Chatsworth House

Today we went to Chatsworth House, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. And surprise, surprise, it was used to film Pride and Prejudice. It was used for Darcy's house, Pemberley. We were so excited to get pictures of what we've seen in the movie, but sadly, there's scaffolding all over the facade right now. I guess they're doing some touch up. The inside was still great though. It blows my mind that people actually live in places like this! Unlike most of the other places we've toured so far, Chatsworth House also has a few contemporary additions to its historical rooms. For example, the mirror I've shown here.

After touring the house we went out to the gardens. Unlike the gardens we've seen so far, the gardens at Chatsworth are much less meticulous. They're more... flowing. Natural.

At the entrance to the Coal Tunnel

This us going through the maze. Our brollies didn't fit between the hedges.

Leslie and I were so confused when we read this sign. After trying to say it a hundred different ways, someone told us it means you have to drive slowly through the gate and honk your horn. Who knew! Hoot!

Pretend I Posted This Yesterday... Much Ado About Nothing

A lot of people were in Scotland today, so Jesse, Leslie and I went back to the V&A. I took about a million pictures of iconic chairs. We also saw the modern glass art exhibit, which was absolutely beautiful. I've always loved glasswork. I think the V&A is one of my favorite places we've been to so far- crazy, right? Never thought I'd love a museum so much.

"Cinderella Table"

"Knotted Chair" by Marcel Wanders... did he earn his knot-tying badge? I think so.

"Artichoke Lamp"

After going home for lunch we headed to Covent Garden Market, which is like a shopping place within a shopping place. It's kind of a barn-like structure, with bunch of small shops as well as an open area down the center where vendors sell jewelry and knick knacks.

Jesse's Dad told us we HAD to take a look into Harrod's, so that's where we went next. Harrod's is an enormous shopping center for the fabulously wealthy. I didn't anticipate the "fabulously wealthy" part, so when I checked the price tag on a cute scarf I had a heart attack! The scarf was over 300 pounds, aka over 500 American dollars. It was super cool in there, though. We saw Gucci bags and jewelry and downstairs there was this awesome candy shop. Even if we could never get anything it was fun to look around.

Leslie and I left Harrod's a little early so we could go see Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe Theatre. We went with Averyl and it was so awesome! I had never seen before but I followed along pretty well. We were really lucky to get tickets; we showed up an hour early and the tickets were all sold out! Luckily we stuck around outside the ticket booth, and a few people came up to us and sold us their tickets. it was a very close call! I have to admit, standing for 3 hours was a little bit tough on my feet, but it was still really good.

The play ended at about 10:30, so we didn't get home until about 11. And I was dead tired. Which is why I didn't blog yesterday. The end.

Today I went to the singles ward with Leslie and Jesse. Fast and testimony meeting was really good. It was so cool to hear testimonies from such a diverse group- there were people from England, new Zealand, Sweden, the distant land of Idaho... and Averyl is in our ward so we got to sit with her. We also talked to some cute missionaries :) too bad they're completely off limits. I swear, someday my taste in men will include DATEABLES.

The Church we went to is pretty sweet. It's like they took the typical church shape, then squished it and pulled it to make it a very London esque building. And the Steeple is Gold! So sweet.

This evening I took the tube to Averyl's flat and we had dinner. I went there all by myself :) and I wasn't scared and I didn't even get lost or anything! I was very proud of myself. She lives in a more suburban area of London and I really liked the houses there. And her flat was dang cute.

The outside of Averyl's flat. The inside was even cuter!

I loved this brick driveway.

To York!

Today was the first day of a long weekend- we get Saturday through Monday off! I was going to go to Scotland with a group but it ended up being too expensive, so Leslie and Jesse and I stayed in London. And I must say, we had a marvelous time. We took the train to York and went exploring.

First off, when we got to the train station, we found Platform 9 and 3/4! Actually they do have the legitimate, Harry Potter, Platform 9 and 3/4 but that area of the train station was under construction. This one was still sweet, though.And it really does say 3/4 but the 4 is worn away so it's hard to see in this picture.

We didn't have any particular plan when we got there so we just started walking. First we saw this awesome medieval wall that surrounds the town. As we kept going we discovered that there are a lot of historical buildings here. We went through the park and found this cool structure that used to be St. Mary's Abby. And this will sound crazy, but the park smelled like brownies! We walked through it a couple times throughout the day and it always had that smell.

We went window shopping down the narrow streets and found a few cool things- this group of street performers that reminded me of the band in Mary Poppins, this sweet looking vintage ice cream "truck", a cheap pastry shop (unfortunately, both inexpensive and cheap, as it were) this cool midieval tower on a hill that looked like a castle, a couple museums...

I think the highlight of the day was the City Art Gallery. We happened upon it and got in for free- it was a small gallery of paintings, sculptures, and pottery. My favorite room was filled with work by Austin Wright. He worked with several different media- drawings, sculpture, collage... He has an abstract style and focuses a lot on space. Many of his pieces in the exhibit showed different relationships through proximity. Jesse and I liked his stuff so much that we did a couple sketches of his sculptures.

After our lovely exploration of York, took the train back into London. We stopped by the grocery store then got back home for a late dinner.

I feel so proud of us for adventuring in England all by ourselves. And we didn't run into any trouble! And it was fun! Yep it was a good day. :)

Bath

Today we went to Bath. Yes, Bath. That's what the city is called. We went to Bath to see the Roman baths. Once upon a time, people from all over used to travel to this place to bathe. The water in the pool comes from a natural hot spring and it was believed to have healing powers.

We also went to a small fashion museum while in Bath. My favorite part was looking at the old wedding gowns- it made me laugh to imagine myself wearing one of them for my wedding!

We stayed in Bath for a few more hours to window shop and sketch. There were street performers everywhere and I absolutely loved it. There was this really cool guy that was playing the Hang drum- it's this instrument from Switzerland, apparently it was only invented about 10 years ago. He was selling CDs and I kind of regret not getting one! It was very cool.

We finally got home and had dinner. Dinner was interesting... we bought these rice flakes because we wanted to try something new, but their texture turned out to be completely different from regular rice. We tried to eat it with vegetable stir fry and this tomato avocado salad... like I said. It was interesting. I'll have to work on that.

Portobello Road, Portobello Road; Street where the riches of ages are stowed

This morning we went to Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. John Soane was an architect in the mid 1700s who traveled all over the world and accumulated a huge collection of antiques. He put them all up in his house and it’s now a museum. He had original pieces of the Parthenon in his collection, as well as an Egyptian sarcophagus. The tour guide told us he bought what he liked- and he liked a lot! He didn’t even realize some pieces were so valuable. It was pretty neat.

Next we went to the British Museum, designed by the famous architect Sir Norman Foster. Here I saw the Rosetta Stone! We looked at a lot of Egyptian mummies and sculptures and such which I thought was interesting.

We went to this cool Italian restaurant for lunch called Kitchen Italia. I ordered a sort of tortellini filled with goat’s cheese. Soo good!

I didn't actually take this picture, but I really wanted to show a better picture of the entire entrance

Then we went window shopping at Portobello Road. They had the coolest jewelry and scarves! We found all sorts of little treasures, like these awesome rings made out of sea shells. I also enjoyed looking into the antique stores.

Salisbury Cathedral, Wilton House, and Stonehenge

I am completely exhausted! We left our flat this morning at 7 and didn't get home until 8:30. I climbed 332 steps to the top of the tallest cathedral in Great Britain, walked through the house filmed in Pride and Prejudice, and visited Stonehenge.

The tallest cathedral in Great Britain happens to be the Salisbury Cathedral. It was built during the 1200s and is of the English Gothic style. The cathedral's spire, however, wasn't added until the 1300s. It blows my mind that such an enormous and beautiful thing could be built 800 years ago. Some of the stone sculpture has been severely worn away by the wind and weather, so some of the original statues have actually been taken inside and replaced on the exterior. And we got to climb all the way up to the spire! We climbed a series of narrow stairways to get there- many of the steps had serious dips worn away from people walking there for 800 years. Some of the stairs were these wooden column-shaped things. See the picture below. When we got to the spire, there was this certificate on the wall from Genus Book of World Records for the tallest spire in Great Britain. Then we got to go OUTSIDE. The view was sweet! I have to admit,  the bells in the tower were a bit startling when they were so close.

We never stopped to breathe. Once we were done with the tour we went to Wilton House via taxi. Wilton House has a couple rooms which were used for the filming of Pride and Prejudice as well as Young Queen Victoria. My favorite part was the Palladian Bridge. Wilton House is presently owned by the Pembrokes. It shows several different styles from different eras because it has been renovated over the years. I was excited to hear that some of the wall colors had been restored by John Fowler to be historically correct. I wrote a research paper on John Fowler this year for my history class. We also saw the famous bookshelf made by Chippendale. After the tour at Wilton we were treated to a lovely... treat. I don't know exactly what it was, some sort of cookie bar and Sprite to drink. Yummy :)

The taxis picked up us again to take us to Stonehenge. We listened to these audio tours but they were kind of hard to follow. But I did learn that Stonehenge was built about the same time as the Egyptian pyramids. That surprised me. If the Egyptian pyramids are so huge and impressive, what's so great about a few strategically stacked rocks? I might have to do a little more research on this place. Anyhow we had fun taking pictures. :)

OH- final event for the day. I got my acceptance letter into the Interior Design program!!! :D :D :D Leslie, Benae and Jesse got in too!! I haven't heard of anyone else that's opened it yet. HOORAY!