February 2, 2012

Warwick Castle

                The second day of our trip we started with Warwick Castle, a pretty cool interactive castle where we were able to walk through rooms of the castle that were set up like Disneyland, with wax characters set up in scenes, illustrating important events that took place in the castle or showed what life would have been like back when it was in use.  We hiked up about 18 miles of curvy stairs to get to the highest tower to see the view of the castle.  Not worth it.  In my castle, I will make sure we have NO curvy staircases.  I’m pretty sure curvy staircases were a favorite thing back in the ancient castle-days, because every castle has miles of them, and every stair is a different height than the ones around it, so you really have to pay attention to where you step.  And I’m not exactly sure, because I haven’t experienced this yet, but I’m fairly certain that falling down a windy staircase would be a lot more painful than falling down a straight one.  Let’s hope I never find out. 

Wax friend.  One of the more attractive ones.

I think I'm going to start a calendar called, "Ashley in various baskets around England."
I'll sell millions of copies.

Henry 8th.  We meet again.

Imprisoned for touching Henry.  He doesn't like to be touched.

                After Warwick Castle we went to Oxford and got a tour of parts of the campus.  First off, it was FREEZING.  Our tour guide basically had tears streaming down his face, not because of the beauty and history of Oxford, but because of the freezingness and chillyosity of England.  Oxford is really interesting, because it doesn’t have one central campus, like most universities.  Rather, it is a federation- 40 self-governing colleges.  Students choose one subject to study, and then stay in that college for all their studies.  The entire establishment as a whole is Oxford, and our guide informed us that having 40 self-governing colleges makes it really difficult to make any changes to Oxford.  Our guide was very interesting and took us around various colleges, informing us of all the future problems Oxford might be facing because they are so steeped in tradition and unwilling to adapt with the times.  He took us to a bust of Winston Churchill to let us worship it, because apparently (as the guide informed us) Americans love Churchill far more than any Brit does.  He was a very interesting tour guide, because throughout the tour he kept making gabs at Americans and little snide comments about America.  I wasn’t offended by it at all though, because I’ve come to find that America and Americans are the punch line to many jokes in England.  But that’s the same way in America- we all have our little embarrassments to our country, university, etc. that we poke fun at.  For example, the U probably makes fun of BYU at least 8 times in every class.  My professors love taking jabs at UVU almost daily.  So I wasn’t offended by his comments at all, it was just interesting to see that America is England’s awkward little cousin they are still confused by.

Part of Oxford

                Best thing about Oxford- all the references to Harry Potter.  We walked by the building that they used for filming the Great Hall, the library, and the hospital wing.  Us Americans love us some Harry Potter.  And the tour guides know that, because anything that is even remotely connected to Harry Potter in any way they make a huge deal of.  And we are overjoyed with it and take hundreds of pictures.  The real jewel of Oxford was one small courtyard where the ferret scene of Harry Potter was filmed.  It was a magical, quiet place, undisturbed by anyone.  It sat patiently waiting for us to come around the corner and as we did, a quiet, knowing hush descended upon the group.  We knew exactly what this place was and we gently made our way across the respected ground to the great tree at the center of the courtyard.  This was the place where Mad-Eye Moody turned Malfoy into a ferret in the 4^th Harry Potter.  The great Daniel Radcliffe and the beautiful Tom Felton walked those same grounds and stood around that same tree.  It was truly amazing.  If you still don’t know what I’m talking about (and if you don’t then I’m not sure we can be friends anymore…) then take a look at this.

The most famous tree I've ever met.

Recognize this archway from anything???  Go watch the youtube clip :)

                Oh, and something cool about this two-day trip: our bus driver was a bodyguard for the Spice Girls.  He’s basically famous.  He also lived with the Beckhams for 6 months when Posh moved to California.  Pretty awesome.  Anyways, so that’s the end of our two-day excursion.  It ended quite epically with everyone sitting around in little dark corners of the center, cramming for our London Walks final the next morning (there is a gopher trying to BURRY itself into a very MODERN glass BRIDGE that leads to the SOUTH (which, as we all know if very appreciative of THEATRE arts) – so Southwark includes Burough Market, Tate Modern, Tower Bridge, National Theatre, and Globe Theatre.  I’m gonna ace this final.)

Memorizing the locations of basically everything in London.