Cynthia Martin

We are almost reaching the end of out wonderful trip to England...This trip was as much fun as educational for me.

Everything started in Bath which is a very nice place which is a place which is neither totally city looking nor completely wild place. One of my favorite places we visited, was at Stourhead Garden. Stourhead is a 2650 acres of 18th century landscape garden, historic parkland, farmland and ancient woodland. It is a beautiful garden following a symmetrical and regular shape. This beauty makes the garden seem unreal and gives this mental image of the perfect garden that everyone would like to have in their backyard. In addition, even though a lot of people were walking around, it remains a very peaceful and quiet place where one can easily meditate or find a time for loneliness.

After 5 days in Bath, we headed to Oxford where it was a completely different environment, it was more like a town college. We have been able to visit the country home of William Morris, author of News from Nowhere and poet, craftsman and socialist. The house contains a collection of the possession and works of Morris and his associates, including furniture, textiles, carpets and ceramics. We could not take pictures inside of the house but I could tell you that it was a simple but very nice house, you could really have this warm feeling of being at home once inside. Moreover, there were a lot of curtains, cushion covers who were embroidered by Jane and May Morris, wife and daughter of William Morris and designed by William Morris himself. His design was mostly inspired from flowers, stream and meadow since we could observe the pale colors he would used such as pale green or blue background. That really gave the heaven-like feeling since I could imagine heaven to be filled with flowers of bright colors.

Finally, after 4 days in Oxford, we are in London, the big city of England. It is definitely a different surrounding, especially the architecture of certain buildings which is more modern. On the first day itself, Madhu, Sara, Molly, Maria and I went to see Big Ben and tower bridge at night and it was such a spectacular view. It was pretty awesome, I have seen these sites before but it was always during the day and I can assure you that it is worth going both during the day and at night as well. Moreover we have been visiting the St Paul's Cathedral from which we could have a panoramic view of England after walking about 300 stairs to the top of the dome. Also we visited the Tower of London where I have been able to see the crown jewels which was amazing and just make us dream about having one of these one day. :)