Fall Break

A week off from school!  I decided to travel around other parts of Europe during my break.

I went to London with a few fellow FU-Besters and met up with my friend Andrew From Semester at Sea and his friend Nick in London.  On the first day I decided to take an organized tour of London.  This tour was done with a bus and tour guide that would drive us around, drop us off and tell us about each of the sites.  The first sight was the London towers I went to take a picture at this first sight but realized I had left my memory card back in Berlin.  But fortunately there was a small souvenir store nearby that had the one I needed.  Once in the London Towers a beefeater showed us around.  They then brought us to Buckingham Palace.  At this palace our guide gave us a history and where the best place to take pictures.  After this out tour took us on a boat ride down the river in which we go to see a different view of London.  The tour then took us to St. Paul Cathedral.  This church was massive and had been slightly hit during the bombing of WWII.  Then afterward I meet up with my semester at sea friend at the hostel.  We decided to go to the only Chipotle in Europe that night.
The next day we did a tour of Stonehenge.  It was bigger than I had imagined.  Its shocking to see that there is nothing around for hundreds of miles in any directions and makes you really wonder where these rocks came from.  That night we did a jack the Ripper tour.  Our guide had been doing the tours for almost 29 years and had even wrote a book on the matters.  It was one of the most fascination tours I have been on.  The next day we decided to go on the London eye which is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe.  It was built in 1999 and opened in 2000.  Once on tope you could see in every direction twenty five miles.  When on top you had a great view of Parliament, the rivers, and most of central London.  Afterwards we went to Camden town.  It is a huge outside flee market area with plenty of great cheap international food to.
The next morning was the last morning in London.  I decided to go to the British Museum which had an impressive collection some of the highlights for me was the full medieval samurai uniform, the Rosetta Stone, mummies, and the Parthenon sculptures.  I then made it just in time for the changing of the guards ceremony at Buckingham palace.

Madrid
In Madrid I saw a bull fight.  I have never experienced anything like this and it was a great experience.  During this bull fight I got to see one matador get hit by a bull fortunately the matador was ok and continued to fight.
I went to the Reina Sofia Museum which has many of Picasso’s paintings.  What is considered Picasso’s greatest work the Guernica had quite a humorous security system.  It is stored in its own room where you have to stand fifteen feet away, and if you come any closer an alarm will go off, and there are also two security guards by the painting to ensure that no one attempts any crime.

I went to the naval museum in Madrid too.  which had model of the old Spanish navel boats.  It also had weapons they used and from other parts of the world such thing as the tribes which had shark tooth spears.  It also had any part of a boat that you could think of.  The next morning we took a guided tour around the city.  They showed us the palace, a few of the important churches of Madrid, a highlight of the great museums in Madrid and the main streets of Madrid.