Charlette's Amazingly Awesome Travel Blog: UK Update!!

Whoops, so I know its been a while since my last update but I haven't been at any real computers since I've been here and I keep telling myself that I'll type up a blog post while I'm travelling, but then I just fall asleep, typical.

As I type this, I'm in Aberystwyth in Wales. Staying with a mate here for a week before I head off to go and see Vanessa in Denmark and possibly Nina in Germany before coming back to the UK to do London for a week.

I've done pretty well with the travelling so far, thanks to the awesome people that I've stayed with. When I first arrived, I went straight up to Leicester to stay with a friend. I hadn't really made any more plans than that about the UK, so it was nice to get there and figure out what there was to do etc. Salena was great to stay with! The first day I was there, she had to work, but she lives nice and close to the local shopping centre so I meandered down there (after getting seriously lost, thanks GPS for saving me there!) and got myself sorted with a UK phone and adaptor etc. It was nice to be somewhere a lot more familiar to home than the States. I'm not sure quite what it is, but you know, being a British colony probably helps haha. I got excited about little things, like drinking coffee out of a mug - not a paper cup, roundabouts, paper being normal sized, and driving on the left (a given!).

The next day, we went on a bit of an explore!! I wanted to head down to Rugby - for obvious reasons. So we went there and had a poke about. Its such a sweet little place, not a lot there (quite a lot of hairdressers though), but some nice scenes to take photos of. The school is an amazing building, we didn't go inside it at all - it was probably even more grand inside! They had a William Webb Ellis statue though, so I got my picture there and did the mini museum etc. Still a cool place to say I've been too though. Then we got back in the car and headed about another hour south to Stratford-Upon-Avon, aka Shakespeare's birthplace. Its pretty obvious which place is his, cos everything else has been modernised. It was like £13 to go in, so we gave up on that idea and just wandered around the township. Another cute little place, but a little too touristy. We had a stroll along the riverside to the church where Shakespeare is buried, but we got there after the church had closed. Faaaail. Oh well, nice little church and graveyard though. That night, we had pie and chips for dinner, which was epic. Oddly enough, Americans just don't do pies (pretty much at all) or chips well. Whodda thunk it?

Good pub name

The place that captures the magic moments

Just incase you forgot

pffft, seen the real thing

Stratford-Upon-Avon, pretty boats!

Shakespeare's house!

Pretty clock tower

Saturday, I headed up to Birmingham to meet Tessa, one of my WGC friends from home. It was nice to see a familiar face! We shopped for a bit, typical I hear you say. I got these cool jandals, where I got to choose the base colour, strap colour and the embellishments. Took a while, but they look super cool. After moseying around the shops for a bit, I wanted to have a bit of an explore so we headed out around the Arts Fest that was on that weekend. We found a giant screen screening the paralympics and then we found the gorgeous canal area. We found a sweet little company that did tours around the Birmingham Canals, for £5! So we jumped on that and went around, the guy called it a "social history of Birmingham". It was sweet, and I was still loving all the buildings. That was a fun day, didn't get back until like 10pm where I conveniently collapsed on my bed.

I'm gonna stop there for now, I'll catch you up on this last week in a bit.

Hooroo