Newcastle, England--the friendliest place on Earth!

Jill says...Yesterday we flew into Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which is located in Northern England. We had to leave our hostel at 5:00 am to take the tube and Stansted Express train to the airport. Needless to say, we were a little tired throughout the day. Another thing I should mention is that we flew in for the day. Our hotel was very nice (I highly recommend Premier Inn when you are in England), and we immediately hopped on the Metro train to head to the city. You might ask, why did you fly on an airplane to go to a city for only ONE DAY? Well, that is because I goofed a little when we wrote our grant. I found an excellent children's book museum, called Sevenstories and when I looked at the map to see where it was located, it showed the Millennium Bridge. I knew that the Millennium Bridge was located by Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, so I added it to our grant. Well......I guess there is more than one Millennium Bridge. So, we flew to Newcastle (it only cost approximately $25 a ticket) for the day to go to the museum.

One of the things that we had heard while we were in London is that Newcastle has very courteous and friendly people. This couldn't be more truthful. In London, it is such a big city (think New York), and everyone is in a hurry. As much as I love London, having people breathe down my back or knocking into me constantly, was starting to wear on my nerves. Every single person we came into contact with in Newcastle was very helpful, kind, and just plain nice. I think that was my favorite part of that city. I definitely wish we could have had more time to explore Newcastle, but I will just have to come back again some day...

Bethany says...
Sevenstories was an amazing place for children to interact with books! I was very impressed with all of the costumes, art, books and materials for children to feel like they are inside the story. The building itself is literally 7 stories high...HaHa. Each floor had a different focus. There was a floor with original artwork used in childrens literature. Another floor contained huge couches and shelves and shelves of books for children to pick up and read and then off to the corner there was an AMAZING storytelling chair with benches and pillows surrounding it for enjoying a good story. The costumes were hand made and well loved...you knew that many of stories were acted out in those costumes. I was very impressed. The best was the floor that children were able to write responses and reports about their favorite characters they had read about thoughout the sevenstories. I will be bringing lots of new ideas into the classroom thanks to Sevenstories. Well I am off to enjoy a rainy day in Dublin...I will write later. :)