LISA Final English days… Before leaving Leeds for good we were eager to spend as much time as possible with friends. So the revelry started on Saturday night when Abi threw a great dinner for us, complete with homemade lasagne, a huge amount of strawberries and cream, and homemade orange cheesecake for desert. Here we also (finally) got to watch Braveheart (after searching for it all over the country). Deciding that he liked our company, and frustrated with...

PAUL With only a few days left in Leeds we thought we'd better get and see the town that our county, Yorkshire, gets it name from, York. So on May 30 we caught a public transport bus to nearby York. York was the Viking capital of Britain and also an important strategic base throughout history. After getting off at the train station, we followed the advice of our handy dandy lonely planet guide and found our way to the starting point for a free walking tour of th...

PAUL Our last trip with the international student office took us to the final country in the UK, Wales. The trip had two destinations, the first, the pretty seaside town of Conwy in Wales and then back onto the English side of the border to walled city of Chester. We were meant to spend equal time in each town, but unfortunately the people planning the trip didn't take into account we'd be leaving half an hour late, the bus drivers having to take a compulsory h...

PAUL We were in Belfast on April 20, and therefore a Sunday, so the streets of Belfast were incredibly empty. In fact it gave the whole town a slight eerie atmosphere. We wanted to learn a bit more about the conflict in Belfast and so we decided to go in search of the murals on Falls Rd and Shankill Rd. What we found was a real eye opener. First, on the "catholic" Falls Rd there are many murals that comment on very recent political issues in the world ...

LISA Stirling and Trossachs tour This morning saw us over-prepared (as usual) and waiting in the cold for our tour bus. It arrived, driven by a nice young Scottish man, who informed us when asked that yes, the commentary is probably only playing in one ear, that happens a lot. Oh dear. Before we began the tour we had to drive to Edinburgh to pick some people up, which seemed strange, but gave us some more experience of Scottish highways. The first official st...