Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

Please let it be known that Kathryn Knowles Lasdow is

GOING TO PARIS!!!

July 12-15

(All by herself, mind you! :) :) !!!)

She will be back in the states on Wednesday, July 16 at 4:45PM!

"For this is the Cadogan Hotel ..."

For some reason the blog is cutting off half of these pictures -- probably b/c they're too big. Check out facebook if you want to see more. *sigh* Technology ...


Hey all!

I just got back from the best weekend in London and Oxford. We were only gone for two days but we did some pretty cool stuff!

My Oscar Wilde class, along with the Alfred Hitchcock class, left Bath around 8am on Friday for London. After a two-hour bus ride, we were dropped off at the Bayswater Tube station, near Notting Hill, and left to embark on our adventures! My class met up with Professor Adrian Patterson from Oxford. Adrian just finished writing his doctoral thesis and is now a professor. His job was to show us around London and Oxford and tell us all the important stuff!

From Bayswater, we headed to Covent Garden - sight of many adventures for Wilde and Eliza Doolittle! We walked past the Royal Opera House and the market. While inside the market, an opera singer from one of the music conservatories in London stood in the atrium and sung for money. Adrian said that a lot of students will do that in order to make some extra cash. Anywhere that supports free classical music is a great place by me!

Covent Garden Market

Opera singer at Covent Garden


Next we headed to Trafalgar Square and stopped in St. Martin-in-the-fields for a quick look around the church. St. Martin’s was built in the early eighteenth century and has a beautiful white and gold interior. It’s known for the concerts that are held regularly in the church. Across the street is the Royal Art Gallery as well as the Nelson statue.

Trafalgar Square

St. Martin-in-the-Field


We had lunch in Piccadilly Circus - a place where Wilde frequented. We moseyed down the Strand, where the Ritz is located, as well as a lot of gentleman’s clubs where Wilde would go. We saw the Savoy Hotel, but unfortunately it’s completely closed for renovations so we didn’t really get the full effect. But right next door was the Savoy Theater where many of Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas were premiered.

The best part of the day though was definitely tea at the Cadogen Hotel. Wilde went to the Cadogan usually for various “illicit” activities with his gentlemen callers ... It was at the Cadogan where he was arrested and imprisoned without bail for being caught in such a predicament. My seminar and I were lucky to be allowed to have tea and read John Benjamin’s poem “The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogen Hotel.” Now that, was cool.

Cadogan Hotel

That night we hopped on a train at Paddington Station (Yes, the home of Paddington Bear!) and headed to Oxford. We stayed at a youth hostel right at the train station. That night Adrian took us out to the Mitre Pub, where Wilde often went, especially during exams, to hang out. Afterwards, my professor Barbara took us to the Bear - her favorite pub while she was at Oxford.

Oxford is an amazing little city. It’s completely dedicated to the University and its thirty-nine colleges. There’s a misconception in America, and I was definitely guilty of it too, that Oxford University is just one place. In fact, it’s one large university divided up into different institutions. ASE, the program that I’m in, is affiliated with University College at Oxford. Americans and other tourists are often seen buying the typical “Oxford” sweatshirt, when in fact, if you actually went to Oxford you would only buy your college’s apparel. In town there is only one shop where you can buy various colleges’ apparel and that’s Walter’s of Oxford. Walter’s is a gentleman’s clothing shop that sells everything - ties, pants, shoes, and even beanies! It was really interesting to see how much emphasis is still placed on “dressing to impress” at institutions like Oxford.

Oxford’s colleges also have some great traditions that make even William and Mary seem lax! Students are still required to wear black robes for certain ceremonial occasions and Fellows are the only people allowed to walk on the grass. Some of the colleges date back to the 1200’s - one of which, Worcester College, the poet Chaucer attended. Worcester College also happens to be Adrian’s alma mater and he took us around at dusk on Friday night. We passed through this ivy-covered, stone passageway and emerged out onto a large expansive field with a tree in the middle. Adrian then informed us that the passageway that we had just walked through inspired C.S. Lewis to write the Chronicles of Narnia. When Lewis walked through, he came upon the same field, only with a tree and a lamp post! He thought that it would be fascinating to write about a little girl who came through a passage into another land ... hence the wardrobe and Narnia. Too cool!

The passageway that inspired "The Chronicles of Narnia"

Then, today was the day that I have been waiting for. WE WENT TO THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY! The Bodleian is especially important to William and Mary because it was here that they found the Bodleian Plate depicting the architectural features of the Wren Building. It was used during the Rockerfeller Restoration of CW. To the rest of the world, and mostly Oxford, the Bodleian is the University’s main library and also one of the largest libraries in the world. It houses every book ever written. They say that as you walk through Oxford you are “walking on books,” and it’s true! The Bodleian stretches deep below it’s medieval exterior and winds beneath the city streets. No one is ever allowed to check books out of the library - not even Prince Charles when he went to Oxford. It’s a rule that was laid down when the library was created in 1320.

The Bodleian


For all my Harry Potter friends out there (especially Rach, my Book 7 pal!), I also got to see Christ Church College where much of the first and second movies were filmed. My friend Alyx and I went a little crazy running around the Great Hall, Qudditich Pitch, and Quad! It was such a shame that Oliver Wood wasn't out teaching today ... *sigh*

Welcome to Hogwarts! Alyx and me ... pre-sorting hat.

Alyx and me eating dinner in the Great Hall - we're obviously Gryffindors!!! (Or should I say, "Tots Gryffs Obvi ... haha Alyx)

Quidditch, anyone?

Chillin' in the quad before Potions class ...

Later this afternoon we went punting down the river in Oxford past Magdalen College (pronounced Maud-lin), where Oscar Wilde used to spend a lot of his time. Punting is very similar to a operating a Venetian gondola, except very British with boater hats, linen suits, and floral sundresses. It’s a lot harder than it looks! After a hilarious, splashy afternoon of attempting to maneuver the boat down the river we finally managed to get the hang of it. (Check out facebook for a video evidence!)

Scott, with his newly purchased boater hat, attempting to get our boat down the river

Adrian's group faired comparably better ... I think it's b/c he's British.

As for me, I need to sleep! It’s been a long few days .. .but here are some pictures to hopefully show you what I’ve been up to!

Victorious!

For those of you who care to know, I've finally gotten the internet to work on my MacBook!!!! Erin's boyfriend suggested I try downloading Firefox b/c the Safari bandwidth is too slow. After a few attempts I now can use the internet without any connection/speed problems! Woo!

In other news ...

I had a really great night last night hanging out with kids from ASE and some of Erin's British girlfriends that she made while she was studying here. Erica and Sarah's graduation from university was yesterday afternoon so we went and celebrated with them. We ended up at The Huntsman pub in Bath, right across the street from the Nelson House. The pub hosts karaoke every Wednesday night and it's become an ASE staple for the summer. Most of the kids in the program came out.


The Huntsman Pub


Erin, Erica, and I


The girls and I singing some NSYNC. Haha


Sarah and Erica, the cutest Brits in Bath :)



Erin and I are off to meet Erica again tonight for curry at Wetherspoons.

Tomorrow, we leave for Oxford and London!

The man of the hour: Oscar Wilde

So here is a preview of what I will be up to this weekend!

My Oscar Wilde seminar is traveling to Oxford and London to live the life of the great nineteenth-century writer!


Oscar Wilde, the man of the hour


First stop: Oxford to see where he hung out and went to university!


Bodlein Library: The sexiest library on earth, and also where they found the Bodlein plate to restore the Wren Building at William and Mary.


We're going punting in Oxford - from what I've gathered, it's sort of like a gondala except not? I wonder if we get to sport that boating jackets and hats?


Last stop: London! To see Oscar's favorite haunts. We even got special permission to stop in some of the swanky hotels to see where he stayed while in the city.


We're doing so much more than this during the 48 hours that we're gone. I'll be sure to keep you posted!

Katy

Ralph Allen and Prior Park

I just got back from visiting the English cottage, Prior Park, owned and built by Ralph Allen, the controller of all Bath stone and quarrying in the 18th century. It was one of the coolest country houses I have ever seen .... it makes Westover and Shirley look wimpy!!

Ralph Allen was responsible for owning and controlling the Bath stone industry. He's the major reason why much of Georgian Bath looks the way it does since he sold the stone that makes up the buildings. He created a tramway that would transport stone back and forth from the quarries and invested a great deal of money into the city's construction economy.

His house at Prior Park was used as a showplace where visitors to Bath could get great views of the city and hopefully be inspired to build their own country estate out of Bath stone. The estate has beautiful gardens and two Palladian bridges - one of which is an exact copy of a bridge from the Quattro Libre. 

Here are some pictures from this really cool place ... the images just don't do it justice. To think, I live walking distance (1/2 mile) from this awesome house!! Take a left out of my front gate and keep on walking and this is where you end up:

http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk126/kklasd/IMG_0608.jpg
Prior Park


Palladian-inspired bridge


Prior Park


Bridge


Remains of Mrs. Allen's grotto: 18th century women would keep a grotto on their property, a place where a local hermit or monk would live who was responsible for keeping up casual conversation with the owner's guest. No joke! They'd have hermits to converse with ... not sure what the point of that is ...


Grotto


The real Palladian Bridge in the area of the property known as "The Wilderness"


View across the bridge


Corinthian columns on the bridge


Me on the bridge, it's really dark :-/


View of Bath from the house

Pictures from Dublin

All of us in this really cute park next to St. Patrick's Cathedral (Christine, me, Nick, Danny)


Cupola of the City Hall.
Dublin castle
Today was a rainy day in Dublin (Christine, Nick, Danny)
Really cool park next to St. Patrick's Cathedral
Excuse me, St. Patrick's, but I question your scholarship. This plaque reads something along the lines of, "Somewhere around here is where St. Patrick baptized a lot of people."
Inside the cathedral

Luck of the Irish? Dublin!

(Yesterday)

Hey all,

Well, I'm officially in Dublin, Ireland for the weekend. ASE gave us a weekend for free travel and I, along with 8 other ASE-ers, chose to come to Ireland. Our flight got into Dublin last night around 11:30. After going through passport-check, attempting to find a cash-machine or a bureau de change, and grabbing a bus we made it to a street somewhere, but not exactly, near our hostel. So, we wandered around Dublin at 12:30AM trying to find this place. We eventually stumbled upon it and made ourselves at home.

We're staying in Citi Hostel in Dublin (www.citihostels.com, for those that want to check it out more). I'm staying in a room with two girls from ASE (Kristen from W&M and Christine from Denison) and there's a woman from I think Australia (just a guess) as well. It was tough trying to sleep last night - our window was open and a group of REALLY LOUD Irish drunks were outside yelling about how excited they were that "McDonalds breakfast opens soon!!!"

This is definitely one of the weirder hostels that I've stayed in - similar to the one from UCC NY service trip. The sinks and shower have faucets that you have to continuously keep pushing down in order for water to flow... I guess they're trying to conserve? And "continental breakfast" consisted of toast, jam, butter, milk, and moldy bananas (Yum...). It's really confusing to get around and everything is a 5Euro refundable deposit. My towel = 5Euros that I get back when I return it, my locker = 5Euros that I get back when I return it, NUTS!

So far I haven't seen too much of the city - except for what we saw on the bus and it was dark. It's a lot bigger than I imagined, but there was a lot of cool old buildings when we were driving around, so I'm sure I'll find some place fun to explore. We don't have a set itinerary, which of course you know is kind of bugging me. But I'm sure it'll turn out okay as soon as I get my hands on a map!! No more of this blind leading the blind. *sigh*

All right, well that's all for now :) I'll be sure to keep you posted on what's going on.

(Later:)

I hate traveling in huge groups. Today was exhausting. Once we finally made it into the city center (we got lost for a while ...) Dublin is pretty neat. It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be and a lot more urban. We walked in a huge loop around the entire tourist section, across the River Liffey, and back towards the Guinness Storehouse.

It was frustrating because we all wanted to do different things - most of the girls wanted to shop, but me and the guys wanted to walk around and see stuff. After finally getting everyone to stop shopping and actually figure out what we wanted to do we decided on the Guinness Storehouse.

The Storehouse is probably one of the coolest museums I’ve ever been in. (Is it sad that it’s dedicated to beer???) It’s 7 floors high and the inside is shaped like a pint glass. On the top floor they have what’s called the “Sky Bar” where you can get a free pint of Guinness and look at a 360’ view of Dublin. My group finally made its way up to the top floor and hung out there for a while. Afterwards, we headed back to the hostel I was so tired I could hardly move when we got back. I realized later that I had only eaten a bagel at about 10:00. We didn’t eat dinner till after 7:00!! That was not cool.

Later we all went pub hopping around the Temple Bar area. We went into Temple Bar, spent way too much money on cider, and then headed elsewhere. The pub scene here is pretty crazy, there were people everywhere!! We made our way through about 4 different pubs before we headed home for the night.

I was pretty stressed out and homesick this afternoon after an exhausting day of hauling ass around the city. Things got better later, though.

All right, I’m off to bed.
Good night!

Today:

Today was SO MUCH BETTER than yesterday. Nick, Danny, Christine and I broke away from the group that wanted to shop all day and did our own thing instead. We got to sleep in (The first time I’ve done that since I’ve gotten to the UK!) and take our time getting ready to go and sightsee.

It was raining pretty heavily when we first set out, and poor Christine forgot to bring an umbrella or a raincoat. We stopped inside St. Stephen’s Shopping Center and bought her and Danny umbrellas. We poked around in the mall for a while waiting for the rain to let up and then we finally set out.

Our first stop was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was so cool inside, lots of stained glass, gothic architecture everywhere. I’m really glad I got to see it. Then we made our way back towards the City Center and stopped in a pub for lunch. The food here is nothing to rave about.

Walking back towards the hostel we found our way into Dublin Castle, St. Werburgh’s, and City Hall. Basically what they’ve done is taken the Medieval castle and built up inside the castle walls. There is medieval, gothic, and neoclassical architecture all mixed together into this crazy group of buildings. Everyone was awesome and humored me while I ran around all excited about the really cool buildings. I wanted to go inside and tour around but I’m not sure if it was worth spending the Euros.

Now we’re back in the hostel waiting for the other group to get here. People wanted to go on an organized pub crawl tonight but it costs 10 Euros and I’d rather we just went around on our own and not spend the extra money, but we’ll see.

We head back to Bath tomorrow morning bright and early. We have to be up and ready to go at 6:45AM. Ugh!!!

It’ll be nice to get back to Prior Park.

Cornwall weekend

Oh my goodness! I just got home from the longest weekend of my life!! We’ve spent the last three days in Cornwall, the Southern coastal section of England. We stayed in a youth hostel in Coverack and then traveled all around Cornwall seeing the sites They split up our houses so we could supposedly mingle and meet new people but my housemates and I spent most of the weekend missing Prior Park. I am so exhausted... but in the end, as usual, it was worth it.

On Thursday night before we left, my house (31 Prior Park) and the house around the corner (5 Clarendon Villas) got together at Clarendon for a pot-luck. We wanted to get rid of all the food we had that was going to go bad over the weekend. It turned out to be the best meal I’ve had since I’ve gotten to England (I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing...). We baked chicken, made pasta, had vegetables, pizza, lots of random mixtures of food... it was awesome.

We left for Cornwall Friday morning at 7:45 (ugh!) and drove for 3-ish hours to Tintagel Castle - the supposed birthplace of King Arthur and the home of the wizard Merlin’s cave. We hiked up the cliff leading to the castle and walked all around up above the coast. We had amazing views all around the ocean and the fields. The ocean water here looks like the Caribbean - there’s white sand and it’s bright blue.

From there, we made it to Coverack, a teeny tiny little town on the Western coast of Cornwall. The town has one main road about half a mile long with a few windy side streets leading away from it. There’s one church, one post office, one store, and one hotel/pub for probably about 5 miles in either direction. We spent the night at the youth hostel. That night for dinner we had Cornish pasties (past-ees, not pay-stee), this fairly disgusting pot-pie like thing with meat and vegetables. I don’t really recommend it.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early for a trip to The Lizard, the southern-most town in England. We hiked around the Lizard’s cliffs led by this geologist/botanist (aka Morgan and Rachel’s favorite old man) old guy named Pat Sargeant. He told us what plants were edible/not, where orange carrots came from (made especially for William of Orange ... go tribe!), and took us around on our hike. He made some strange presentation where attempted to demonstrate the geological history of the world through a role of toilet paper??? We were all a little bit lost on that one.

After our hike on the Lizard, we drove another 2 hours to St. Ives, probably the most touristy beach in Cornwall. My friends and I braved the FREEZING cold waters and swam in the English side of the Atlantic ocean! It was fantastic! (Morgan, you would have totally loved it!) We walked around St. Ives and went to the Tate modern art museum and the Barbara Hepworth museum. It’s a really cool little town. I wish we could have spent more time there. That night we headed back to Coverack for a traditional English BBQ consisting of chicken, steak, and bacon (Blaakman, you would have been in food-heaven lol :) ) and french fries, followed by Cornish ice cream made from clotted cream, SO GOOD.

That night my friends and I headed to Coverack beach and sat out on the rocks watching the sunset - really cool. (Emily, we found this one beach that to get to it it was seriously like walking into the Secret Garden, I was expecting Dickon to pop out of the woods with a sheep or something any second, lol, I wished you were there to see it!)

Today we all woke up and felt so sick because we’re all exhausted from the traveling. Luckily, the staff caught on that we were not happy campers and shortened the day’s itinerary - instead of going on another hike in the town Widecombe on the Moore, we left early and headed back to Bath. THANK GOD.

Now we’re back in 31 Prior Park - and I never thought I’d say it but it’s good to be home.

PS HAPPY FATHER’S DAY DAD :)

Tintagel Castle (Birthplace of King Arthur)

Beginning the hike, we had to cross this really narrow bridge (left) over the ocean to get up to the castle ruins
Merlin's cave, two of my friends swam in there and looked around - you can get in when the tide goes down, but they obviously could not wait :)
View backwards of our hike
Me at Tintagel
Tintagel ruins

Coverack (where we stayed)

Main road through coverack
the Paris Hotel
Coverack boats

Hike at The Lizard
Our guide, check out the bandana. Haha
Me at the Lizard

Me and Kristen at the Lizard
The end of the hike - the water was so blue!

St. Ives
We totally swam in that water :)
Awesome doorway and lintels with sea shells and glass
Main beach area in St. Ives