My roommate Jenn received an e-mail this week from one of her friends that lived here a couple years ago and knew where to get cheap drinks. Because we had a day trip with our program on Saturday, we decided to go and find one of those places and just sit and chill. We had a general idea of where the pub was at (not far from our house and what street it was located on), and the name of it. We started to walk that direction and couldn't find it, so we asked bobbies where to go. (I'm not sure if they still call policemen that, but I wanted to use the term). They were the nicest policemen we've ever met...if I was a London police officer, and probably had tourists asking me all the time where to go, I probably wouldn't be Freddy Friendly to them. They pointed us in the right direction...or what they thought was right, but was actually wrong. :) Eventually we found the spot, but the only thing that was there was a construction scaffold saying that whatever used to be there definitely was not anymore. Shoot. We ended up going to another pub. I decided along the way all I wanted was a diet coke with grenadine...essentially a cherry coke. (I'm very beer-ed out. We go out so often that, even though I probably just have one or two an evening, I really just don't want any for a while.) You can probably figure out what happened by now: they didn't have any grenadine and gave me regular coke instead of diet. I'm not sure if that story is really blog-worthy, but it's just another example of the line of small incidents of things that just don't go right.
Yesterday we took a trip to Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace. They were BEAUTIFUL places. Windsor Castle is still the place that the royal family uses as a weekend get away. It's about 25 minutes outside of London in this beautiful tiny town that
definitely is an escape. Add the fact that it's nearly 1000 years old and has some of the most beautiful decor of any room anywhere makes it quite the getaway. Windsor was initially a castle and still has many of the intricacies that made it "battle worthy," including arrow slits and the traditional castle top (that I don't know the name of, but where you could shoot arrows and then hide behind so they didn't get shot.) Of course, many of those have been transformed for modern day uses, but they are still cool.Hampton Court Palace that Henry VIII essentially stole from his best friend, Cardinal Wooley (who he eventually beheaded in the Tower of London.) When William and Mary reigned (around the town of Christopher Columbus), they decided to tear down much of what existed when the castle belonged to Henry. Not only did they te
ar it down, but the structures they put up in place of the old buildings were a completely different style. (Think putting something sort of similar to the White House next to a building like an old country schoolhouse. While those structures aren't exactly what the castle was like, but you get the contrast.) At the back of the palace is an immense garden with trees groomed much like I remember from the movie "Alice in Wonderland." The trees actually looked like large Hershey Kisses instead of suits from a deck of cards, but were still cool. The last thing we did was a maze of shrubs. (This also reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, but in this picture, I'm pretending to be Harry Potter in book number 4 where he reaches the trophy/port-key at the end of the tri-wizard tournament and is z
apped to go and face Lord Voldemort.)
ar it down, but the structures they put up in place of the old buildings were a completely different style. (Think putting something sort of similar to the White House next to a building like an old country schoolhouse. While those structures aren't exactly what the castle was like, but you get the contrast.) At the back of the palace is an immense garden with trees groomed much like I remember from the movie "Alice in Wonderland." The trees actually looked like large Hershey Kisses instead of suits from a deck of cards, but were still cool. The last thing we did was a maze of shrubs. (This also reminded me of Alice in Wonderland, but in this picture, I'm pretending to be Harry Potter in book number 4 where he reaches the trophy/port-key at the end of the tri-wizard tournament and is z
apped to go and face Lord Voldemort.)I'm dealing with my first little bit of homesickness, so in order to perk myself up, I decided to head to THE Catholic cathedral for the country of England for a grand Catholic mass, with a fantastic choir, in an building steeped with tradition. I'm not saying "beautiful" at this point because the outside is in the Byzantine style, and I'm not particularly fond of it. However, the inside was beautiful (and possibly/probably also in the Byzantine style) and will throw in that adjective only when talking about the inside. There isn't a tube station that takes me directly there, so my plan was to get off at the station on my line and walk to the church from there. I have long legs and like to walk, and on the map it didn't seem so far. Wrong. I ended up being late, VERY late to mass because I had to walk all the way through the borough of Chelsea to the church...it took me about 35 minutes (ma
ybe a bit more). Mass was good and as uplifting as I hoped, but I will have to go back and catch the whole thing this time. Here is a link to the cathedral's website if you want to know more about it.I did some wandering around Harrods after mass, but I'm going to stop now to allow you to catch your breath and do something else with your day. :) Don't worry...I'll write about it later (there is MUCH to tell.)
