Day One
Chatsworth House. It's mammoth, and where Mr. Darcy lives if you love Pride and Prejudice.
Inside Chatsworth...pretty impressive house. I couldn't imagine living in a place like this. Crazy.
Bronte Parsonage. It's where the Bronte family lived including...Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. We just read this in literature so we decided to pay her home a visit. The setting was perfect, it was a foggy cold day. Just like how it is in the book.
Our home for the night...IBIS. This hotel is whack. Okay, it wasn't bad. We just kept finding things we weren't expecting. Like Alyssa trying to call our room only to discover we didn't have a phone. And the beds didn't have anything under the mattress on some sides so if you rolled over you'd collapse onto the ground...and there was a weird piano bench seat built into the wall. And our room cards randomly didn't work. It was a fun night as you can tell by how much I'm writing about it.
Day Two
We walked the medieval wall around the little town of York over to the minster. It was a really beautiful cathedral of course.
Fountains Abbey. It was dissolved by Henry VIII but I think the ruins are sometimes more fascinating.
We stayed in this castle in Durham. Breakfast was in the great hall. And the cathedral was right across the street so we went there for evensong which was absolutely amazing.
Day Three
Hadrian's Wall. It's a Roman wall. We hiked up to it in the snow and slush, it was actually really fun. It was incredibly windy up there and when you stood on the wall you felt like you were behind a big airplane's engine.
William Wordsworth. We've been reading his poetry in class so we came to his house and his grave.
This was a flower in his yard. It's real.
There he is, William Wordsworth everybody.
Day Four
Hilltop Farm. We walked here, where Beatrix Potter lived. She's the author of the children's books with Peter Rabbit and all those characters. It was a pretty walk and everyone was amazed at how green the landscape was. They're not from the northwest.
Preston. We came to this city which is important to a lot of our church history. We saw where the first missionaries in Britain preached and the River Ribble where the first people in Britain were baptized.
After walking around the town with our funny radios that let us hear our guide's voice through our earphones, we got back on the coach so we could visit the Preston temple. We just had some time to walk around the grounds. I love this temple because it's so new and modern. I only wish I wouldn't have been there with fifty other people. It would've been a nice place to sit and think and just be happy.
Day Five
Liverpool. This was the last stop of the trip. The docks were right across from our hotel and I felt so grateful as I thought about how thousands who came before me were brave enough to emigrate to the Americas so I could have a better life. We're so lucky.
We went to the Maritime museum that was all about the transport of emigrants and trade through the docks as well as all the big ship liners that were docked here. There was also a museum about the slave trade and the role Liverpool played during that time. It was a pretty blunt reminder of what humanity is capable of.
Then of course we had to go to the Beatles museum. We were in Liverpool come on.
Many hours later we were back home in London. I am so happy I won't have to ride on the coach ever again. But I'll miss it...how bittersweet. And that's it, our lovely yellow and red coach.
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