Travelin' Around England

Over the last few days, we have traveled to a few places. Saturday we went to Oxford, home of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. We spent a few hours walking around the campus and town. Below, you can see Christchurch College. We didn't go inside, but this is where the great hall scenes (with the long tables) from Harry Potter were filmed. 

Laura and I then bee lined it to The Eagle and Child Pub, which is where Tolkien and Lewis spent much of their time. On our way, Laura had the unfortunate incident of being pooped on by a bird. 

This is the pub. A plaque on the back wall read "C.S. Lewis, his brother, W.H. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and other friends met every Tuesday morning between the years 1939-1962 in the back room of this their favourite pub. These men, popularly know as the "Inklings," met here to drink Beer and to discuss, among other things, the books they were writing."

This was on the wall when you entered the pub. Seeing as I just met them the day before, I thought it was necessary to take a picture of it. We were told that Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Ring series while living in Oxford.

While walking down an open air market, I saw Turkish Delight for the first time. I immediately thought of Narnia :)

The next day, Laura and I decided to travel to Winchester and Portsmouth. Winchester, hometown of Colin Firth, was beautiful! Below, is a picture of the Winchester Cathedral. 

 It was Sunday, so there was a service going on. 

 The cathedral is also where Jane Austen is buried.

 We then walked across town to the Great Hall where King Arthur's round table is located. 

They have it hanging on the wall. 

Laura and I then caught the train to Portsmouth. We wanted to see a town located on the English Channel. It started raining and was quite cold, so we didn't end up spending much time here. 

 We did put our feet in the English Channel!

Today, we went to the British Museum. We weren't able to take many pictures, and only the nerds of the family would appreciate hearing me ramble on about seeing the original Beowulf manuscript, Anglo-Saxon linguistics, and King James's Library. But we did see original Beatles lyrics written down on paper bags, etc.

Iconic London: Day Two

We woke up early in order to see as much as possible today! Kensington Palace, home to Will, Kate, and Baby George Alexander Louis, was first on the agenda. The grounds were beautiful, but it was quite cloudy out today. 

Below, is the sunken garden at the palace. 

They had four tours: The Queen's Quarters, the King's Quarters, Revealing Victoria, and Modern Royal Fashion. The fashion area had this display case of some of Diana's dresses. They also had rooms for HM the Queen and Princess Margaret. I didn't realize what a fashionista Margaret was!

The wallpaper below are all drawings of famous pictures of Diana. 

We then traveled over to Westminster Abbey. We didn't take the tour because we were in a hurry.

 The Big Ben pictures are below: 

We had booked tickets to see the 2:00 showing of Macbeth at the Globe Theatre. A few minutes into the show, I made a comment to Laura about how Banquo's voice sounded a lot like Pippin from Lord of the Rings. She, not being a nerdy LOTR fan like me, shrugged off the comment. A couple minutes later, after staring through the large, graying beard, I was convinced it was none other than Billy Boyd playing the role of Banquo! I couldn't believe my luck. Now, if you know anything about the Globe, it is not a big theatre. Therefore, he brushed past us several times when entering the stage through the crowd. I had to keep myself from grabbing his arm and yelling out "Pippin!!!"

After the show, we saw him walking down the pier with none other than......Merry!!! I didn't think my London experience could get any better. As you can see, we did a bit of stalking and he walked out right behind us to answer a phone call.

I decided there was no way that I could pass up the opportunity for this photo op! Though Billy seemed a little preoccupied, Dominic was more than willing to take the photo. The sun wasn't very helpful, but I will still cherish this moment. I did ask Dom how he felt about the ending of LOST; he claimed he never saw it. I called him out on his lie, but he just smiled and went on his "merry" way :)

Iconic London: Day One

Due to royal baby watching, I did not get to see much of London the first day I came into town. A group of us decided to use our two days off to come into London and stay in a hostel for an evening. The morning started at the much anticipated house of Charles Dickens. However, we quickly realized that the tour wasn't too exciting without a tour guide. We made the best of it though!

Above is the Dickens door and the entrance to the museum. Below is a picture I thought mom would like :)

Next, is the jail cell bars of where Dickens family was kept in debtor's prison. This room was full of artifacts. 

The room below was a "reflection" room. It had famous quotes from his novels posted all over the room .

After the Dickens house, we made our way to the Tower of London. This ended up taking up the rest of our day, but was well worth it!

We were advised to take the Beefeater guided tour at the tower, and we were extremely glad that we did. It was very informative and entertaining. We heard lots of gruesome stories of executions gone wrong: brains exposed, 27 failed attempts at cutting one man's head off, and other cruel deaths.

Once the tour finished, we decided that the crowned jewels were a must! Pictures were not allowed, but they were beautiful. We had a rowdy group of junior high students in front of us. We all had to hold in our inner chaperone and not intervene, but we still struggled to not yell at some unruly kids.

We visited Wakefield Tower (also known as the "Tower of Torture") and looked at different torture devices. 

As you can see, the London Bridge is also located near the Tower. I did learn that this is not the actual London Bridge, but is called that for some reason. 

Laura and I decided to take a river cruise that night that ended up somewhere in the business district of London. We had to learn the bus system in order to get back to our hostel, but we were able to see London at sunset.

The Brookland Museum

I have fallen off on the blogging. A couple of days ago we went to the Brookland Transportation Museum. The ladies in our group decided one of the males must have scheduled this trip. We arrived at the museum with 4 hours allotted to looking at old motorcycles, cars, buses, and airplanes. Laura and I decided taking funny pictures was the only way we were going to make it through this event.

 I had the opportunity to drive a race car via video game. I kept crashing before I ever made a lap around the track. Guess I will not make racing a future profession...

This plane had no wings. It looked very strange. 

If you want to watch the interview...

You can click on this link. Laura filmed it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdoQ-cgCLaU

The Day I Saw the Royals

Today, Laura and I got so excited about the Royal Baby, we asked our instructor if we could spend the day in London. Understanding it was a historical moment, she agreed. We decided that we would just stop by the hospital and take a couple of pictures before we moved on to hear the 41 gun salute at the Tower of London and the bells at Westminster. However, once we arrived, we realized that we were standing a couple of feet away from where she gave birth. The Lindo Wing was surrounded by paparazzi, but we were able to get pretty close. We decided to stay awhile. 

While waiting outside, we made several friends. Constable Marchant was patrolling the perimeter, but came and chatted with us quite frequently. We met a couple from South Africa and their UK friend and a Holocaust surviver from Germany. We talked to them for several hours discussing all our cultural differences. The constable frequently joined in on our chats. Our South African friend and I were interviewed multiple times as we waited. You can see me being interview below :)

The second interview, according to our UK friend, was by a famous UK news anchor. He told me that I had to get a picture with him, which you can see below.

The Sun tabloid passed out free English flags to all of us and then drove by on this bus.

A commotion started and it was announced by the royal media correspondent that the Middletons would be arriving shortly. They came and stayed for about and hour before leaving. They didn't really look over our way, but here is a pic of them getting back in their taxi.

We decided that the best way to get in on the news was to befriend some of the news people and cameramen around us. After we forged a few friendships, we were constantly kept up to date on other arrivals. We waited around until 5 when it was said that Charles and Camilla would be arriving. They only stayed for about 30 minutes. As he was leaving, he stated that everyone might want to wait around for a bit! It was then we knew that Kate and Will would be leaving today. It was very difficult to contain my excitement because the rumor all day had been that they wouldn't be leaving until the next morning.

Finally, after several false alarms, William, Kate and the baby emerged from the hospital! They took the famous picture (I'm sure you've already seen) on the front steps and then went back in to grab the car seat.

 Will exited the hospital again (as you can see below) and put the car seat in the car.

Kate then waved at everyone and entered the car. Will got in the driver seat and they left to live happily ever after. Laura and I were not prepared for what came next---people bombarded us for interviews. I'm pretty sure I did 6 more interviews before I left, including ones for France, Germany, and England. My famous news anchor friend came back for a follow up interview and told me that my previous one ran on the 12 o'clock news earlier that day. I felt pretty famous for awhile.

We then rushed over to Buckingham Palace to get a picture of the announcement of the baby. Apparently, they only leave it out for 24  hours. We did not get there in time to take a close up, so we continued our stalker picture taking techniques and took some from a distance.

As we were leaving London, we passed a Bentley dealership. I couldn't resist. So, I pretty much had the best day ever. Tomorrow we are going to an aviation museum-it won't compare.