Wales & The Westfield

So, on Friday Heidi & I visited the Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd's Bush. It is basically an extremely large mall with a movie theatre, grocery stores, and a ton of restaurants...not to mention tons of clothing stores. We shopped quite a bit and definitely need to go back because we have not even seen half of it! While we were there we ate at a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho. They mostly serve the traditional Vietnamese soup, Pho (hence the name), but also had other things. I got a tofu and button mushroom pho and some vegetable summer rolls. Here's a photo of them:

The pho is a broth based soup with lots of rice noodles, tofu and mushrooms in this case, and fresh bean sprouts, chillis, and coriander (cilantro in American English). The summer rolls are on the side with a spicy, sweet chilli sauce.

On Saturday, Heidi & I went to Wales for a two day sightseeing and horseback riding tour. Our first day we visited a town called Chepstow, which is famous for Chepstow castle. Here is a view of what I believe is the Wye River outside of the castle.

These flowers were growing out of the wall of the castle, hanging over the river. I thought they were really gorgeous, so I took a photo of them!

Here is a photo of me sitting in a chair in a restored portion of the castle. I look rather royal, right?

There was some sort of festival/parade thing going on in Chepstow while we were there. Here is one of the floats from the parade. I thought it was strange because the darker skinned people in the back were actually painted white people. I'm not sure whether this should be considered offensive or not... Anyways, there was a festival and the marching band was playing Lady Gaga...hmmm, strange festival!

The next town we visited was the town of Tintern, which housed Tintern Abbey, Wales's first Cistercian Abbey. I didn't go inside, but it was plenty beautiful from the outside!

The last town we visited was Hay on Wye, which was where our hotel/hostel was located. It was basically a town of book stores and nothing else. We could hardly find a grocery shop! Two of the people on our trip didn't like that and saw it fit to look through the windows. They were a married couple and he was wearing her hat...this was only one of the strange things that they did.

After we arrived at our hotel, the Baskerville Hall Hotel (named after the Sherlock Holmes story, the Hounds of the Baskervilles), we quickly got some dinner. Beans, chips, ketchup, brown sauce (fake HP sauce but still tasty), and a Strongbow! What a delicious dinner while we waited for the US vs Ghana World Cup match to begin. Unfortunately for the US, we lost...

The next day we went horseback riding in the Brecon Beacon national park in Wales. Here is a photo of my horse, Roody. He was wonderful, although a bit naughty! At the end of the ride he even managed to squish me between two other horses, which resulted in losing a stirrup. At least we were close to the end, but riding with one stirrup is never very fun! The horseback riding was amazing, but my bum really hurts now!

Here is one of the views from the Brecon Beacon national park that I got on my camera while horseback riding. The Welsh countryside seemed to go on forever and ever!

After horseback riding we headed over to a local pub, called the Three Horse Shoes, for the Sunday roast. I was a little concerned about what the vegetarian option would be, but our trip leader managed to get me a lovely vegan risotto! It was so delicious along with the steamed vegetables that accompany the usual Sunday roasts and the Strongbow cider. Unfortunately we had to leave the pub just as the England vs. Germany match was starting up...England lost anyways (4:1).

On our way back to London, our group made a brief stop in Oxford, rather than a service station. I got to see Christchurch college, which is what this photo is of. Even though we only stayed for an hour and all the toilets were locked, I really enjoyed seeing the campus! I hope to be able to return to Oxford someday so that I can see a little bit more.

So, this photo has absolutely nothing to do with Wales, but during lunch break from class I got some tasty veg Indian food from the Hare Krishna man near the SOAS campus in London. It was super tasty and free! Doesn't it look delicious?