UK excursion weekend

Sorry for the long absence! It's been the Irish equivalent to Midterm week here, and just today I turned in my first UCD paper, thus completing my work for the week. Hooray! I had other assignments as well, but now I finally have a moment to share my incredible weekend with you all.

This weekend was the second and final Rutgers excursion, in which all the UK and Ireland Rutgers Study Abroad students who signed up ahead of time went away for the weekend together. This time, we all went to Lewes, a small town in East Sussex, in the South of England. It's also the town where my Resident Director, Catherine, lives with her husband, Roger, and dog, Sam. On Friday, I took an early-afternoon flight out of Dublin to London Gatwick, and then took the train to Lewes. Once there, I checked into the White Hart Hotel, an historic hotel where we stayed, and found out that I got paired with my roommate from last time, which was a lot of fun!

Catherine met us all in the hotel lobby later in the evening, and walked us all down to her house for dinner. The  dinner was wonderful, and it was great to chat with all the same people from the Connemara trip, plus four more. It was particularly nice because they had the same things going on now being abroad, but we could easily talk about home too, and not have to explain ourselves. We ended up staying until almost 11, when Catherine told us the itinerary for the next day and threw us out. :-)

The next morning we had a usual hotel breakfast before we met Catherine again. From there, we made an unscheduled stop at the cheese shop she had mentioned she works at, because we were all dying to see the place and try some cheese. We had a little tasting, and tried cheese specific to Ireland and the UK. Being a complete cheese fiend, I absolutely loved all of them! After that, we got onto a bus and headed to nearby Pevensey Castle. This castle is historically inmportant as the place where William the Conqueror's army landed in 1066. At that time, it was on the coast, and since has been involved in several wars. We had the chance to see the amazing views from there, and step into what would have been the dungeons and archery towers. Thankfully, we also had the absolute perfect weather all weekend!

From the castle, we had lunch at yet another adorable pub with good food. I had what was referred to as "bubbles and squeak" as a side to my dish, which it turns out was a lovely mash of potatoes and cabbage, and maybe a few other veggies in there. After lunch, we head to the South Downs and Beachy Head- a place right along the coast with big rolling hills, chalk cliffs, and beautiful views of the never-ending landscape.

Oops, it's way too late at night, and I'm heading on an all-day Aran Islands tour, so I have a long and early day ahead of me! I will be sure to finish my trip to the UK, but for now, I have to go to sleep! Until tomorrow...