Tuesday, August 10 Visit to Cambridge

So I should be doing homework, but I'd rather be doing this!

Sunday and Monday we caught up on sleep and laundry and grocery shopping, then got up early Tuesday morning to catch the train to Cambridge (which is just past London). We got off the train (hobo kits in hand - that's important later) and did a quick walking tour of the colleges. It was a PERFECT day and we thoroughly enjoyed the weather by getting ice cream and just sitting in the parks.

Welcome sign in the street on our way to the Information Center

A church we saw while stopped at a red light
Some of the lovely architecture
Lab where lots of important things happened, including the discovery of electrons. Goooo Cambridge!

Peterborough College Chapel, a really pretty building
Me in the courtyard of Peterborough College
More architecture
Entrance to Trinity College, where we actually spent the 2 pounds to go inside and see the chapel
Part of the courtyard of Trinity College - look at the ivy covering those buildings!
Me on the other side of the courtyard at Trinity. The chapel is right behind me.
Inside of Trinity Chapel
Again in Trinity Chapel, with the statue of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, an alumnus of Cambridge and one of my favorite poets of all time
The Wren Library at Trinity College, where we got to see manuscripts from Tennyson, Isaac Newton, A.A. Milne, Spenser, Shakespeare, and tons of other incredible things. I cried.
Pretty stream directly behind the Wren Library (it would be just the the right of this scene), where you can get a glimpse of just how glorious a day it was

Saturday, August 7

I know, I'm really far behind, but I promise there's not much of the story left :)

On our drive back to Cardiff from York, we stopped at Preston to see some church history sites. We met a guy there that Tom knows, Peter, and he was our tour guide for the morning. It was great.

This is where we met Petah. It's called Market Square, and it's where the very first LDS missionaries taught. President Hinckley also taught here when he was a missionary in Preston during the 30s.

This is the view of one of the old inns in Preston, possibly where the missionaries stayed during their first few weeks (Peter is in the foreground, but you can't see him very well)
The other side of the street, where another old inn sits that could have possibly housed the missionaries on their first stay
A really pretty old church in Preston that I took a picture of just because :)

An alleyway where one of the first converts and his wife lived. He was originally Jewish, converted to Anglicanism, married an English wife, then heard the missionaries teach, got baptized, and moved to Nauvoo. While there he tutored Joseph Smith in German and Hebrew (this guy knew 7 languages) and practiced dentistry in Brigham Young's parlour. Wish I could remember his name....

View of the house of an elderly widow where the missionaries stayed for a longer period of several months. This is where they had that vision recorded in Church History.....crazy story. Anyway, the place went up for sale several years ago, the press heard about the story and started calling this place "The Devil's House." It still sits empty, and has never been sold.

Pretty park in central Preston where all the rich people's servants used to take their laundry to dry. So basically the center of Preston gossip...

The River Ribble, where the first baptisms in Britain took place. It's gorgeous.

Me in front of the Preston (Chorley) Temple

With some of the pretty flowers in front of the temple doors

After our tour of Preston, we drove a few hours more until we stopped at Powis Castle in Wales, home of one of the largest collections of Far Eastern paraphenalia in Britain. I and one other girl from our group got left behind on the tour......which is just as well since we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the place, anyway. So we got more time to roam the gardens (which were quite extensive) and take pictures...

This is a side view of the castle. Straight through the doors is the courtyard and such, to the left is a steep hill at the bottom of which is the parking lot (whoopee) and to the right is a steep, landscaped hill leading down into the gardens

On the back side of the castle, from the terrace below. This is a little greenhouse-type place built into the hill, looking out over the gardens. Very picturesque.

Only a partial view of the gardens - they stretched from above where I was standing to where the treeline is. You can get a sense of how large and varied they are.

Another back view of the castle, with both terraces in view. Only about half-way down the hill leading to the rest of the gardens.

View from the far garden of the castle (left), holiday cottage (middle) and servants' quarters (right). I wasn't kidding about the gardens being huge.

After Powis we all loaded up in the van (again) and asked our GPS "Gypsy" to take us HOME! We hadn't been in Cardiff since Monday morning and were so ready to take a short rest from all the craziness!

Edinburgh

So, I fail at writing on this blog. I didn't finish before classes started, so that just means I get to do it now instead of homework. I don't have a very good blog ethic...

Okay, Edinburgh! We started the day at 7am by riding a high-speed train from York to Edinburgh, almost a 3 hour trip. We got there mid-morning and the weather was just gorgeous! The sky was blue with big white fluffy clouds and it was actually warm enough that I didn't have goosebumps - quite a rarity for the whole trip in general. We all got into the castle together and had a Scottish tour guide named Andrew who wore a kilt and had the most amazing accent. The castle was actually built on a dormant volcano, so there's volcanic rock and stuff in the gardens. Way cool.

The castle

Me in the Royal Apartments were we actually weren't allowed to take pictures. Sh. The Royal Apartments are where Mary Queen of Scots lived and where she gave birth the James VI who would become James I of England when he succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603.
Me on the walls of the castle, looking out over Edinburgh and over the the North Sea. It was quite a view, and the city is breath-taking.
After the castle, we walked down the Royal Mile that leads to Holyrood Abbey. It felt a lot longer than a mile, but we got to see a lot of cool street performers and stopped at a million souvenir shops and listened to bagpipes and such :) It was a great taste of Scotland.

The tavern where we ate lunch, called Deacon Brodie's Tavern. It's actually named for the guy that Robert Louis Stevenson based "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" on. Brodie was a churchman by day, and a reckless gambler and womanizer by night. I don't know what happened to him, but the food here was good :)

I just walked the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace!

Holyrood Palace, the Queen's official residence when she visits Scotland

I don't know if you can read the sign, but in a house just on the other side of this alley, the poet Robert Burns lived when he visited Edinburgh. Pretty amazing.

On our way back from Holyrood, we stopped for lunch and had a good time just hanging out there. Then we walked to rest of the way back to the train station - getting a little turned around in the mean time, but it turned out okay. We met our whole group and got on the...was it 4 or 5... o'clock train back to York. Apparently everyone else had the same idea, because there were very few seats for us to sit in, and some of us (me included) had to stand for probably half the trip until enough people got off that we could sit down. I was exhausted and it had been such a long week, so you can imagine that I wasn't in the best mood, but I was trying really hard :)

Also on the train was a cricket team that was drunk off their rockers. They were loud and crazy and cat-called us whenever we walked past. It was a little unsettling to have them so close. But we managed to stay out of their car for most of the trip, even though at one point one of them put on a hula skirt and coconut bra and went stumbling around the train. Oh, what asinine things alcohol can drive you to...

We finally got back to York, walked back to the hostel, and got in a good night's sleep before piling back into the van the next day and driving to Preston for a little church history sight-seeing on the way to Cardiff.