Touch the Sky in Scotland

This may come as a shock, but... Scotland was ages ago. So... let's breeze through again as usual and just go with the bullet points...

• Burghley House is an amazingly rich house and that was cool.
• Chatsworth followed close behind especially as it's Darcy's home in the newest P&P
• We were starving in a sketch part of town so we ordered free-delivery pizza. It came after an hour and a half and we scarfed it down. Poor decisions.
• York! I loved York.
• We saw the Jorvik Museum for vikings. There is definitely a little ride you take which was delightful.
• While there my mom suggested Betty's for tea. When we went it was delightful. Seriously we had such a blast. As they phrased it, "Well done Mama Raymond."
• York's Chocolate Story. I can't begin to describe to you the joy of this place. I'm going to be quick about it, but... I made my own chocolate candy bar. I freaking made my own. I also had a taste testing session. I also tried chocolate the way the Aztecs would have had it. I also sampled all different kinds. SO GOOD. Also Kit-Kats are wildly popular and cranked out like nobody's business.
• We attended Evensong at the cathedral and it was beautiful.
• Fountain Abbey - amazing! It's huge and so fun to explore.
• Whitby - home to Dracula. That was a quick stop but I think Dracula might have photobombed my photos!
• There was definitely a man at our Italian place that was interested in me. Flattering if not slightly creepy.
• ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS KALLIE CAME HOME. So I skyped in the bathroom of my hotel in Edinburgh.
• Hadrian's wall
• Tour of all things Potter in Edinburgh - I died. Again and again and again
• The Elephant House - where JK Rowling scribbled on napkins
• Tomb of Tom Riddle, Potters, McGonagall, and someone else
• School that perhaps inspired Hogwarts
• Hotel she finished Harry Potter in
• Edinburgh Castle
• New Lanark - also an enjoyable amusement ride there
• Watched Brave while in Scotland
• Another large house... which I can't remember the name of. We see so many!

Sorry I'm not making the photos look good. So... that's happening.

"I will ride, I will fly, chase the wind and touch the sky, I will fly, chase the wind and touch the sky" - Touch the Sky (Brave)

Jane Austen novel at
Chastworth

Betty's tea with Hannah

Lauren and I making our
own chocolate

Me, Hannah W, and Erica
with our own chocolate bars

I really liked my chocolate

Fountain Abbey

Posing at Whitby - is that Dracula?!

We were being vampires

Durham Cathedral

Edinburgh Castle - makes me
think of Harry Potter

Touch the sky

Having a blast

Elephant House

Eating at Oink for lunch

Tom Riddle Sr and Jr
buried here

School inspiration for Hogwarts

Graffiti in Elephant House
from all fans

My own token

The statue plaque reads,
"Do Not Kiss"

Wales, Wales, Wales What Do We Have Here

Once again, I wish I had time to really give the full glory of what occurred over the missing week of my life. This was our week abroad - abroad outside of London - and it was pretty intense. We had already chosen a code word for times when we felt grumpy and we were prepared to enjoy ourselves and emerge friends at the end of six days on a bus together. I am pleased to tell you we were successful. No friendships were broken and we only had one dead body.

So what all did we do my goodness! Okay well my favorite was the Lake District. It was beautiful. I just stared out onto the lakes and the mountains and wanted to dance and sing and write poetry - can't really do much of any of those... Hahaha. So I just breathed it in. Everything is so beautiful and peaceful there. God clearly is here living and full of love for his children. How can you look at so much beauty and not feel that God wants nothing more than our happiness? He certainly soothed my tired and perhaps grumpy feathers after some difficult times. Being with BYU students also is the best because we all share a unique understanding of God's love. Thus the video is a recording of our spontaneous outbreak of hymns while we sat on the dock. So I loved it all so much. Our hostel was directly in front of one of the lakes so we definitely ran out and jumped off the dock to swim in the frigid water. We also saw Dove Cottage (home to Wordsworth). I was so excited. I think I died a couple of times being there myself. It was wonderful. English major freak out for sure. (Shout out to my mom for raising me the way every girl should be raised - loving English.)

• Cardiff Castle
• Llandaff Cathedral
• National Museum in Wales (where I saw Monets and the Blue Lady and other random masterpieces --- Masterpiece anyone?)
• Big Pit Coal Mine
• Trip up to Snowdon (we were literally surrounded by fog and I've never felt more like Jane Eyre in my whole life)
• Conway Castle
• Time spent in Chester - we went to a cathedral, Chester Rows, and wandered around in general. Everything closes super early here in the UK so there came a point when there wasn't much to do.
• Some pretty crazy girl nights and movie nights
• Traumatic Slavery Exhibit in Liverpool. It was not very organized to begin with and then it was brutally honest in a really... horrifying way.
• We spent a good hour or so getting on and off the bus to look at church history sites... that weren't there... so that was fun. Lol. "Imagine what this would have looked like!" "We don't know if this is the right street or where the building would have been, but get off the bus and let's look around!" We were all pretty darn tired for that kind of trip.
• More church history sites throughout Preston - we actually got a really fun tour from an LDS Englishman!
• LAKE DISTRICT AND DOVE COTTAGE
• Morton House - it was this random stop we made and none of us knew why we were
• We eventually ended up at the Potteries... they were... It was our last day and we were all exhausted. It was just a museum and had no gift shop or anything so it was a bit of a bust. Suffice it to say that nowadays you're asked, "on a scale from the Potteries to Dove Cottage how was--?" Or when we're angry we'll tell someone to "go to the potteries." It's basically the biggest joke here.

That's all I can think of for now. It was an incredible trip though. I can't even describe how much fun I had. There were also some crazy things that went down and my friends here were unbelievably supportive. They laughed and joked and just made me feel better if ever I was feeling down. We also have dubbed the professor's wives Mama Wood and Mama Benfell. They fill in as mothers for us when we miss our own - though no one can beat my real mother. So it was just bonding and wonderful and a dream every day.

"For oft, when on my couch I lie / In vacant or in pensive mood, / They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude; / And then my heart with pleasure fills, /  And dances with the daffodils." - "I wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by Wordsworth

Llandaff

They had an American food
store - yum

This was after our experience
in the mines. We survived 

Snowden Mountain

Conway Castlee

Fun candy store in Chester 

In Liverpool. Heh. 

Roman Ampitheatre

Castell Castle 

English Major moment
outside Dove Cottage 

Me and my man Wordsworth 

English major moment
Wordsworth was
poet laureate

HeartLee, me, Syd jumping into
the lake

Our personal lake

Lake District

Can't get any better than that

Me and Lauren early morning

Preston Temple

Morton House

Liverpool Beatles Museum 

Claire and I had to copy their sleeping
position because that's priceless

FOR JESS: From the Bank to the Temple: Legal London

These walks man... they start to blur. But here's a fun thing I learned on this walk! - great minds think alike and BYU students have great minds. So picture this. We're doing our walk and we're beginning to feel pretty hungry, so we just

BYU students who walked
in on our meal

walk down the street to find a place that looks yummy (one of my favorite things that we do in London). So we find this place called Barburrito and our group goes inside. Now we're in the middle of London in the middle of the day randomly choosing a random store. Ten minutes later another group of BYU students walk in having seen the store and deciding it looked delicious. We are in a very large city filled with food places and we BYU students all flock to the same one. This is why we all get along.

the Fat Boy

Okay but in all seriousness I did notice some other things. The London fire definitely is commemorated here. One of our other walks talks a lot about the London fire, so I shouldn't have been so surprised to see another small token on the opposite side of the city. There's this little statue that they literally call the Fat Boy and he's there representing gluttony. So apparently people believed that the fire occurred because god was punishing the people. It's really interesting to see how much religion has really influenced history. People may have different beliefs or argue over god or any number of things, but clearly religion is one of the most important things in the world.

St. Lauren's Jewry

Fun fact: the London Fire supposedly started at Pudding Lane and stopped at Cock Lane which used to be called Pye street, hence Georgie Porgie, puddin' and pie." Whaa-?! Who knew so many of our traditional nursery songs were actually slightly disturbing?!

I liked this church because it felt a little more modern. Apparently it's actually been around for quite a few years and was bombed during the London bombings, but since it had to be restored it definitely feels more recent. I actually liked the change of scenery since we have been doing nothing but ancient ruins. It's a nice shake up and proof that anything Brits want to do they can accomplish well. It's also really typical London that they don't just demolish a ruined building and they instead restore it or "improve" it.

Side note, there are statues devoted to Commerce, Agriculture, Science, AND Fine Arts!!! I was actually really surprised that with that list of things, they would include Fine Arts. So... that's fun. I'm a Humanities major and I've been involved in the arts my whole life so I love that London is so conscious of the arts!! What a wonderful city this is.

"You are now / In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow / At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore / Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more / Yet in its depth what treasures!" - Percy Shelley

Barburrito

SPOILER ALERT: This is where
 season 2 of Sherlock ends. If you
know what I mean 

This is for ambulance
parking. We are not in
America 

Barburrito's mascot was a
donkey

FOR JESS: Seats of Power: Whitehall and the Mall

"Right Fears No Might"
Slogan during The Great War

So here's the dealio - Jess don't read anything that follows in the parentheses - (one of my friends got a really good score on her blog posts and she didn't write as much as I have been writing so... I'm gonna reign it in and maybe write less boring stuff... .... hopefully I still get good scores....)

What a cute little walk this was. This one - surprise surprise - focused more on political things, so I saw some really cool buildings and tons of statues. Maybe I've mentioned this before, but apparently
they like to memorialize anyone who have set foot on British soil. Okay not really, but they certainly are ready and willing to pay tribute to people who contributed significantly. There are especially a lot of tributes devoted The Great War. I'm amazed by how many things we pass that really honor and revere those who worked hard during the war. So much of London identity came through that war.

Ohhhhh! Is this where we are?!

Something that this walk was really helpful with was the way it helped orient me. I have a good grasp of the underground for sure nowadays, but what's hard is emerging out of the underground and picking up from there. It's like having mini little maps in my head that I pull out based on which tube stop I arrive at, but I have no concept of where anything beyond that tube stop is. Well this walk shook that up hardcore. Suddenly twenty different locations tied together in my mind and it's always weird and helpful. So thanks Dr. B for helping me figure out where I'm going with my life.

Baron Clive

As we were walking, we read this interesting story that stuck with me. It's this story of a man, Baron Clive, who was suffering from depression and decided to commit suicide. However, when he tried to fire the revolver it failed twice and he took it as a sign from God that he was supposed to live. Well turns out this man became one of the most important British officers during a turf with India - he ended up freeing many prisoners and reestablishing order. Having depression all around - and in my
life - I really appreciated the fact that depression did not limit this man from completing wildly significant feats that affected the lives of hundreds and through them thousands. If that makes any sense... It just reminds me that the worth of souls really is great in the sight of God.

Anywho, this walk definitely was a simple one if we're all gonna be honest together here, but it was fun to be out in the city figuring things out and being with some of my favorite people on the planet.


"It is not the walls that make the city, but the people who live within them. The walls of London may be battered, but the spirit of the Londoner stands resolute and undismayed." - King George VI (King during The Great War)

Scotland Yard - Disney's
favorite law enforcement

This makes me so happy

Elite Men's Club with
Athena atop... yup

In front of St. James' Palace

Buckingham Palace! (I toured
one day - coming soon)

Here in London we don't
discriminate by color -
black phone booth

Cleveland Row home to
"Queen Mum" - how cute is
that?!