A Trot Through Wales

London has been such a great city to be in. While I've only actually spent two full days in the city and the other two in Wales, I still love what I see around. The weekend was such a great experience here. Friday night we went to a youth/college age worship night put on by Hillsong Church at a theatre known as "The Forum" (the first of its kind to be done here in London). It was so powerful to see Jr High, High School and College-agers come together to worship as one body, jumping around, singing and just praising our God. The band was amazing and the worship and prayer time made such an impact. They had some students up on stage at the very end of the night to pray us out, and one of the students, who wasn't more than 12 or 13, hit me in the gut with his prayer. He talked about having a wall up between you and God, and to just let it down and let Him in between that wall... I can't put the words together as well as he did and he is so young, yet so rich in his place with God (or so it seemed). It was just an amazing night and some much needed time spent with God.

Saturday and Sunday we went on a tour to Wales. We boarded our bus Saturday morning after stopping at the nearby Starbucks and awing at all the Christmas decorations they have out. I think it's so early to have Christmas things out already, but I have to remind myself that they don't have a holiday like Thanksgiving here in between Halloween and Christmas. I still love the vibe that Christmas brings though!

We spent most of the day on and off the tour bus, making stops along the way to Brecon, Wales. Our tour brought us to the Chepstow Castle, Tintern Abbey and another small town, known for its second hand bookstores. The sights were amazing, especially the ruins of this old Abbey that stood during Henry the 8th time. The hostel accommodations were also great. I had expected a pretty run down place, but our hostel room was like a hotel room with four twin beds in it, that were soooo comfortable. Two of Samira's friends were also on the trip with us, Kristin and Stevie, who made me laugh so hard all weekend.

Sunday was spent in the Wales countryside on horseback. The horse I rode was named Nimbus, like the Nimbus 2000 broomstick Harry Potter had! He was quite the character and had a personality to him that was quite ornery, but warmed up to me after a little while. The hills were rolling green, with rich colors of golden yellow, burnt orange and reds all around, even the dirt (well mud here) was saturated in color. It rained a bit for the first two hours we were riding, but it wasn't unbearable until the last hour when sheets of rain came pouring down and the wind smacked it right into your face. We were sopping wet by the end of our tour and it was so cold, but we all still had a great time. The beauty of the countryside is unspeakable. It literally felt like I was looking at a picture someone took and then digitally enhanced its colors. Who knew that there were colors outside of the "California brown." It's just a bummer that I didn't get any pictures of it, because we weren't allowed to have our cameras while riding the horses, because they could spook easily. Needless to say, it was beautiful there.

We made a stop in Oxford on our way back into London as well, and visited the famous "Eagle and Child" pub, where JRR Tolkein and C.S. Lewis were some of the writers who used to meet to bounce ideas off eachother for their next great book. It had a cool atmosphere inside and delicious Treacle Tart.

Our weekend came to an end when our bus arrived back in London and we were back in Sam's room at the university of Westminster. We were happy to be 'home' and warmed up by the scolding hot showers we took, but sad that we were no longer in beautiful Wales.

My trip is coming to a sad ending in a few days when I must return home. I am happy to see everyone, but sad that traveling is coming to an end.

Foggy Londontown

No fog yet, but the air is crisp, cool, partly cloudy and a light drizzle here and there! I also experienced my first London tube ride on three separate rail lines to get back to Samira's dorm room. Another day of traveling to get here from Athens. It was hard saying goodbye to Lara and Erica as I got on the tram to ride to the airport. We had such a great time the last three weeks and I could not have asked for better travel buddies! Anyhow, I have decided that plane rides aren't so exciting and not so fun when you have a man sitting next to you with bad breath and leaning over armrest. Apparently his seat was not large enough (even though he was not a large man at all).

I had a bit of a scare at the airport coming through passport check/customs when I didn't know the address I was staying at and the man said "well how are you going to know where you're going?" I told him my friend was picking me up and he got her name and number as I handed him the piece of paper with Samira's name and number, hands trembling. He obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Lesson learned...always be nice to the customs check and just answer their questions.

Tomorrow we are going to see some sights and go to a worship night at Hillsong Church, London and a horseback riding tour through Wales this weekend! I'm definitely looking forward to my time here in Londontown. More from London soon and I will be back in the states one week from today...crazy!!!

Dirty Street Vendors

Athens, the land of Grecian architecture, delicious gyros and a huge flea market! We have been exploring the city again, much like we did in Rome. We walk everywhere, which I love that we are able to do. Mark, who we met at the last hostel has been traveling with us so it makes for a good dynamic with the four of us...he usually keeps us on track to where we are going most of the time!

Yesterday, we slept in til about noon because we hadn't gotten into our hostel til about 2:30 am from the airport after flying in from Corfu. We had heard there was a huge fresh produce type market on sundays near the flea market til about 2 so we went exploring, as we usually do. We found the flea market fairly easy since it is huge and probably about 6 or seven different streets. We asked a few people but couldn't find it so we just trekked around the flea market looking at all the cheap, knock-offs there are to buy, like the NEKE (instead of NIKE) sweatshirts and Calvin Klain (instead of Klein) underwear that we spotted and had a laugh about. We found delicious souvlaki for about 2 euros (which is like a shredded chicken pita) and great capuccino freddo (sweetened ice capuccino) at a cafe off one of the main streets. Probably one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had, and we all know how much coffee I drink! I got addicted to them when we were in Italy. I love the street vendors everywhere that we go where you can buy peanuts, roasted corn or chestnuts, sugar donuts, and gyros or souvlaki. We've had souvlaki now for all our main meals and we definitely stopped at McDonald's for 1 euro coffee this morning!

Today we visted the Acropolis and surrounding ruins that were the main part of the city in ancient times. The structures are amazing and Mark told us that one of the reasons why ancient structres are still so intact is because of the pure mixtures used for their "cement." Also another little fun fact is that the columns that occur in most of the structures were put together in pieces, rather than the one huge chuck of marble I always assumed the columns were carved out of. Like Rome, words cannot describe and pictures cannot depict how these structures look. We also went through the Agorra below the Acropolis and also a museum that had different pottery, jewelry and statues. While the statues are missing parts, they are still huge pieces of marble, but it would be amazing to see their actual size if they were whole again.

We did a little shopping as well, since I needed to buy a few warm and cheap things for my trip to London in a few days! We are now at a 24 hour internet cafe and going to have another cheap souvlaki from a "dirty street vendor" as Erica likes to refer to them as, but they are the best we've had!