Awesome Exeter

It was very nice the other day (a few weeks back (...oops, sorry for the lateness! (now triple parentheses just for fun!!!))) and I decided that since I had to go into town anyway, I might as well make the most of it and do a bit of site seeing. It started off a little rocky but (spoiler alert) it turned out awesome!

First I went to have lunch in one of the cafeterias on campus, which I'm only telling you about because it happened to be the very worst meal that I have eaten since arriving in Exeter. This place on campus advertised 'authentic street food from around the world', which sounded better than sandwiches (England's most available and disappointing food).

Somehow this:

The Ginger Beer was delightful though

tasted exactly like beef stew. Even the rice tasted like beef stew. I'm pretty sure the weird chip things were shrimp chips. I think it was supposed to be a thai dish, but oh my goodness, was it something else. In hindsight the lack of any people really should have tipped me off.

This is a cafeteria at noon on a Thursday. What other time would people come here?

The one saving grace is the absolutely amazing view from the huge windows.

AHHH-mazing

I also stopped at this place because I thought it was more on-route from my class to downtown. It wasn't. At all. I probably added like 20ish minutes to my trip. Luckily the sun was shining and the walk was downhill, so it was all fine.

There are these large maps around town that show different historical places that one can visit. (You might recall from my previous blog 'the House that Moved' was one of these random places). I knew I wanted to go see the quay but only slightly out of the way was this place called the St. Nicholas Priory. I recalled that I had read something about it on the Exeter museum website, but I couldn't remember what, so I decided to go take a look. This is the sketchy alley you have to go down to get there. You literally have to walk past piles of garbage. There is no other way to get to this place.

A nice old gentleman is squeezing inside one of those
door-frames so I can take this picture of a dirty, garbagey, alleyway 

Then you get here!

Cool secret historical treasure

Since it was in the middle of a work/school day in February, the place was pretty much empty. St. Nicholas Priory was built at around the same time as Exeter cathedral (1200ish). It was apparently lived in by Benedictine monks, and used as a mini-hospital, until king Henry VIIIth disbanded the priory. So the placed was used as a second house by some Tudor merchants, who hated living in a 400yr old ex-priory so only stayed there for a brief period (only like, 20 years). After that it was basically treated like garbage. Now you might think this would mean that this national heritage site would emphasize its history as a priory. On the contrary, the place has been converted into a living-history Tudor house!! They have completely reconstructed the house into what it looked like for the brief period of time that this family lived there (and hated it, because it didn't have any kind of heating, and it was intended to be lived in by monks, who had intentionally shitty and sparse lives). The reason it was reconstructed (and not torn down) was due to the fact there is a lovely Tudor-style ceiling.

For some reason I took a picture of everything but the ceiling

Complete with dead rabbits!

It was such a slow day, I ended up talking with the interpreters (cute old people, of course) about the place (which was only 4 rooms) for over two hours. I am now a wealth of knowledge on Tudor living and Priory-conversion-into-Tudor-house studies. It was super fun and totally random!

After that I headed to the quay (It's pronounced 'key'-- I did not know this). The quay is beautiful and historic, of course. While Canadians have terrifying geese and mallard ducks, England has swans everywhere.

Not that you can see any swans in this picture (lol)

There are a lot of custom furniture shops on the quay for some reason, but there was also this super adorable antique that I went into. In particular, it sold old postcards. I'm not sure if you will find this as cool as I did, but I actually found a postcard that was mailed here from Banff in the 1930s. I also found empty old postcards of places I've visited in Exeter and Devon. I was tempted to send them, but I might just keep them instead.

Its like someone mailed me a postcard from home in 1932

Also, this store had all these old buttons, which reminded me strongly both of my grandmother and mom, who both love buttons

Then just to make the day even lovelier, I had tea and cake.

Sooo legit. Look at that china, and that legit dessert fork.

On Tuesday the next week, I went with a couple of my friends on the free Exeter ghost tour. It was all very kid friendly, and of course they tried to work in all the Exeter folklore/history. My favorite was when the guide (this little old lady) would tell stories that didn't involve any kind of ghosts. For example she told a story of a man in Exeter who invented a new type of tree (through cross-breeding, not any kind of mad science or anything). The first of these trees he cut down to be used for his coffin. Then some dumb apprentice used it to build some other random thing. So he cut down the second tree and kept the lumber under his bed so no one could use it by accident. Thats the whole story. Thousands of years of history... this makes it into the top 20 ghost stories of Exeter.

The very, very, best came at the end however when the tour took us into the basement of a pub that was opposite the cathedral lawn. Firstly, there was this super creepy 'exactly-the-setting-of-The-Ring' well. She told some kind of creepy story about it.

A well in a pub basement. SUPER HAUNTED, NO QUESTION

Then, out of the blue, after an hour and a half of the most child friendly tour of my life, the guide was like: "if you go to the other end of this basement there is a skeleton of someone they dug up from the cathedral lawn, who some speculate committed suicide".

Oh yeah, of course they have a terrifying skeleton
in the basement of this pub, makes perfect sense.

My room and other mysterious places

Hey everyone

So I haven't posted in a while and its because I haven't been doing enough exciting things to blog about. I think I've stock-piled a sufficient number of pictures and travel stories.

Of course I've been going to school the same as usual. I do have a lot more time on my hands from usual, seeing as I only have 7 or 8hrs of class a week. Also, the only assignments that I have are due at the end of march, and I don't really have any midterms. In addition, I'm only being marked pass/fail, which takes the pressure off considerably.

This is the first time I've ever taken classes that are actually about ancient history. I thought I would love it, since I've always had an interest in it (I mean I wrote my honors paper on sewage and farming practices in Ancient Egypt-- which consumed my entire life force, but was still fascinating). However, I feel now that I'm taking specific courses-- Egyptology and 'The Brave New World of Augustus'-- I find it doesn't really ignite my academic curiosity. Perhaps because a lot of the focus is on the material evidence itself (ex: what can this statuette tell us about religion in ancient Egypt?). I guess its kind of struck me how little relevance these topics have to my life. All in all, I find myself much more engaged with the material in my globalisation module, although thats mostly because its irritatingly uncritical.

This is the Carrie's-twitter inspired song you should listen to while reading this.

I've been doing a bit more site-seeing around Exeter which is pretty fun. Its also good because I don't feel as though I need to go with other people, which typically requires a certain amount of coordination. Instead I can just spontaneously visit any of the cool random places around town. That is mostly what is in this blog.

I would like to apply this spontaneity to out of town trips, and just go off by myself to somewhere around Devon. Unfortunately since it is off-season many of the interesting houses, castles and museums are closed. Also, I have to figure out how to get there, which requires a certain amount of organization and confidence. I think that as March arrives I might become a bit more independently adventurous.

To begin, I took a few pictures of where I am living. Surprisingly enough, my room is a little messy.

I think they are a bit optimistic about how much room I'm going to need for books. 

The kitchen. Pretty similar to cluster living.

 My building, which is called "Widecombe"
- like something from a Jane Austen novel

The view from the kitchen.
I'm on the third story and the University is on top of a hill. 

An awesome hollow tree,
I'd like to pass secret messages to a stranger.

(I just googled "messages in hollow trees"
and all I got was that some dead bodies were
found in a hollow tree in Ohio. World,
I have lost faith in you) 

Random pond right outside my door. 

A few weeks ago some of my friends and I decided to go on this "underground passages" tour of Exeter. I was most impressed by the experience of walking around in very old dark, damp passages rather than the history that surrounds tunnels, which is that they were built to service water pipes. I mean they are 800yrs old, which is very cool, but the "a few times a year some workers might come down here and fix a pipe" story isn't exactly riveting. The best part was at the end. There was an optional part where you could crouch down and squirm your way through the smallest portion of the tunnel which gradually became smaller and smaller. It kind of created this growing sense of claustrophobia, which was really thrilling (it sounds strange to explain, but thats what it was like).

We had to wear hardhats because it is next
to impossible not to hit your head

The smallest portion of the tunnel, although its difficult to get a
 perspective of how tiny it is

Super creepy mannequin with a video of someone's face projected
 onto it. 

We had to wait a couple of hours to take this tour so we did some other site-seeing in the mean time. On the places of interest maps that they have all over the downtown, they had directions to this place called "The house that moved" which sounded very interesting. So we decided to go see it.

 It was just an old house that had a bridal shop in it, and a sign which read "the house that moved"

No other explanation. I looked up what it was when I got home, but it was pretty funny at the time because it sounded so alluring on the map, and turned out to be just a house with an enigmatic sign. They do have a video of them moving it, which went off smoothly in a couple of days during the 60s. Not the worlds most exciting tourist attraction, especially without any context.

Right next to it there's the oldest street in Exeter.

Unsurprisingly, a very steep hill

We also discovered this really cool 'by donation only' bookstore. I love second hand book stores, and it was in this very old building which made it even better.

Check out the wooden beams. So awesome.

'The Atlas of Mysterious Places' was a great name for this day of weird
 out of context site-seeing

So that was one particular day of random fun exploring.

Another was after my friend Angela and I went to go see the movie 'Never Let Me Go'. I don't know if you've heard of it/seen it, but it was an absolutely sad and beautiful movie. I gave me goosebumps it was so good. Afterward I went shopping, then got a coffee and a bite to eat. I was going to just walk home, but instead ended up taking a detour and having a park bench picnic at this 'promenade'.

This is the old roman wall with a 'folly tower'

The weather was a little grey, but the view is gorgeous!
(And the vista isn't too bad either)

So I have more stuff to share, like my trip to Torquay, and some other cool places in Exeter I visited, but this seems like a natural point to stop so you can at least read this!