England

INTRODUCCION

The first week after the semester ended Hemanth and Juan went to the UK. We rented a car and drove around everywhere on the left side of the road. Stores and restaurants were open more often than in Spain, except you couldn't eat for less than 7 dollars! Also the metro (London Underground) closed at midnight and the clubs all closed at 3:00 or earlier.

LONDON

While Juan claimed allegiance to the Hard Rock in Madrid (he went there 7 times in the 4 months), a visit to the original Hard Rock Cafe here in London was nevertheless required. Hemanth risked his life standing in the street to take this picture. In the bag is an original Hard Rock T-shirt, the classic ones which Juan is negligent to buy unless he goes to the original Hard Rock (or a certain other one 7 times in 4 months).
This is the inside of the original Hard Rock Cafe, which is important, because it actually looks like a cafe. The memorabilia in this room is somewhat more significant than other Hard Rocks. Also there are the two bars, the drinking bar, which can be seen at the beginning, and the eating bar, which can be seen at the end.
This is the English Houses of Parliament with Big Ben, taken across the Westminster Bridge of the River Thames. The fog in London fades in and out, and this is a particularly clear picture. Like most people Hemanth thought that the continuous fog sucked, but Juan really liked it.
Here's a movie of the north side of the Houses where Big Ben is. You can also see the double-decker buses crossing the street, which Juan and Hemanth decided were better than the long double busses of Madrid. We never got to take one however. Also, we decided for having the level of fame that the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower have, Big Ben is actually quite small.
Not so small is the enormous London Eye Ferris wheel on the other side of Westminster Bridge alongside the London Aquarium. They built the eye for the celebration of the year 2000, and it is well representative of the British propensity to maintain and add to the existent tourist industry.
This is Westminster Abbey, probably from the north wall. The abbey is probably the closest you'll come to a Catholic cathedral in Spain, but I guess we'll never know since they didn't let us take pictures inside. Also, the abbey is really crowded, and it would probably be greatly difficult to effectively worship there. The highly geometric shapes make this Abbey look more rectangular than most Spanish churches. Probably the best part is the coat of arms room inside, in between the crypts of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.
This is the great Buckingham Palace right before the ceremonial part of the changing of the guard. Most of this happens in a gated area in front of the palace itself, so all the people surround the area pressed up against the gates. This is a really stupid military positioning if you think about it, but with today's modern weapons it wouldn't there are far more difficult considerations.
In front of the Palace is the great fountain followed by the Mall, St. James Park, and Green Park. This movie demonstrates what it's like to be standing on the fountain. This whole area is very close to the rest of the tourist attractions except the Tower of London, which unfortunately we ran out of time to see.
These are the Buckingham ceremonies, part of the changing of the guard. This movie is taken on the other side of the fountain from the last one. The changing of the guard turns out to be like a new parade everyday, except it's always the same.
This is Picadilly Circus, the greatest metro part of London for years now. We got here during the day on Juan's mad CD buying excursion, produced by the fact that about 80% of his favorite bands are British. The light show here is good, but it's actually quite small, since there are very few tall buildings in London compared to other great capitals.
Here are the Picadilly Circus advertisements by night, from the window of car as we passed it (on the left side of the road of course).
Not a subway, or a metro, but the London "Underground" as they call it, is characterized by it's "tube" trains and fairly pretty stations, like this one at Picadilly Circus. This metro must cost something like 4 times as much as the one in Madrid to ride but is much more essential, since there is almost no parking in London. The small trains can also get really packed sometimes.
Both the hostels we stayed in were in the neighborhood of Russell Square, which is filled with this great park and a outdoors restaurant. The weather here is perfect, unless you don't like the gloomy sky.
This is Trafalgar Square, a more stately square than the more neighborhood-like Russell Square. The building in the back is the national gallery.

WINDSOR

This Legoland is the glorious reason we went to Windsor, a small fairy tale town that is relative to London and the Heathrow airport the same way that Alcalá is relative to Madrid and the Barajas airport.
This is what it's like to drive around in England. There are round- abouts, BP gas stations with 95, 97, and 99 octane gas, and Ferraris randomly scattered about. Most of the street signs in Windsor are directions on how to get to Legoland and the castle. Nevertheless, there is beautiful scenery everywhere.

YORK

This is St. Leonards place in York, across from the Art Museum. York is a devastating city because it all smells like fish and chips. This is in front of where we began our York city historical volunteered tour.
The first place that we went to on the tour was to this tower and other assorted remains. The bottom part of this tower was made by the Romans and the higher part is from the medieval Anglo Saxon times. The coffins they placed out here are Roman and were dug out from another place across the river. Hemanth is actually at the edge of this picture if you look closely.
This is the York Minster, the English cathedral of the town. This church has an enormous amount of stained glass, although not of colorful as that of Spanish cathedrals (Toledo, Leon). It does however, allow much more light to enter, which is somewhat necessary among the foggy skies of east England.
This is a movie of the York Minster. These windows are as big as tennis courts. For some reason they have chairs inside this church rather than the long bench pews.
This is a view from the old walls surrounding York. Nearby is a huge Kit Kat factory, that the tour guide actually used to work at. On the other side of this wall here you see the Minster in the distance.
This is the Clifford's Tower in the south center of York. Hemanth and Juan found it not so spectacular. Although it is an ancient tower right in the middle of the city. As we learn in the York Dungeon adventure spectacular, they used to torture Jewish people here back in the day.
Really the most important part of York, this is Wacker's restaurant, where Juan had to go after smelling the city-wide aroma of fish and chips. Most of the clientele here are senior citizens such as you would find in a Luby's or Furr's cafeteria in the U.S.. Younger people tend to get their fish and chips from take out places, which there are a lot of all the way up through Scotland.

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