The good thing I guess about having to spend the day by the computer while I'm ripping music is that I get inspired to write in my blogspot!
Now I've come to the point where I'll tell you about my trip to England (15th to 19th of December).
I went there with a friend, whose name I won't be mentioning here because he hasn't got a blogspot of his own, and therefore isn't "published" on the internet himself, and then, well, keeping him anonomus seems like the right thing to do.
Anyway, our trip to England was to start by the 1150 flight from Gardermoen to Heathrow on Thursday the 15th of December. The night before both me and my friend attended a Christmas party. This is an annual tradition with a bunch of friends, so we didn't want to miss it. We both agreed though that we weren't going to drink much, and we certainly weren't going to be late!! At about half past two in the morning I got back to my bed - far from sober - and at 8 in the morning I had to get up again. I didn't feel half bad, and certainly felt a little better when I got a message from my friend who told me that he was slightly worse than me because his head was killing him!!! My biggest problem that morning was stuffing whatever I still had left of my personal belongings in the flat into my big blue suitcase, because when I left the flat that morning I was also moving out of it. I had been planning for a long time to pack one small and one big suitcase, the smaller one for England, the bigger one to be left at Gardermoen till I got back and headed for Solör. I was amazed at how many things I actually had left in the apartment - and was sweating - alot - while trying to squeeze them all into the suitcase - I didn't manage with everything. And in the end left a couple of things that I thought - well, I can live without these!
So at the agreed time I got on the tram, one stop to the bus stop 3 minutes from the flat that would bring us to Gardermoen. Things went fairly well. I left the big suitcase at left luggage, and we got to the gate at time. Then the plane was delayed - of course it was, because we had layed a plan that included the plane landing on time, 1325 English time, and us catching the 1445 bus to Winchester. Our plane was to land on terminal 4, this meant that since the bus left from the central bus station on Heathrow we would have to get on the Heathrow Express to the bus station to actually catch the bus. So, 1 hour and 15 minutes for getting off the plane, getting the luggage and getting to the bus station didn't seem half bad. But then, as I said, the plane was 40 minutes late from Oslo airport.
The captain on the plane was not at all happy about that. He spent the first 15 minutes after we all got on the plane to explain why they were delayed. The Norwegians had decided to have a surprise security check on their plane that day - and he kept repeting "which they of course are totally allowed and entiteled to do....." and he didn't exactly yell you his frustration - but when he was rambeling on for like 15 minutes we sort of got how unhappy he was about this security check, without him actually saying much else than that this was something they were allowed to do!
Anyway, we landed on Heathrow at about 1350. The luggage arrived surprisingly fast, and we got the bus station at 1440. We hadn't bought any tickets for the bus, on the internet, before leaving Norway, because we suspected that planes might be delayed and so on - and if we hadn't caught the bus, there wasn't going to another one for 2 hours -and then we would have gone by train. When we got the the bus we asked if we could buy tickets from the driver - he was not very happy about this. He told us that he would prefer it if we could buy tickets at the ticket office, "it's just over there!". We asked if he was still going to leave on 1445, he said yes, we run in the direction of "just over there" - but there was no ticket office just over there, because there's lot of building work going on at the central bus station at Heathrow these days, so we couldn't find it. We run back to the bus and asked once more if we could buy tickets from the driver - and he said yes, but only if we had the correct change! He didn't seem very happy when I asked the price and then told him that I did indeed have the right change. Then he had to write to tickets for us by hand AND he had to get off the bus to find somewhere to store our luggage - but we did get on the bus and was finally on our way to Winchester.
It's about an hours bus drive, we arrived in Winchester at around 16. Made a stop at McDonald's because we just wanted to eat something that really was fast food. M friend suggested a cab to the hotel, but I had printed the worlds worst map from the internet and said I was sure it was no more than about half a kilometres walk to the "Giffard House hotel" and I'd like to walk to see a bit of the city. I turned out to be about 2 kilometres walk, and my silly little map was so small and so bad that we really had a tought time actually locating the hotel - but we got there in the end.
(JUHUUU! By now I've ripped 2 of the 27 CD's I'm planning on ripping for the iTunes library!)
The "
Giffard House Hotel" is actually an excellent place to stay. I would recommend it to anyone. It's not very big, but the rooms are so exclusive, so nice, and the bathroom was amazing, so beautiful. It's in a rather quiet part of Winchester, but only about 5 - 10 minutes walk from the main street. A bit of a walk I'll admit if you arrive by bus and have got a suitcase to bring with you, but other than that - if you're going to stay in Winchester, you can't go wrong with Giffard House Hotel. Not bad prices either.
That evening in Winchester we went to an Italian restaurant on the main street (can't rememeber neither the name of the street nor the restaurant at the moment), it was very nice, great food! We had planned on going to a pub after dinner, but somehow, all the travelling and the probably also the Christmas party from the previous night caught up with us and we were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel at 10 and went to sleep.
The next morning we walked over to the university of Winchester, it was only about 5 minutes from the hotel. It's rather small, but I wasn't expecting anything else either, after all, Winchester is a city of only 50 000 people, and there are only about 5000 students at the university and many of them are mature part time students as well. It looked like nice place though, we even inspected the the are where all the students live on campus (even though I have no plans on doing that!) and it looked like a very good place to be a student. We walked for a little while around Winchester - and from what I was I gather that everything goes on in and around the main street of Winchester, outside that one it's a fairly quiet city.
We got on a train around 11. We were going to London that day, but had decided that we wanted to see some of the nearest big city to Winchester before we left; Southampton. It's about 20 minutes by train south of Winchester. We went there, walked around for a couple of hours, saw the football stadion (since my friend is a football fan, not of Southampton though - but anything that's got to do with football is worth seeing...) - and then got on the train for London.
In London we arrived at the Waterloo station. I was a bit tired after all the walking we'd done around Winchester and Southampton so I suggested a cab to the hotel in Earls Court, because that, I thought, would be faster than going on the underground having to change trains at last once - and it really didn't look very far on my map. I guess, know how bad rush hour can be in Oslo, I should've have been able to deduct that rush hour in London wouldn't be any better than in Oslo - it wasn't. The traffic hardly moved at all. The trip to the hotel took about half an hour and cost about £20. Oh well, if you're on vacation, you're on vacation....
The next days we spent doing typical touristy things. It was my friend's first trip to London, and we saw Trafalger Square, Buckingham Palace, Oxford Street, Hyde Park, Big Ben and the Parliament, and the Science museum. We also saw London Eye, but didn't get on it. We're both a bit worried about hights, and I've actually been on it once before, and it was neccessarily a very happy experience - it's a long way down when you're on top of the London Eye!!!
We did of course go to pubs, and on Sunday afternoon we saw the football match between Chelsea and ... and .... and.... some other London based football team, at a local pub. Earls Court isn't very far from Chelsea and it soon became quite evident that most of the people in the pub cheered for Chelsea. I'm not much into football myself, but I actually think it's an experience worth having to watch a match at a pub in England - they're all awfully excited about it. I spent more of the time drinking my beer and watching the people though, then watching the game.
On Sunday morning we went to Harrods. It was SO incredibly crowded we both got claustrophobic after about 15 minutes and left. On my way out I noticed a 3 legged massage thingy that was on sale for £10 and for 2 seconds thought about buying one - and then thought, ahhh, no.... In the evening back at the hotel I thought some more about it, and my friend also did - and we decided we hadn't bought much else in England, so this would be the great thing to buy.
The plan for Monday was that we had to check out of the hotel at about 1030 to catch the flight at around 1300 from Heahtrow. We decided to get up early, got to Harrods to be there at 9 to buy these massage thingys - should be plenty of time. We got the Harrods on time, and found it closed - it didn't open till 10. Most sensible people would probably then have thought to go back to the hotel, but we should never be blamed of being sensible people. We reasoned that since our hotel was on the same underground line as Harrods and only 4 stops away - we could wait till 10 and still get back to the hotel on time. We stayed till 10, rushed into the store, to the 2nd floor, found the things - and walked not so fast out of there. As it turned out, early morning at Harrods is a good time to be there - there were no people anywhere, just us and those working there - and at that time we would actually have liked to stay for a while, but..... At 1020 we left Harrods and run for the underground station, got down to our platform, and met a service person who informed us that this line was now closed and that we should find other means of transportation if we wanted to get to Earls Court!!! We hit the street and found a bus. When we got the hotel it was 1059. Luckily I had packed my suitcase before leaving that morning, and we were at Earls Court underground station at 1115 - and for once we were lucky - when we came running to the platform a train was just about to leave and we caught it in time. We got the airport around 12. I spent about half an hour checking in my luggage, and being irritated at stupid people. There are these self service check in terminals, and then you drop your luggage at a certain place. About half the person in front of me at the drop spot had NOT checked in at the self service terminals, and they were not allowed to check in at the drop spot either - but they kept arguing about it with the personell working there..... Anyway, at 1230 I had checked in my luggage. My friend, who's after all a bit more sensible than me - had only brough hand luggage - I, being a woman, was of course not able to do that - I mean, it's a 5 day trip for God's sake - how on Earth am I going to pack for that in a suitcase small enough to be hand luggage??? As usual there was a long line to wait for the security check. I was pulled aside and asked if I would agree to try out the new security camera they have on Heathrow, this is the one that when it photographs you remove all your clothes so you look naked. I thought, hey, why not - having your nude photo taken at Heathrow is also an experience not everybody gets to try! (and I also thought that if I refused I might be asked to actually remove all my close and would have then have a person in rubber gloves poking and examining parts of my body that I don't normally want strangers to examine...!!!) I was a bit worried about it taking long time though, but they told me it would be faster than the regular security check, and it was!
We got to the gate just as it was opening - and did then in the end catch the plane.
When we got back to Gardermoen I was to go to Solör for the night, because I wanted to bring my stuff there and officially then be moved out of Oslo. It was about -12 degrees at Gardermoen. I went to the bus stop at 17, the bus was to leave at 1715, and it didn't arrive till 1740 - a rather cold arrival in Norway I must say, waiting for the bus outside for 40 minutes.
Other than that - the trip back to Solör went well. I got back to my parents place at 8 in the evening - and got up at half past 4 in the morning to catch the 0540 bus back to Oslo!
So, what did I think of Winchester and the university? It was after all the main goal of the trip to see this place. I liked it. Winchester seems like a nice and quiet city. I did however not like it as much as I liked Chichester. And I also did not like Southampton as much as I love Brighton, which is the closest big city to Chichester. On the basis of this, I have decided that if I'm accepted into Chichester university - this will be the place that I choose to become a student.
And that was my trip to England.
(and by now I've soon finished ripping the 3rd of the 27 CD's that I'm going to be ripping today!)
