Miscellanea: September 2012

So maybe you've heard from my parents. Or not. About our trip to England and how there was this blackout at our cottage on our first night there and that's when I come into the story (they always seem to make it sound like it's the most exciting part. D:). Well, what happened - you'll find out yourself soon enough.

So I was thinking and I thought that I should now tell the story from my point of view instead.
Yes, so you get to see whether it really was that scary or not. Or fascinating. Or exciting. Whatever.

And I should've posted this like, 9 months ago, but I guess procrastination got the best of me.

So basically, I was really hyped. I mean, I've been travelling overseas all the time but I've never been to the United Kingdom (let alone England) so, yes, I was hyped (at that time) about the fact that we would be going to the United Kingdom.

We packed, and left for England on December 17th, 2011.

Waiting for the plane to take off.

An adorable (yet mischievous) kid I saw in the airport.

Watching Justin Bieber at the 2011 BRITs in the plane. ;)

When he won the award.

The first photo I got in London. :)

We arrived at London Heathrow airport in the early morning (at around 6am, as far as I can remember). We rented our car from Hertz and while waiting for my sister to arrive from Belfast (as she's studying there), we decided to go to Tesco as it was in the Heathrow aiport compound.

Frost on the car window.

Heathrow.

The scenery. I guess I like taking photos of the sun rays, so do excuse me if you think there's nothing special about it.

We saw snow! :D

And so, I got this photo.

Our first stop in England:-

Oxford

Oxford University. It looked absolutely perfect.

Just a random lane we came across.

This is where they filmed The Great Hall for the Harry Potter movies, or so they say.

The quality's kind of bad because it was dark, but yeah.

Yeah, so after that, being out all day (from the airport in the early morning to Tesco then to Oxford for pretty much the rest of the day), we decided to head to our cottage in Stratford-Upon-Avon. It was quite dark by the time we left Oxford - it wasn't night time yet, it was winter and it actually got dark at 4pm. Yeah, four in the afternoon. Or evening, whatever. My mum was driving and we got the directions from the cottage owner through email so we referred to the email (my sister had her data plan on her phone and all) and we came to the right road eventually but we just couldn't find our cottage. We drove up and down the same road for God knows how many times but we still failed to locate the cottage so we called up the cottage owner but she didn't pick up. We then decided to turn off to a small restaurant-like place and my sister went in to ask for directions. By that time, my mum was all mad for us not helping (Um, I'm not entirely sure about what she meant. Or maybe I forgot why she was mad.) so after getting the directions from the people in the restaurant, my Dad drove and, like, at least half an hour later, we noticed a small barn-like building so we stopped and went down. There was a small cottage there and as it wasn't gated, we decided to go and take a closer look (the owner mentioned that there was a 'Shakespeare Cottage' sign on the house) and we saw the sign. Initially, while looking for the cottage, we thought that the sign would've been big enough for passer-bys to see but I guess it wasn't. And the house? It wasn't that prominent either.

Thankful that we finally found our cottage after searching for at least an hour and a half, we brought our luggage down and we then realised that the barn-like thingy was the garage. Like, uh, okayyy. My Dad parked our car in there and came into the house while we looked around. It was tiny, sort of, and not what my mum expected it to be. After we got all our stuff safe in the cottage, my brother decided to take a bath as we haven't had baths for more than 24 hours! He took a short bath, came out and I decided to bathe next 'cause I couldn't stand not washing my hair for so long! Ew. I went in, turned on the shower and, you know, bathed. After soaping myself, I realised that there wasn't shampoo for me to wash my hair. Ugh. My parents asked me not to wash my hair as it was cold but I insisted on doing so.

And things start to get interesting from here.

Just as I was about to raise my hands to soap my hair, POP! Everything went black. I didn't know what to do. I was rooted to the spot. I told myself not to panic - it's the worse thing you could ever do when something goes wrong, but then reality hit me - it was winter, in Stratford-Upon-Avon, located north of London, I didn't have my clothes on and there was no electricity (which meant no lights and heater. Nothing.) I was like, "Shit." I don't know. I didn't know what to do. So I just stood there in the bathtub, pondering my next step. I couldn't put my clothes back on - I was wet! I was telling myself, "Hmm, it isn't that cold, actually." Later on, maybe five or ten minutes later, I started shivering, literally. I could feel myself shaking. No, seriously. So much for England not being 'that cold' during winter. Eventually, my sister came to the toilet with her phone - she was using the torchlight app, and I wiped myself dry (thank God I washed the soap off before trying to start to shampoo my hair before the blackout) and put on my pyjamas. Fast forward to about half-an-hour later, I was in the hall, in my clothes and another two jackets, still shivering. Gosh. The shivering just refused to stop. Later on, the cottage owner rushed over (about half an hour later as they live quite far away from our cottage) and said that the electricity circuit didn't trip. She brought her husband and son along and they brought us to another house (they probably owned). Her husband and son helped us carry our luggage to the car and off we were to our new house. The new house was much nicer, to be honest. It was a double-storey one. though. We were finally able to settle down. Thank God.

I'd say it wasn't entirely traumatising for me, but, I have to say, it was kind of freaky.

But,

I went to sleep, with electricity.

Day 2

Anne Hathaway's Cottage

There was this awesome coin-crushing machine there. It crushes your coin and shapes it into a flat piece of thing with Shakespeare related stuff. It depends on which design you choose, really.

Anne Hathaway's cottage.

This pie was lovely.

Magical.

Beliebers go hard, remember? ;)

Day 3

Warwick

I woke up at like 6am (I couldn't sleep) and I looked out of the window and saw the moon and decided to get a photo of it. The photo doesn't look that good, though.

Pine cone and a peacock feather.

Some sort of berry outside our rented house.

There were apples too.

Warwick castle.

Peacocks roaming around.

Hand-wrestling, anyone?

An owl. *-*

We never get such awesome signs here.

I think I'm the only one who noticed this: This wax figure doesn't have eyelashes. :O
P.S. I'm just observant like that. ;P

Day 4

Ledbury

We were to leave Stratford-Upon-Avon for Abergavenny and I got some photos of our house before we left. I didn't get to get any photos of the cottage which we first lived in for a few hours, though. The one where the blackout occured.

The dining area. There were actually two dining areas, to be honest. We used the other one, not this though.

Our living room. Or TV room. Whichever you'd prefer to call it. It looks cosier at night.

The corridor upstairs. It's long. I think there were about 5 to 6 bedrooms. Huge, I know.

Me and my siblings' bedroom.

We even had a pool room. Awesome.

On our way to Abergavenny, we stopped at this small town, Ledbury.

My sister likes this photo I took. I must say I'm a little honoured.

Some sort of weird berry.

Day 5

Cardiff

Some sort of super bike, I guess.

In the market.

BIGGEST BLOCK OF BUTTER I'VE EVER SEEN.

Temptations.

Candy!

Well.

Roasting a pig.

Cardiff Castle. We ended up not going in. :(

Tea or coffee, I forgot.

We went shopping.

The Cardiff City football club stadium. :O

It's a Belieber's thing. ♡

Day 6

Abergavenny

The Abergavenny museum.

After that, we went to Tintern, a small town.

As far as I know, there were hardly any people there. :|

SHEEP.

Tintern Abbey (I think this is the gift shop).

Tintern Abbey.

I pitied this cocker spaniel. It was winter, raining, in England, and it was soaking wet.

Mobile post office.

Tintern Abbey right before we left.

Sunset.

Day 7

Bath

(on our way to London)

Before we left our house in Abergavenny.

Through the car window.

Yup, I had mint Kit Kats tucked safely into the back of the driver's seat.

Those Kit Kats are plain epic, by the way.

The Roman Baths

Inside the Roman Baths building.

Busking.

Water droplets.

I touched the water. Then I realised it was dirty. Ugh.

Paintball!

A seagull.

Tell me if it was the squirrel you noticed first in this photo.

The Royal Crescent.

Nice little items in a shop.

Stalking the police. Hope it isn't illegal.

Day 8

Christmas Day

It was Christmas day and since there weren't any public transport services (we returned our car when we arrived in London and used the London Underground instead to get to places in London), we stayed in our rented apartment.

Later at night, we went to my Dad's old school friend's house for Christmas dinner. That friend of my Dad's cooked. And gosh, the turkey was perfect! We even had Christmas pudding (it was my first time trying Christmas pudding, so it was pretty cool). And his children - a boy and a girl (they're pretty much grown up already) are pretty much geniuses. They're lawyers and they studied in Oxford University. Yes, you got that right, Oxford University. And the daughter's a Canadian! :D Plus both children have awesome British accents.

I think that was the best Christmas I've ever had so far.

Day 9

London

I find it funny how they put up this sign ('cause there probably were too many people who came to see Platform 9 3/4).

This was in Green Park, I think (There were too many parks there and it's hard for me to remember).

Buckingham Palace

The bird on his head.

A one-legged pigeon.

This never fails to remind me of Justin when he wasn't that popular yet. I remember watching a video he posted at that time of him sitting here and performing with just his guitar and his friend. And later on people just slowly started crowding around him. Ah, memories.