World's Longest Post

Ten days have passed since my last entry.  Within that last week and a half I’ve been to castles, manors, Roman ruins, two foreign countries- and through all of it I’ve been on the wrong side of the road!  Plus, I’ve met 38 new girls that I now call roommates, as well as four professors and their families.   Needless to say, I have a lot to cover in this entry.

The good news: I wont be leaving this little blog hanging for this long ever again during my adventure.  In my humanities class we are required to keep a blog about our experience abroad.  We have to do two posts a week, so I have no choice but to be a good blogger.  I don’t expect anyone to read much ­–especially since a lot of it will be technical information about paintings, sculptures, buildings, and homeless Londoners begging for change in the underground– but it should be a good record of my trip that I can keep.

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When the plane touched the ground in Great Britain my eyes were still wide open.  I had spent the eight and a half hours on the plane from Atlanta trying to contort my body into some position in the fuzzy, straight-backed seat so that I could get even an inkling of sleep.  Sleep had been promising at the beginning of the flight, when Mom and I had three seats together.  Plenty of room.  Then a man mysteriously passed out when trying to get out of his seat across the aisle.  Maybe he was dehydrated.  After all, they say you should drink plenty of water before such strenuous flights.  Or maybe he just wanted to stretch out and ride comfortably across our three seats for eight hours with every flight attendant attending him industriously.

Hm.

So Mom and I got kicked out of our seats.  She was directed to one side of the plane, and I was instructed to take the man’s previous seat beside his wife, who kept asking me if I could sit somewhere else further up in the plane.

“Um… I think they said this is the only seat, “ I tried to say as nicely as I could.  It was true.  Soon she was waving down a flight attendant and asking if I could move somewhere else.  She was pretty persistent too, with all of her, “are you sure”s and “but what about over there”s.  RUDE!  Now you see why I suspect the fainting man.  Obviously this couple had a little plan: dominating entire rows for themselves.

In my new seat it was impossible to sleep, mainly because I was afraid to accidentally touch the hem of my neighbor’s sleeve in my unconsciousness.  But something about being crammed between Satan’s mistress and the plastic plane wall made me sick.  I threw up into one of the plastic wrappings that the pillows come in, since apparently they don’t provide those lovely brown paper bags on Delta International flights.  I don’t think that made the woman like me any better.

I felt much better once we were walking around in the airport.  Though all of us were a little jet lagged, we were excited to get out and see a few things.  First, we picked up our rental car.

This is my aunt Debbie.  We quickly nominated her as the official driver.  This makes her one of the bravest women I know!   You should see the roads here!  Not only are they narrow, but they are covered with cars and buses that zip down the streets at unbelievable speeds, squeezing through impossible spaces and sailing within centimeters of each other without the least bit of panic.  Let’s just say that we were all but screaming during our first trial on the road.  We got several people to honk at us, a few not-so-friendly gestures, and we even hit a few curbs as we tried to adjust to driving on the left side.  Roundabouts… I’ve driven in a few in the U.S.  These things here are not roundabouts.  They are chaotic wheels of danger!  There were a few times that I thought we were going to get crushed.  Sometimes, if we weren’t sure where we were going, we would just go around and around, terrified to make a wrong move.  Have you ever wanted to laugh and scream at the same time?

This is my mom and my Grandma.  For the first day Debbie was not only learning to drive, but we were also learning how to control our backseat driver urges.  We did, however, keep a tally of curbs hit.  Thirteen.

Once we were all finally adjusting, and Debbie was becoming quite skilled, she said, “I feel like I’m on a ride in Disneyland!”  It was funny, but it also gave me the impulse to check my seatbelt.  

Here is my aunt Diane.  Haha- okay that's not really her, but for some reason I don't have a picture of her in the car.  She must have been out.  But she was so fun to have on the trip too.  I felt that she needed to have a car picture up too.  I have no idea why this little stick figure was painted in the middle of the road.

Our first day we went to Salisbury, Stonehenge, Bath, and then we spent the night in Bristol. 

Salisbury was such a quaint town and the Salisbury Cathedral was jaw dropping.  

These flags were carried to war in Italy as early as 1806.  They were even carried in the war against the U.S. in 1814 and 1815.  I thought that was way interesting.

Ever wonder what the oldest clock in the world would look like?  Well it doesn’t even have a face.  It was made around 1386.  The clock simply strikes the hour on the hour.  And it still does that today, inside of the Salisbury Cathedral in England.

This is a cool picture of the holy water.  I was able to get the reflection of the stained glass.

 

I noticed throughout my journey in the UK that cathedrals have memorials all over the walls and the floor.  That makes sense to me.  Pray for and remember those who have passed on, right?  What doesn’t make sense to me is the decorating of cathedrals of the day with these nasty little faces.

It was believed that these things would scare away evil spirits.  I personally think they would scare away any good ones too.  But people really believed in it, and the rich even had them in their homes (I saw them in Sir Walter Scot’s house- where I was, regretfully, not allowed to take pictures.)

Remember, Debbie was still getting used to driving, and we were lost somewhere between Salisbury and Stonehenge.  We pulled into a narrow dirt road, which was next to a used car lot, to figure things out.  A man with silver hair and a pink and grey argyle vest was standing in the lot and smiling at us as though he already knew why we were there.  Perhaps the Volvo packed with luggage and the maps draped over the dashboard gave us away.

Mom rolled down the window and asked, “Excuse me, could you tell us how to get to Stonehenge?”

He laughed and then waved away the giant roadmap.  “Put that away- get rid of that,” he said as he approached the car.

Diane said, “Oh right,” sarcastically under her breath.  We were both giggling in the back seat as the man began giving Mom and Debbie directions.  Maybe he was trying to tell us some kind of shortcut- I was having a hard time understanding his thick, and yet very proper, accent.  He was way nice and repeated his instructions for us a few different times.

We thanked him but then quickly needed more of his assistance as we tried to figure out how to back out of the narrow road and back onto the highway.  He directed us and then waved as he headed back into his lot.  Finally facing the road again, Debbie was cautiously waiting for a clear spot in the crazy traffic so that we could continue on our way.  This was hard because people were driving crazy and fast. 

Finally!  The perfect opening!  Debbie slammed on the gas and --- we shot backwards.  As soon as we came to a jarring stop, we burst out laughing.  Debbie shifted from reverse to drive, and recovered so quickly that we were on the road in five seconds.  I looked back to see the car-lot man leaning against the hood of a car with his hands clasped in prayer.  HAHA!  Clearly he didn’t think we would ever make it to Stonehenge alive.  

I’m happy to report that we did make it.  There is nothing cooler that coming around the corner on the highway to see a circle of steely grey stones perfectly placed in the middle of a field of green grass.  Stonehenge is amazing!  In the 70’s the little barriers were put up so that people can no longer walk freely between the ancient stones.  Grandma said that she was able to go right up, and I totally envy her.  They think the monument was put up around 2,500 BC.  As a bishop explained to me the other day, in America bigger is better.  In England older is better.  That means that Stonehenge is the number one coolest thing to see in the UK.

Or as my mom calls it, “Sten-hounge”.  That became the joke of the trip.

Bath is a must-see.  Most of the cool pictures I let Mom and Debbie take.  When I get them later, and when I visit it with my BYU group, I will post all kinds of pictures.  The city has so much history, and everything matches.  All of the buildings are the same design and color.  I had my first pasty- cheese and onion- in front of the Roman Baths.  We had many pastys after that.  We also tried the water from the baths.  It was somewhat warm and very minerally.  I couldn’t take more than two sips.  But the room was so beautiful, and I’m pretty sure it’s where the latest Sense and Sensibility was filmed, when they go to Bath and drink tea. 

The next day we accidentally took a wrong turn.  It really wasn't our fault.  The UK likes to put their construction signs directly in front of other signs so that you can’t see them.  “DIVERTED TRAFFIC” just so happened to be covering up the arrow that would have shown us where to turn to get to Warwick Castle.  So driving obviously didn’t go perfectly, but we were able to make up for it.  There were a few times during the week that we were stuck in very bad traffic, though.

The upside to this was the beautiful landscape that we were able to enjoy.  The country is absolutely gorgeous.  The vegetation grows so close to the road that it bends in to brush cars as they pass.  Trees often make long tunnels for us to drive through, and when we can see past bushes and hedges there is almost always a magnificent field or forest.  I’ve never seen so many sheep in my entire life.

When we were traveling through the Cotswolds we stopped to take some pictures- we just couldn’t pass up the beauty.  I can’t wait to post the pictures that we took, because they were amazing.  Diane and I crossed the street (very wary of cars that could bowl us over at 100 miles per house) and she handed me Debbie’s camera so I could jump the stone wall into the field.  I decided I wanted to pet one of the sheep.  However, after I got within ten feet of the nearest one I stopped dead in my tracks.  The thing had piercing golden eyes and I’m pretty sure it was considering coming after me.  I slowly backed away, and as soon as I tried to snap a picture of it, it decided to relieve itself.  So either sheep look evil when they gotta go, or I just narrowly escaped death by wooly livestock.

Bibury was my favorite town of all the Cotswolds.  It was very green and had a shallow green river running through it.  Again, pictures I can’t show you yet, but it was so beautiful and the little church with the ancient cemetery was very cool.  Very old.  Campden had the thatched roofs, which were also very cool looking. 

We finished off that day by heading over to the Sherwood Forest.  That was the day that we missed Warwick castle, so our plans had changed a little bit.  Sadly, we weren’t able to get to the forest until dusk, and the place was closed.  But that also meant that we had the forest to ourselves.  We got to walk around on a wide trail and imagine what it would have been like to be there when Robin Hood was hiding out or fighting King John along with his band of “merry men”.  We saw the “Major Oak” which is very old.  So, of course, it was voted Britain’s favorite tree in 2002.  It’s hollowed trunk was supposedly used as a hideout for Robin Hood and his men.  It was definitely around when he was- but who knows, right?

Some of us just so happened to desperately need to answer nature’s call when we were in the middle of the forest.  Sorry for how blunt I am, but I peed in Sherwood Forest.  How many people can say that?  Well... how many people would want to?

I just have to include this picture because I thought it was so funny.  We are in a bathroom waiting in line to use port-a-pottys, and the sign made us laugh.  Imagine the kid who figured that out.  ("CAUTION: Wide Toilet Chute.  Small children should be supervised at all times")

The Lake District was beautiful, but I’m very excited to go back on a sunnier day.  When we went it was foggy and rainy, and we couldn’t see as much as we wanted to.  But still, I’ve never seen so many waterfalls along the road in my whole life.  We stopped to take some pictures when I decided to trek a little distance down a narrow dirt footpath.  Diane was right behind me when we both stopped at a roaring sound.

“Is that a waterfall?” Diane asked.  I told her I would run down the hill and check.

I felt like I was in a movie!  Almost neon green grass, sheep everywhere, stone walls, a beautiful misty lake in front of me, and running toward a little copse of trees in the middle of a dale. When I got there I spied the waterfall through the low-hanging branches.  To get a better look I had to squeeze through a fence (which looked electric but... I'm still alive, so that's good) And then I saw it!  A huge and amazing waterfall! What made it amazing was the moss and the bright BRIGHT green vegetation that was dripping wet all around it. Absolutely stunning. I made my two aunts trek down and squeeze through the fence too. They were glad they did. They agreed that it was much prettier than the waterfall we had paid several pounds to see earlier that day. What a find, huh?  Oh and the fence must have been placed so that no one would fall to their death. It was a bit precarious. I held on to a slippery moss-covered tree trunk for support as I stood as close to the waterfall as I could for a picture, but my aunts didn't dare come down that far. 

Rest stops are very big and very busy in Great Britain.  One of the places we grabbed breakfast (by the way, the British like their eggs runny… very runny and almost uncooked) and in the bathrooms they had chewable toothbrushes.  I kind of found that ironic, considering all of the things said about the teeth of the British… but anyway…

I didn’t try one.  My mom did.  She said they worked pretty well.  Grandma decided to try one too.  After a moment of thoughtful chewing she asked, “Well do I swallow it?”

My mom, Diane, and myself all shouted, “NO!” at the same time.  Funny.  So luckily we did not have to perform CPR that day.

I tried Yorkshire pudding in York.  It’s not pudding.  It’s like bread.  I’m still confused on what is pudding and is considered a scone, etc.  The definitions are very different in America.  But I noticed that the British love to sit down and spend a good deal of time eating at a restaurant.  You wont see British people chowing down on a box of fries as they are walking down the street.  I most certainly didn’t see anyone hurriedly swallowing a burger on his or her way to work in their car.  That’s not how they do it.  In America we eat to survive.  We eat so that we won’t pass out while we are at work or school or wherever we are rushing off to.  In Britain, they live to eat. 

 However, don't think that means that there aren't any fast food restaurants. There are.  But the English would never dream of eating their drive-thru food in their car.  And if McDonald's could be quaint... well the UK would make it quaint.

All of the food I’ve had so far is so good (okay, except the liquid boiled egg) which isn’t what I expected.  I was warned that food in England is horrible.  So far so good.  The food in Scotland… well that’s a different country with a different story.  Lots of fun things happened in York and the Lake District that I wont go into.  

Like this super old building we stayed in that was once a priory and is now a Mariott hotel.  But this entry is getting ridiculously long and I’d be shocked to find that anyone is still reading this.  Moving on to Scotland.

Hadrian’s wall was built by the Roman’s along the boarder of England and Scotland.  Its purpose was to fend off the “barbaric” Scots.  We stopped at that for a little bit, where I took plenty of video, and again left the picture taking to the other women.  I was able to walk on it and explore the remains of the little fortress. 

We pressed further into Scotland with absolutely no change to the weather or the scenery.  Only a little “Welcome to Scotland” sign gave any clue that we were in new territory.  It was still unbelievably green and beautiful, and people were still driving like maniacs.  At this point Debbie was almost Pro, by the way. 

We stopped in the famous, and infamous, Gretna Green.  I’ll talk more about that when I get my pictures, but it was fun.  It is where British people used to sneak over the Scottish border to get married because the legal marrying age was lower than it was in England.  A blacksmith’s shop was famously the first marriage house that was frequented by many young love-struck teenagers.  Mom loved it, and so did I.

Grandma taught me a little bit about my heritage.  The McKay clan dwelled in a large chunk of Northern Scotland.  There is a Reay Forest up there (my mother’s maiden name) and I hope I can see it someday.  I got a scarf with the McKay colors- the clan that my great-something-grandfather Lord Reay was the leader of.  

We even saw a place where they make the patterns and kilts etc. 

One of my favorite stops of the trip was to Sir Walter Scot’s house.  His estate was beautiful; it looked like he lived in a castle.  Can you believe that his family (or descendents) only moved out of the house five years ago?  But the middle floor has always been left exactly as it was at Scot’s death.  He had the most amazing library I’ve ever seen.  In fact, I’d love to duplicate it someday for my own castle (haha!  In my dreams!)  

The British love their pets!  It's been fun seeing the very English dogs being walked by their loving owners, rain or shine.  Even back in the 1800s these people loved their dogs.  We saw a few dog cemeteries between the different places we went and this is just one of the headstones.  The date reads 1860. ("To Captain. As Faithful A Dog As Ever Wagged A Tail. Aged 16.")

Castle Howard is also very beautiful, and still houses the Howard family.  I wanted to spend more time at both places, but my family had to keep reminding me that we were in a hurry to see a lot of things.  I spend too much time looking and everything and reading every little piece of information offered.

In Edinburgh we had a very cool taxi driver named George.  He gave us a two hour tour of his town and told us all kinds of interesting things.  For example, he took us to a graveyard that had a very high black fence all around it.  It also had a neglected-looking tall tower on one end.  He explained that in that tower, the families of the recently diseased would watch over the grave of the person who had died.  They would do this for a few days to prevent grave robbers.  Isn’t that weird that grave robbing was so common? He also took us to the beach.  I'll have pictures of that better.

I tried haggis.  For those of you who don't know, that is the heart, liver, and lungs of a lamb all ground up together.  I don't like meat to begin with.  Sometimes I call myself a vegetarian, even.  So for me, eating haggis was a big deal.  After I finally mustered up the courage to lift my fork, it wasn't as horrible as I expected it to be.  It almost had a sausage taste.  But one bite was good enough for me.  I didn't even get near the black pudding: pig's blood.  But Mom tried it!  Good job, Mom!

We went to some museums, some less awesome than others.  This one was the better one... it's called the castle museum.  It had very cool recreations of streets and shops from the Victorian age.  It had tons of information, and I want to go back and read more.

These couple of pictures are of Clifford’s Tower.  Mom and Diane are in the top picture on the inside of the tower and I'm in the bottom one on the outside of it.  It stands on top of a very steep hill.  Coming down I started slipping and couldn't stop myself.  I just slid all the way down to the parking lot.  The tower has served many capacities, namely a lookout tower for a prison.  As most other things that people come to see in England, is it very old.  Cool, huh? 

This is the view from Clifford's tower.  The rooftops all over the UK are awesome, whether they're thatched or topped with old chimneys- and of course they're always a few spires-, they are a cool sight to see.

We went into Edinburgh castle, which also contains the Scottish Crown Jewels.  That was amazing.  This included the Stone of Destiny, which has been used as a coronation chair for centuries in early Scotland.  Reading the history of it was amazing.  Sir Walter Scot actually helped recover the Crown Jewels and the stone.  He pretty much rocks.

Exhibit A of why not very many people choose to learn to play the bagpipes.  It just doesn't look all that attractive.  These guys were dressed in their traditional garb and playing on the side of the street for coins.  I didn't realize how many different songs the bagpipes can really play because before going to Scotland I always heard the same two songs over and over again.  You probably know what songs I'm talking about.  But there's some awesome music, and some songs I heard were accompanied by acoustic guitar or drums and it sounded sweet.

We also went to Hollyrood Palace, which is the residence of the Queen when she visits Scotland (which is usually only an annual visit).  It was cool we got to see the private quarters of Mary Queen of Scots and all kinds of artifacts from that time and even earlier.  Very awesome, I wish I could have taken pictures in there.  The building was beautiful.  My favorite was the nearly-forgotten abbey that is connected to the back of the palace.  It was destroyed by an angry Catholic-hating mob many years ago.  Now it stands in ruins with plants growing through it’s cracks and with open blue sky serving as a ceiling.  But inside the actual palace, the tapestries, the old furniture, and especially the old stuff of Mary Queen of Scots was so cool. 

Part of the reason I like going to all of these old places is because of the smell.  Maybe it’s weird- but I just love the smell of old books, old tapestries, old wood.  It’s kind of sweet and musty… but it just reeks of stories and of history.  As I gazed into the amazing green forests or stood gaping at giant towers, I couldn’t help but feel the inspiration of millions of writers before me.  This is where the world’s greatest fairy tales, novels, poetry, and legends were born and cultivated.  It’s clear to see why.  It’s a remarkable place, and I love it here.

Thanks, Mom, for taking me on the trip of a lifetime.  There's no one I would have rather gone with than you.  Diane, Debbie, and Grandma- I was so happy you came, it was a blast.  I love you guys!    

In my next entry I will tell you all about where I am now, which is the heart of London- my new home until December.