Summer school may not always sound like fun, but when your classes take you to Europe for five weeks, it’s hard to not have the time of your life.

Julie Hughes, a junior at the University of Southern Mississippi, traveled to London this summer to learn about Victorian gothic literature at King’s College. She said her favorite part about learning about that type of literature was being able to see the inspirations from timeless stories. Among many sites, she was able to see where the Brontë sisters lived and the landscapes that they saw.

“You get to walk along the Thames and see the inspirations for so much,” she said.

But she also learned a lot outside of her classes. She learned a lot about Jack the Ripper. She said he gets a lot more attention over there. She found it interesting that the police never actually caught him. She got to see Charles Dickens’s house and visited the Sherlock Holmes museum.

“They had fan letters, not written to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle but to Sherlock Holmes,” she said. “It’s really cool because he wasn’t even real.”

Hughes, a graduate of Loyd Star Attendance Center, said her favorite part was going to the London Eye, a giant Ferris wheel.

“Walking around you know it’s big, but then you see everything that you haven’t gotten to yet,” she said.

She also learned about modern culture there. She said many were surprised that she had held a gun and that it costs a lot to go the hospital.

“It’s commonplace to you, but it’s really strange to them,” she said.