Northern Trip/ Scotland

Okay.. Sorry it's been so long since I updated this! For one of the weeks, we were in Northern England/Scotland, so I claim innocence based on the grounds that I did not have internet access. This last week though... I plead the fifth.

Anyway, Monday was a lot of travel. Our bus driver, Tony, was kind of really funny. He has apparently led a lot of groups from BYU, and is well familiar with our ways and habits. Haha! Well, our first stop was Chatsworth House. Since I still haven't gotten around to posting any pictures (I'll try for later today!) than I will simply describe it as Darcy's house in the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice. Seriously, after that, I really want a castle; Okay, technically is a "royal estate house", but either way. The house is the ducal seat for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. It was interesting to see how far the estate extended. Even into the surrounding town, you could see the houses marked at the door, windows, and drainpipes with "Chatsworth" blue. The house itself is huge! I loved the collection of paintings and statues! I wasn't as fond over the modern works-- they didn't seem to fit in with the spirit of the house-- but many of the rooms had the original artworks. The paintings on the ceilings and walls were my favorite (versus the framed ones). Especially in one of the bedrooms, they made the paintings around the ceiling appear as though they were statues, coming off the wall. The grounds were also extremely beautiful. They had statues lining the walkways, and the smell was amazing! It wasn't quite like home (Washington) but the gardens were so intricate, with paths around rocks, and trees, and mazes, and a pond with a fountain... Yeah... I've decided that I want to live there someday. It was pretty cool too, as we were leaving, a royal helicopter flew down and landed on the front lawn. We couldn't really see who was inside, but Tony said (and I agree) that there wasn't enough security to be one of the higher-up royals. Tony guessed that it might have been the Duke and/or Duchess of Kent. Driving away, I decided that Northern England/Scotland has got to be some of my favorite country ever! Everything was so green! Different shades from back home. There were rolling hills, moss, a few trees, but not as many as Washington. I also really loved the dry stack fences they had all around. They've been there for centuries. ; basically, the farmer, as he was preparing his land, would take the stones he found and stack them between two wooden posts until they fit together so well that they could stand on their own and form a wall. They are all over the countryside! It was beautiful.

Tuesday we went to Hadrian's wall. The wall was built by the Romans, at the top border of their land. It really didn't serve much of a purpose in keeping anyone out-- there weren't any challenges to it. It manily was for the local Romans to try and make a show for the Emperor. It was also about defense before expansion, an interesting concept. We had to do a writing about that. We also got to see a Roman settlement right on the border of the wall-- there was the foundations for many buildings, such as the commander's house, bath house, the wall of  course, and several other buildings. They let us climb all over them. I got some really cool pictures... You'll have to see them sometime!  Later that day, we made it into Scotland actually. We stopped in Edinburgh, and later that evening we went and climbed Arthur's seat, which is actually where Orsan Pratt dedicated Scotland for the preaching of the gospel, It wasn't too bad of a hike-- fairly steep, but again, the landscape was beautiful! The best part was the wind! It was more windy than I have ever felt in my life! By the time you get close to the top, they have a chain that you can hold on to. Because of the wind, it was really necessary! At one point, the wind was so strong, I had to hold onto the chain or be knocked down! At the actual top, you always had to be on your toes because of the wind. Sitting down was your best bet, but if you did stand up, you could see the whole of Edinburgh! That evening, we went to the oldest/first pub in Edinburgh for dinner. We all had a bit of haggis, and it actually was really good! I'll just pretend that I don't know what it was..

Wednesday, we went to the National Gallery of Scotland. It was a lot smaller than the one in London, but they did have some really nice paintings, including some Rembrandt's, Botticelli's, and Raphael's, While Raphael isn't my favorite, I loved his colors. They have a luminescence that makes the entire painting glow! Afterwards, we went to a Hiroshi Sugimoto show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was a beautiful show-- I loved his lightning forms, and several of his other photos were very inspiring. In that project, we was essentially taking old photos (from around the time photography was first being invented) and reprinting them in different ways and with different effects. We then went to a Tony Cragg show. Normally I am not one for modern sculpture, but I really loved what I saw!  Many of the workds involved the human face-- the sculptures appeared abstract, but as you walked around them, you could see the faces materialize. I loved discovering each face! It was kind of amazing... The evening was pretty amazing too! We all went out to kind of wander around, and ended up at an old bookstoree. Sarah started talking to the owner, and it turned into an hour long history lesson on Mary, queen of Scots, and the Royal Stuart line. I think the original question was whether Scots considered themselves English. It was really interesting!!! Afterwards, we all went out for pizza, and I discovered that red onion marmalade is amazing!

Thursday, we ended up in Ambleside, back in England. We did a lot of hiking and I loved it! As I said before, the countryside is so beautiful! We hiked through fields and past all the farm animals, past lakes and trees and hills... It was really nice to have the time not only to just look at everything around us, but for some quiet introspection. In the evening, we ate at a place called Lucy's 4... It looked a bit sketch from the outside, but the food was amazing! It was Mediterranean style; the portions are really small, so you order about 10 dishes and just share them all. We finished everything off with buying a couple of tubs of ice cream and sharing them between us all. Even though it began on a Thursday, it was the official start of ice cream Tuesday. And then the fire alarms went off, about three times that night. About the third time, we all just kind of stayed asleep. They had been working on the electrical system earlier that day and they were just malfunctioning.

Friday, we did more hiking. We ended up at Dove Cottage, one of Wordsworth's residences. It was really interesting to learn more about him. After, we hiked up to his other home, Rydal Mount. While not as grandiose as Chatsworth, it was extremely beautiful. It was high up enough that you could see a lot of the surrounding countryside. It rained nearly the entire time, but the gardens were beautiful. They were a little bit more wild than the others we've seen. I actually wouldn't go with wild, but maybe more natural. The others weren't unnatural, but you could see the hand of the gardener in it more. We stayed the night at a nearby hotel. Dinner was really good! I had black pudding, and roast beef with yorkshire pudding. It was all extremely good! That evening was really funny too! We happened to be staying at the hotel with the Corby Town Football Club. Hahaha, an entire soccer team thinks how lucky they are to happen to be staying at a hotel the same time with an all-girls university group. Too bad for them the university happened to be BYU! They weren't bad people at all, but just with different standards. We kept getting notes from them in our room to the effect of wanting us to come over and hang with them. Again, too bad for them that we were from BYU.

Saturday was pretty much just traveling back to the London Centre. It was a long drive; nothing much really happened. I  have to go to church, but I'll try to update for this last week soon!