Finally, a little time to put this post together. I wish, I'll probably be doing this in bits and pieces which (surprise!) is how the majority of my posts come together. Yours too? Great :)
I'll try to keep this as least confusing as possible. The "reason" I went to England was for a conference May 14-18 but Cara (a fellow grad student) and I were able to extend the trip on both ends of the conference for some sightseeing. Misha was supposed to meet up with us in London too but got stuck in Italy :( I know, how hard is her life!
Cara and I left SLC Friday morning and landed in London Saturday morning. There's a 7 hour time difference! The flights were long and uneventful. Well, not entirely uneventful if you enjoy bathroom humor :) I tried to sleep between New York and London with a row of 4 seats to myself but unfortunately had the last row by the bathrooms. Man, people have to pee a lot on overseas flights! Anyway, we decided to get on London time ASAP so after dropping our luggage off at our hotel (at 3am our time) we headed out into the city, on foot. I wish I'd taken a picture of our room so you could see how small it was but you get the idea from this shot of the bathroom. How they managed to fit a sink, toilet and shower in that small space is impressive.
Electric sockets in the UK are weird. Not only are they funny shaped but you have to remember to turn the switch on too.
Hyde Park
Our hotel was just a few blocks north of Hyde Park so we walked through it every chance we got. It is big! Not as big as Central Park
but much bigger than any of the parks here in SLC (although SLC probably has more parks than most other big cities). In my research before the trip I saw that some of the upcoming Olympic events will be held in Hyde Park. This is also where the Princess Diana memorial fountain was built and the eastern end of the park is Kensington Palace/Gardens where Queen Victoria grew up. It's a beautiful park, especially being located right in the middle of the city.
I was surprised at how many animals we saw in the park, other than dogs I mean. This little guy was hilarious, just hanging out, upside down on a tree.
On our way out of the park we unintentionally timed it perfectly to see the Royal Horse Guard. Very cool.
Westminster Abbey
After
lunch we decided that London is
very expensive and so we would only pay
for one attraction and that attraction would be Westminster Abbey. A
very good choice. Westminster is amazing! You can't take pictures
inside but the architecture and grounds are awesome! I thought
Westminster was just a really old, famous abbey where the royals are
crowned and married but it is actually the final resting place for many
famous people. Like William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles
Dickens, George Handel, Charles Darwin and of course, former kings,
queens and other nobles. There are also memorials for other well known
Englishmen like the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen (who I
love), Winston Churchill, Sir
Francis Drake and Paul Dirac (who you may only recognize if you've taken
quantum mechanics, so maybe just me).
You may notice that our camera randomly takes some really amazing shots. I swear it has nothing to do with the actual settings, it just feels like taking a nice shot. And sometimes not.
You may also notice that I like to take pictures looking straight up at the sky. This is partly because all of the buildings are super tall and also because I really like that angle. Not really sure why.
That's Cara in the bottom right corner, in case you're wondering what she looks like :) We didn't get very many pictures with both of us in there.
Big Ben
The House of Parliament and Big Ben clock tower are right across the street from Westminster Abbey and close to the River Thames. We could also see the London Eye but that was one of the more expensive attractions we decided to save for our next visits. It is a little pricey but would be amazing at night.
See! Randomly amazing shot! I love this picture!
Then it was on to Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and the loooong walk back to our hotel. I think we covered a good 12 miles that day, not to mention walking around and through everything. We were exhausted! We did find a pub on the way back to our room called The Swan that was pretty tasty :)
I think all the pictures of the actual palace are on Cara's camera :( But I did have this nice shot of the park directly across the square. Wouldn't it be nice to live in the middle of this?
It felt so nice to take showers and change the clothes we'd been wearing for ~36 hours. Cara fell asleep fast and didn't wake up for 12 hours! Even though I was pretty tired myself I had a hard time sleeping. It could have been the twin bed or the hard mattress. Apparently the UK doesn't believe in pillowtops. Every mattress felt hard to me. Sunday morning we trekked across the city again to the British Museum which is awesome. All museums in the UK are free so we liked this attraction :) It is also home to the Lycurgus Cup which is related to the research we do (if you're curious enough, I'll explain it to you) and we obviously wanted to see it. I asked at the info desk what room it was in (the museum is huge!) and they told me it was on loan! Of all the bad luck! I was very impressed however that one of the employees can apparently keep track of all the display items in his head. The first guy I talked to didn't even know what the Cup was! We still spent a good 3 hours at the museum and barely scratched the surface. Add that to the list of Must-Dos on my next trip.
St. Paul's Cathedral was on the way to the museum. We didn't go in but the outside is beautiful anyway! On the left you can see some construction barriers. They were actually all over the city, probably in preparation for the upcoming Olympics. I'm sad I didn't take any pictures of the city roads/crosswalks. Apparently Londoners are aware that they drive on the wrong side of the road and have labelled literally every single crosswalk in the city to make sure us tourists look the correct way before crossing. Thank you London! It was very helpful.
When I saw this building I honestly thought my Lasik investment suddenly failed me. Nope, it's just a really oddly painted building. Look at the trees, that picture is in focus!
Tower Bridge
Our final stop that day was the Tower Bridge and Tower of London itself. I had to inform Cara that the London Bridge which is just downstream from Tower Bridge is now in Lake Havasu, AZ and she didn't believe me. Believe me folks, they moved it. A new bridge was built and is still called London Bridge. Tower Bridge is the cool one anyway and I liked the Tower of London a lot as well. Apparently, because I took a ton of pictures of it. England has a lot of really, really old buildings that America just doesn't and I think that's cool. The Tower of London is neat because it's one of those buildings that kept getting added to, like it was under constant renovation. The White Tower itself is over 900 years old!
This is the view from the middle of the bridge. Very interesting because...
if you look right you'll see the Tower of London (very old)...
and if you look left you'll see City Hall (very new). It was quite a juxtaposition!
Tower of London
This is the White Tower built by William the Conqueror before 1100.
Other kings kept fortifying and adding to the complex and now it's huge! Oh yeah, that's a catapult on the lawn that they had just used for some demonstrations. We missed them :(
If you look really closely on the right you can see one of the tour guides. They're actually retired military men with distinguished service careers so the guy leading you and your family through this historical attraction was quite possibly at one time a sniper and now wears a bright red and blue costume. I find that interesting. And a little weird.
At one time this area of the lawn was a menagerie so to show this they built these steel lion statues. I think a plaque would have sufficed.
As much as we were trying to be frugal we splurged on subway tickets to get us back to our hotel. I think we walked another 10+ miles that day. We walked down a new street and found another tasty pub called the Lone Dene. This pub also had free wifi (yay!) so I pulled out my tablet and was finally able to Skype with Justin who I'd not been able to talk to since Friday evening during our layover in New York! That was really hard!!
Monday morning our sightseeing was over and we set out on another long walk to the train station . This was the third train ride I've taken in 2 months. Justin was/still is pretty jealous. This was definitely the best ride though as we were heading north and passed through some gorgeous countryside. In case you were wondering, yes, we pretended we were on the Hogwarts Express :)
*Note- that is not my coffee cup. This is the view from the other side of the train where a table of four older women were obviously meeting up for their annual Girls' Weekend Out. It was adorable!
The conference was held at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire county. As fun and beautiful a city as London is, northern England was my favorite. It was just so stinkin' green. Oh yeah, and we were staying in a castle. Pretty awesome. The conference was actually really cool. There were only about 50 people involved and it was interdisciplinary so I got to talk to a lot of people from engineering and physics one-on-one which you don't normally get to do at big conferences.
These are the
gigantic keys to our rooms. I wasn't paying very close attention and honestly tried the big one. All it did was spin in the lock and then I realized there was another small key on the ring. Woops.
And a randomly un-amazing shot. This was my room at the castle.
With a huge bathroom. I could actually lay down in that tub without bending my knees. It was heaven!
I loved the way the water came out of the faucet. You better believe I took a bubble bath every night we were there.
This was the view from my window. Nothing but forest. If you look just right of center though you'll see a gap between two trees.
And if you look really close in that gap you'll see Beeston Castle which was on the next hill over. So freakin' cool!
Of course there were a few suits of armor hanging around.
Looking up the central tower.
And down the central tower.
Views from the top.
I loved that they had kept the castle as original as possible but it sometimes made modern requirements funny.
This is the gatehouse. The current owner bought the castle after his oldest son was married there. That son and his wife now live in the gatehouse. How cool to be able to revisit your wedding location whenever you want! Oh wait, Justin and I do that too :)
Beeston Castle
Halfway through the conference we took a break and went on an excursion. Beeston Castle is one of the oldest castles in England and only about an hours walk through fields of flowers. It was awesome!
Walking to the castle.
Beeston was interesting in that it was actually just a wall. There were a few rooms in the towers but the interior of the castle was actually just a field where people lived in tents.
Looking down the hill through a break in the wall.
Caves on the castle grounds have actually been used in movies and at one point (long before filmmaking) the owner brought in a hermit to live in them. Apparently it was very fashionable at the time to have a crazy old man living on your land.
Peckforton employs a couple of falconers and they put on a show for us after the excursion. It was awesome. Lisa- you would not have liked it.
This guy actually just wandered the grounds. He was beautiful!
Hedwig!
They actually had a bald eagle! Go America!!
I thought this was a really cool shot of the owl flying. She flew first and was absolutely beautiful. Did you know owl eyes don't rotate in their sockets? That's why their heads can turn so much. I learned a lot of random bird facts :)
This is a red kite. I thought it was one of the scarier looking birds of prey but surprisingly none of the birds were very big.
The hood on this falcon looked funny. This demonstration was really cool because he had the bird fly around the castle and then attack this bait he was swinging on a string. Eventually he let her catch it of course (otherwise they couldn't keep the birds doing these tricks) and it was really impressive to watch. Falcons are not only the fastest bird but the fastest animal. When they're "divebombing" they can reach speeds over 180 mph!! Take that cheetahs!
I love this picture of the hawk. Doesn't he look cute?!
And finally the buzzard. They run funny!
Manchester
After the conference we spent a day in Manchester sightseeing. Jennifer (my advisor), Cara and I found this trail right next to our hotel and walked through some more English countryside.
Just beautiful.
Sheepies!
One of our stops in the city was the art museum. Cara and I thought this interactive travel display was neat. There were tags for you to write where you were from and somebody had written "District 4." We found this especially entertaining because we both read the entire Hunger Games trilogy during the trip.
Yep, that's a giant picture of a bellybutton. Art.
Manchester City Hall. I just loved the architecture of this place.
Apparently the courtyard of city hall is a happenin' place. That morning there was a wedding, a vegetarian fair and advertisements for the Olympics.
One of my favorite pics- we found Cooper Street! And it meets up with Princess Street!
Manchester, being a former textile center, was also greatly affected by the American Civil War so Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter apologizing for the inconvenience. Not only was he honest and fair, but extremely polite. There is actually a small square in his honor.
This was quite possibly my favorite building- the John Rylands library. He made his fortune from textiles and his widow built this library after he died. It's now a part of the University of Manchester library system.
Unfortunately the entrance is modern. I'm not sure exactly how they did this, if they tore down the front of the building or what, but there is a definite line between old and new.
Justin and I have tossed around the idea of naming our first son after both our dads, John Wesley. I think it's cute but after seeing this I may have changed my mind. I did know there was a historical figure in church history named John Wesley, the picture just discouraged me.
Finally, another church. The Manchester cathedral. It was closed by the time we got there but, like everything else, the grounds were still gorgeous.
Whew! That's a lot of pictures! I apologize for any confusing text/typos but I really don't want to edit anymore. The trip was fun, the conference was awesome and I'm glad I finally was able to use my passport but I never want to travel, especially internationally, without my husband again!! I missed him way too much. The 4 hour layover on our return flight was almost unbearable. I'm very excited to see more of Europe with Justin by my side :)
