English Miscellany (with Danielle)

Once again, I'm looking through old photos I've taken and trying to get caught up on my picture posting. So today has less of a theme- but does include quite a few shots from the time when my friend, Danielle, came to visit in October! But it's mostly a hodgepodge collection. I kind of like it- quirks and oddities in our daily lives!

Lets see what we have...

For starters: the hubs and I discovered this awesome little car... parked on the sidewalk... right in front of a sign that says "No Parking". Oh, I love London!

And on a walk, I looked down a side alley to see this. Where else in the world will you see a random piece of artwork larger than a car (ok, a SmartCar, not a real car) hanging on a building above a dumpster?!

Oh yeah-- does anyone remember this beauty? On Facebook, I posted this article that boasted the 'world smallest home' selling for £275,000 (that's about $420,000) in Barnsbury, about a 10 min walk from our place. It looks better in their pictures. And I cannot believe the price of real estate around here!

Change of pace: I LOVE this view! It's  on a bridge in the middle of St. James' Park, between Buckingham Palace and Victoria Embankment. You can see the London Eye on the right, and a gorgeous palace-type place, that is apparently, the Royal Horseguards Hotel.

Buckingham Palace... and the flag is up, which means the Queen was in residence in that day!

Another of our favourite nights out... walking from the Southbank, through Borough Market, along to the Globe Theatre, and across Millennium Bridge to this spot in front of St. Pauls!

The view from The Millennium Bridge towards London Bridge and the Shard.

And the view from the Southbank (on an evening we happened to be attending Julius Caesar at the Globe!)

All right... back to a bit of reality. Here in England, we have Primark- the clothing equivalent of Walmart. Hence, a wall full of adult footie pajamas. Seriously, people?! Do you wear these?

Oh yeah- a bit of a theme to some of these pics! I realised I haven't posted many pictures from Danielle's visit. Danielle came in October to squeeze in a bit of a girls trip before wedding the love of her life just a few weeks ago! They're now settled in marital bliss, but I get to remember her 'back when' she was just a fiancee roaming the streets of England!

We took a couple day trips: the first to Oxford. I posted previously about The Eagle and Child (and the Inklings who met there), as it was the highlight of our day, but the rest of the town is worthy of sharing too!
The Radliffe Camera (camera meaning 'room' in latin).

I love all the winding passages one finds throughout Oxford.

And kind of cringe at seeing banks and coffee shops in such amazing old buildings! (Though this could theoretically just be a reconstruction to look old!)

I want one of these!

And this spot signifies the place where Ridley, Latimer, (Oct. 16 1555) and later Cranmer were burned at the stake for opposing Catholicism. It is here Latimer spoke the famous words of encouragement: "Be of good cheer, Ridley; and play the man. We shall this day, by God's grace, light up such a candle in England, as I trust, will never be put out."

On another day, Danielle and I took a bus journey out to Bath (pronouced with a long ah... or so I've been told!)
The Bath Cathedral.

The Royal Crescent... famous for its groundbreaking curved architecture. (I tried to make it panorama, but couldn't get it to work, so you get two pictures.)

The Weir under Putney Bridge

I loved these sweet rooftops sticking out through the trees. And, if you look closely, up in the hills, you can see bits of the mansion at the Prior Park Landscape Gardens.

The first half of our day was grey and dreary, but the clouds parted just in time for sunset, and we realised that the Bath limestone was made for the golden hour.

Sally Lunn's... which is famous for... wait for it.... its bunns. Considered the oldest house in Bath, it dates back to 1482, though Miss Sally Lunn, a French Huguenot baker, didn't take up residence until the 1600s, when she brought with her a recipe for these large buns.. half bread, half cake, usually cut in half- but eaten in a variety of ways- for savoury sandwiches, to a morning toast, to cinnamon-sweet!

Just to give you some perspective on how old that is: this is artwork taken from the late 1400s.

And being French in the 1600s, Sally may have worn something like this:

Or this:

When I walk these streets, I lose perspective on how much history has happened here. How many shoes, sandals, bare feet have walked the same streets? What peasants, tinkers, merchants, servants wandered the same alleys? What careers have been built and lost? What families have been grown in times of piece and scattered in times of war? What swords have swung and bombs have dropped? Ultimately, what lives have lived here? What souls walked this path? And how many died knowing Christ?

I love how small I feel in the history of England. I love how small I feel in modern England- with its mix of slow country life and the urban multi-cultural worlds (plural) of London. When I take the time from my errands and photo shoots, it really is amazing, and I'm so grateful to be here to experience it!

Scotland Adventures

Again- we're recapping 2014 today on Caledonian Road... and today's adventures take us to the bonny hills of Scotland! The hubs and I snuck up for a long weekend away... spending a day in Edinburgh before staying with some extended family of friends from church. It was amazingly wonderful of them to welcome us in their home, and the highlands of Banchory (I think we were right on the border of the highlands, honestly) were breathtaking! Loved it!

Edinburgh... a city of ups and downs, winds and alleyways... just breathtaking!

The hubby took me for an early morning coffee, and then up to Calton Hill to watch the sun come up over the city!

Then we hired a car and began the drive to Banchory.

Our friends took us for an afternoon walk up Scolty Hill. It doesn't even count as a mountain in Scotland, but it had me stopping for breath, and the views from the top were incredible!

The afternoon sun still lit the hillsides, while a wall of rain travelled down the valley between.

We even got to see a rainbow!

Remnants of August's heather still dotted the hillside, though we were a month too late to see truly purple hills!

And the stone walls were covered in moss unbelievably thick! Such a contrast of stark, barren hillsides with rich, overgrown valleys. Breathaking!

And not bad for a wig too! Especially if you're going for the chia pet look!

On the way home, we drove through high altitude, dry wind-swept valleys. Honestly, parts of it reminded me very much of my old home in Colorado... driving over Monarch Pass on the way to Gunnison, no guardrails between you and the drops, the fog lower than the treeline, and a barren beauty all around.

We loved Scotland!

Out-and-Abouting

Well, again, I find myself needing to make up for mass amounts of missed posting opportunities. The last couple months have been full of lovely experiences with plenty of photo ops, just not the time (or discipline) to follow through and post about them. So I'll take January to catch up from 2014 and post the pics I have left.

Here are a few days worth of being out and about.

Every September (yes, I'm so far behind, I still have pictures from September!) London hosts and 'Open House London' event, where buildings around the city, normally closed to the public, open for one day. Though there are tons of buildings available, the more famous structures have long queues to get in- meaning you have to pick one, maybe two to see in a day. This year, the hubby and I chose to see Lloyds of London (i.e.: the inside-out building!) It was equally as impressive on the inside-- though the 2 hour wait took its toll! :-P

The view from the bottom:

   

The views from the top:

I can't believe how packed in everything is, and as you can see, there's still more going up!

Though frankly, at the end of the day: it's still a desk job-- at which you share a 4x6 desk with four other people. Not my cup of tea!

From the outside- the 'guts' of the building look pretty cool. Elevator shafts on the left, ventilation on the right.

Right next to Lloyds is Leadenhall market, a covered arcade where parts from Harry Potter were filmed! :-)

They had a display of books that I kind of loved, kind of hated for how they ruined so many books!

And we found a 'mini' Gherkin... though it's not really very mini at all...... and its made out of Legos!

Up the street, about halfway between Lloyds and our home, is Bunhill Fields, a cemetery for non-conformist (ie: not Church of England) pastors throughout history. Here is John Owen (who the hubby is studying for his ThM and hopefully PhD and John Bunyan!

Right across the street is John Wesley's chapel and home.

I love that we live here, right next to so much history!

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All right- enough of London for now! I took a day trip with a friend to Manchester. She was looking at the university there so I had the day to tour Manchester myself. Quite frankly, I wasn't too excited. I mean, what's in Manchester? But actually- it was a lovely little city. Reminded me of some of New England's small cities--- maybe Philedelphia?

And I discovered the John Soanes Museum... a little museum with gorgeous historical reading rooms!  I mean, LOOK!

Ah!!!! Look at these libraries!

 And the sunset lit up the arches of this church so beautifully, I considered it a lovely end to my day.

I still love my London-- but Manchester's all right too!

A Visit with The Inklings

Well, as I took the month of October to focus on the 31 Days Challenge, I feel a bit out of the loop with my normal blog posts. However, October was a very busy month here in the UK, and I have lots to make up. I'm not sure how much I'll get in, as we're traveling again back home for the Thanksgiving holiday, but we'll sneak in a couple posts and see what we can do.


At the beginning of October, my friend, Danielle, came for a visit. We took a couple day trips during her stay, and one of those days found us in Oxford. Its an absolutely gorgeous city, so rich in history, it's almost mind-boggling! But I think the highlight of the day was our visit to The Eagle and Child, the pub where the Inklings used to gather.

For those who require a quick lesson, the Inklings were an informal literary discussion group whose most famous members include JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. I've read differing accounts on the details, of this being the location where The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was first read, or where perhaps Out of the Silent Planet, still in its infancy, was handed over for inspection, or even where The Lord of the Rings was introduced (apparently, to less than unanimous approval)! The details may be fuzzy, but some semblance of truth remains, and lends to its visitors a spirit of admiration and joy-- as do the writings these men left behind.

And it was lovely to share this with a dear friend. We may not have written any great prose, nor thought any truly great thoughts, as others before us have, but the time was sweet and the shared memory lovely.

In his book, The Four Loves, CS Lewis writes on friendship:

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles [Williams] is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's [Tolkien's] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him 'to myself' now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald... In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious 'nearness by resemblance' to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying 'Holy, Holy, Holy' to one another (Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall have.

What a sweet description of shared friendships, and what a blessed expectation of our future adoration of the shared Christ!

"My happiest hours are spent with 3 or 4 old friends in old clothes tramping together and putting up in small pubs." CS Lewis

As Danielle and I left the pub, we passed a small group of tourists asking the staff "at which table the Inklings had sat" to which he quickly replied "Actually, at this table right here. Shall I wipe it off for you?"

As the Inklings met every week of the term for almost 30 years, (and the pub was renovated the 60s), I sincerely doubted his sales pitch. In fact, probably every tourist in there that day thought they were sitting at that very special table.

But we certainly enjoyed our table, enjoyed pondering the stories within those walls, and will treasure the memories we took with us as we went on our way into the grey Oxford streets.