Denbies Wine Estate/ Brighton/ Goodbye Banquet

This is the last time I'm going to be posting on my blog, hopefully some people will have a chance to read it before I get home.  This week has been very busy with preparing to move out of my apartment and getting things settled with classes etc.  

We had the chance to take a tour and do a wine tasting at Denbies Wine Estate with my International Business class.  The winery was beautiful and it was really interesting to see how they make the wine.  The tasting was great too; they make a couple of great, and award winning wines.  The success of the winery is due to the similar soil and climate conditions as found in Champagne France.

This is the outside of the estate.  Inside they produce the wines and have a sales floor, restaurants and even a hotel.

These are the barrels that the wine ferments and ages in.

Barrels like the last ones, except decorative and with taps.

Wine cabinet down in the bar we had our tasting at.

The "bar".

My International Business class went to Brighton after the wine tasting.  Brighton is an artist community/city on the ocean and is often called the "London on the sea" by the British.  It was a popular destination for the Monarch in the 17th and 18th century as well.  We were lucky enough to be there on a beautiful day and it was great to be at the ocean.

The Brighton Pier

The beach, which was covered in rocks, oddly enough.

Brighton from the pier.

Thursday night, Kingston University held a going away banquet and dinner for us.  Tonight, Friday, I'm saying goodbye to my roommates.  Although I'm not leaving until Monday, they all leave on Saturday morning.  It was really hard to say goodbye to them.  We're all so isolated from our families and being in this situation with them brought us together really quickly. Although we are all looking forward to seeing our family (and friends) at home, we will miss the one that we made here. I think that I've made some life-long friends here and it's hard to leave them.

Amber, Amanda, and I.  We had one other male roommate, but he was usually with his girlfriend so we didn't see him around a whole lot.

Kirsten, Amber, Me, Amanda, and Jenna.  The rest of the flat.

I've never done a blog like this, but I hope that it was an interesting and effective way for you all to stay up to date on what I'm doing.  I miss everyone a lot and it will be nice to be home Monday night.  See you all soon!

Oxford University

Today my British Culture and Society class went to Oxford University.  It wasn't the best field trip that we went on, but it was still really interesting to see.  Also, some of the sites on the tour were used in the filming of both The Golden Compass and the Harry Potter movies.

This is an aerial view of part of Oxford University.

This is the college that Sir Walter Raleigh went to.  Raleigh was later commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to explore the new world, and he named Virginia after the virgin queen.

This is just a really beautiful garden outside of one of the colleges at Oxford.

This is the main quad at the largest college on campus.

This is one of the largest dining halls on campus.  It is also the dining hall that was used in the Harry Potter films. 

Paris: Eiffel Tower/Louvre/Tour De France

I spent Friday through Monday in Paris with the other students from Kingston.  I hadn't signed up ahead of time for the trip, so I flew with one of my flatmates, while everyone else took the train under the channel.  

Going to France was a lot harder than I expected, because I'd never been in a non English speaking country.  It's really overwhelming when no one can understand you and you have to navigate your way around, but I know it was a great experience.  

The weather was beautiful in Paris, it's a lot warmer than in London.  I'm adding a lot of pictures, because they'll do a better job of describing my trip.  

I spent a lot of time at the Eiffel Tower.  It was definitely my favorite part of the trip.  There was a large park about a quarter of a mile from the Eiffel Tower, and there is a perfect view from there.  We spent a lot of time just sitting in the park hanging out; it was really beautiful.  The Louvre was also amazing.  The paintings are stunning and a lot of them really look three dimensional because of the talent of the painters.  I tried taking pictures of some of the paintings, but it was hard to do them justice.  

This is a picture of the Louvre from the outside.  It is really massive and impossible to capture the entire thing in a picture, but this is one the entrances.  

This is another picture of the outside of the Louvre.  

This is just a picture of the river from the Louvre.  

This was my first view of the Eiffel Tower.  

This is the view that we had from the park that we spent a lot of time in.  The tower is lit up at night, and this is the best time to see it.

This is my favorite picture that I took of the tower.  

A shot from the bottom of the tower, but I'm actually still across the street.  

Me and one of my flatmates in the courtyard outside the Louvre.  That is only about a third of the building on that side, and there are two other equal sides to complete the courtyard.  Also, everything below us is a part of the museum, including the glass pyramid that you can see part of which is the center of the underground portion.

The ceiling in one of the rooms of the Louvre.  It used to be a palace, which is why it is so extravagant.

The Mona Lisa, which was hard to get close to.

One of the paintings, a depiction of Good Friday.

A piece of the Parthenon. 

One of my flatmates and I in front of Venus.

The Moulin Rouge.  We wanted to see a show, but the cost 180 pounds.

This is the house in Montmarte that VanGogh lived in when he first arrived to Paris.

The "Wall of Love" which has Love written on it in every known language on Earth.

The home in Montmarte that Picasso lived in when he arrived in Paris.

A home in Montmarte next to a vineyard.

The view of Paris from Montmarte.

Kirsten and I at the Tour de France.  I've never seen so many people crowded into a subway station as we did before this, but it was really worth it.

The leaders of the Tour coming into the finish line, where we were watching from.

A view of the tower from the park by the Tour.

I took a picture of this because it was my beef tartar from the French restaurant on our last night.  It was a piece of completely raw steak ground with some seasonings and it was really good. 

Fuller's Brewery Tour

Today my International Business class went to Fuller's Brewery, for a tour of one of the oldest and most famous breweries in the world.  We saw how beer was made in the 18th century and currently.  

This is a picture of the copper beer kettle in the 18th century. 

At the end of the beer tour we got to sample all of the beer we wanted at a private bar.  This is me with one of the beers.

They also let us pump our own beer.  English beer is a lot different from American beer because the only gas in it is natural gas produced by yeast; there is no CO2 put into the formula so it is more "flat" or smooth, and also it is served warmer.

This is the private bar we had to ourselves for forty minutes after our brewery tour.

This is a picture of a Fuller's Brewery beer that was aged for ten years.  It tasted almost like wine, but it was the best beer they had.

It is a much different experience here regarding alcohol.  They start drinking in the middle of the day, and it lasts all days, as a social habit.  There is much less "binge" drinking, and the beer is much smoother and easier to consume.  The culture also treats alcohol differently and would serve beer at school functions, family parks, etc.

Today my British Culture and Society class went to Stonehenge and Bath.  We started at Stonehenge.  The stones, which weigh nearly 40 tons were dragged up to over 100 miles to be placed at the site, and as most people know nobody knows exactly why and how they were erected.  The stones were a lot bigger than I thought based on pictures I had seen, etc.  They are roughly 20 feet tall, but are in 8 foot holes in the ground to help keep them standing.  There isn't much more to say... we didn't get an official tour we just walked around and looked at the site.  It is really big, as you can see from some of the pictures.

The thing I was really excited for was our trip to Bath.  Bath was originally discovered by the ancient Romans, who made a city here with Roman Baths, hence the name.  The Romans settled on the site for their baths because there are natural hot springs where water that is approximately 46 degrees Celsius comes out of the ground.  The Roman spas existed on the site for quite some time until they left Britain hundreds of years before the first century AD.

Later, the British discovered the site, and it had the same appeal that it had to the Romans.  Legend says that a British aristocrat came upon the site after being banished from the court with leprosy.  It was said that he bathed in the hot spring, was cured, and went back to court to tell them of the "curing" waters.  Soon after, a city was built, and it became the vacation spot for the wealthy aristocrats of England who came to bathe in the water and drink "the cure".  In the movie The Duchess, Georgina Spencer comes to Bath to try to help her bear a male heir, which was common in those days.  Also, scenes from the movie were shot here. 

 

This is a famous bridge in the center of Bath.  The only other like it is in Florence Italy.

This is the famous Royal Crescent.  These are the "apartments" (but had 15-20 rooms each complete with servant quarters) that all of the wealthiest aristocrats stayed in when they were in Bath.  The city is like an ancient version of the Hamptons.  Today, one of these apartments would cost about 5 million pounds, or 8 millions dollars. 

Again, the Royal Crescent.  Shots similar to this one can be seen in The Duchess and other movies about 18th Century England.  
This is the Royal Theatre in Bath, which was the first theatre to be commissioned by the king outside of London.   
The remains of the ancient Roman Bath.

At the end of the tour we got to have our own glass of the Bath water, the same water that the English drank in the 18th century.

Me drinking my "cure".

The trip to Bath was the best trip that I've been on so far.  It was really fascinating to be on the site where so many famous people from English history had been, including King Henry VIII, Georgina Spencer Duchess of Devonshire, and Jane Austen.