their lemonade being... basically sprite or 7 up). anyway, it's not very alcoholic when you dilute it properly and it's a really nice drink in the hot weather. you can also throw in fruit to add flavor, and once you finish your drink, the fruit is saturated in the pimm's yumminess.

a few days before i left oxford, the program sponsored a strawberries and pimm's garden party, which was simple but fun. there was a mountain of strawberries that i couldn't get enough of, and the pimm's with fruit was perfect for the weather.

65 high street

i'm in hot manila now, but here is my room from oxford.
time to play catch up

bath

by the time we got to bath, we had already been to both stonehenge and salisbury. needless to say, we were a little tired and wanted a break from being tourists. instead of rushing every which way to do as much as we could, we walked through the streets slowly and took our time. we went to a famous tea shop called sally lunn's, which is the oldest tea house in bath. they are also famous for their "bath buns," which are kind of like hambuger buns... except much sweeter, gigantic, and accompanied by jam and clotted cream. for some reason, i don't have a close up photo of the buns, which i highly regret. what was i thinking? the buns and tea were delicious.

we spent A LOT of time at sally lunn's, so with the hour or so we had left we headed to the jane austen centre. we didn't pay to go through the "museum," but we spent a lot of time in the gift shop (where i bough a few things...). i wish we had had more time to spend in bath, but hopefully i'll be able to go back again in the future. the last photo here is of anna, stephanie, chelsey and me while we waited for the others to get back. i mostly chose to post it because the pigeon in it is hilarious.

david is here!

yesterday in london, today and tomorrow in oxford (:

*photo from our ride on the london eye

salisbury

other than steak, i didn't really know much about salisbury before we went to visit. turns out it has an amazing cathedral and a lovely river running through it (although i suppose that's true for most british cities). this short visit was wonderful. a wonderful fusion of town and nature, bowls of fruit and veggies sold at one pound per bowl, and baby ducks (:

stonehenge

now that i've finished my oxford tutorial, i am trying to catch up posting about the little trips i was able to take while here in england. i didn't really know what to expect going to stonehenge, but when i got there, i found that that's really the best way to go about it. it's really cool to see these strange formations, but at the same time, the site is literally in the middle of no where. you get to walk around it, and in an adjacent field there are a lot of sheep hahaha. there are also a lot of fields and freeways around it, but i suppose this is why it's still in such good condition! luckily this brief visit wasn't our only trip for the day and we were able to head over to steak and shower*, too.

*{steak and shower are hints for the next places i'm going to talk about... i didn't want to say the city names right away, so this is what happened... can you guess what they are? and don't worry, i know i have bad jokes, i won't be offended...}