Yesterday marked our first month traveling!! Yay! One down… 7 more to go (maybe?)! Let’s talk about yesterday then we can move on to today! So yesterday, we walked another half of the city walls of York and spent the rest of the afternoon in the only brewery in York, the York Brewery! We arrived right after a tour had started, but not to fear, we were given some tasty cask ale beer while we waited for the next tour to begin! We spent the first hour talking to a nice couple from a town about an hour away who come to York every year on holiday because they love it so much. We have to agree with them, York was pretty spectacular. At 3:30, we went on the tour of their brewing facilities. They are a 20 barrel brew plant housed in an old flour mill. We got to see the brewing process and then enjoy more beer tasting after. Ryder even poured his own hand pumped cask ale.

We met another couple who were also visiting York and had a really great time talking with them until well past dinner time. We finally said goodbye to the brewery, grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back for a relaxing night.

Today we got up early, had a great breakfast at the B&B, and caught the train from York to Edinburgh. The ride took about 2 and a half hours, but we passed the time talking with a nice gentleman from northern Scotland. He gave us some great recommendations on places to stay and things to see while we are here. We got off the train and caught a taxi to our new place in Edinburgh. Once we settled in, we headed out to the main center of town (about 15 minutes walk) for lunch. The world famous Fringe Festival is going on in Edinburgh this month. There are performances, art installations, venders, and all sorts of entertainment going on all over the city!! We walked down along the river and spent some time at a few booths where I purchased a necklace and Ryder a hat! It started to pour down rain and of course we left our rain jackets back at the flat, so we hoofed it back, getting soaking wet in the process.

We just finished a homemade pasta meal and are settling in for a nice first night in Scotland!

This morning we slept in until 8:30am, got up, packed, and checked out of our airbnb. We hoofed it to the metro and rode in to Kings Cross station arriving in time to catch the train. We decided, however, to catch the next train and instead send a few packages back home at the post office across the street. By the time we got back to the station, we had 10 minutes to get on the next train to York. We found the platform and boarded the train, only to realize to our dismay that it was completely booked!! Eek!! I spoke with a very nice train attendant who informed us that the trains to York are ALWAYS fully booked! Because of our British Rail pass we are guaranteed a seat, but can’t book reservations for travel at 2 hrs or less, the amount of time to get from London to York!! Well, I freaked out a little and hustled over to the ticket office to see if we could reserve a seat on the next train. The really nice attendant there said we just needed to board the train immediately after it posts and find any unreserved seats we can. We waited around the platforms sweating out the next 20 minutes (ok ok, I sweated, Ryder wasn’t worried one bit). Once the train hit the platform we made a beeline to the first car and found two empty seats next to each other in first class! Yay!

The train ride was really nice and comfortable. We watched the most recent episode of Suits and spent the rest of the ride researching places to stay and things to see in Edinburgh, Scotland. I have to say I’ve become thoroughly spoiled traveling first class on all the trains. It was cheaper for us to purchase the Brit Rail pass beforehand for our travel throughout the UK. This pass was only available in first class. On this train we had a complimentary beverage service, including alcohol. We didn’t get any, but I can’t believe we could have enjoyed free alcohol. Unheard of in the US.

Our train arrived on time and we caught the next bus to our accommodations, the Heworth Guest House. The owners of the establishment greeted us warmly at the door, providing a wealth of information about the town and things to do. We settled into our room then headed out to explore the city. As we made our way down the street it started raining. Luckily, we’d checked the weather and brought our rain jackets 🙂 Ryder looked like a caution sign hehehe. We walked about 15 minutes to the city center, stopping at the York Chocolate House for some chocolate drinks and chocolate fondu. We were in chocolate heaven! I would definitely recommend this place to anyone visiting York as the customer service was superb! After having our sugary fill we walked to the other side of town, heading for Clifford’s Tower.

This tower was once a medieval Norman castle built on the orders of William I to dominate the Viking city. York Castle formed an important royal fortification in the north of England. Before becoming a historic site, the tower was used as a jail and prison until 1929. Today, only the shell of the castle remains atop the huge baily. The view from the top of the walls was very beautiful, showing York in all it’s glory. We slowly circled the top of the tower, taking in all the sites, then climbed back down the slippery stairs and out to the street.

We had planned to walk the city walls the next day, but decided we were close, we have time, why not? We walked all along one section of the wall, dumping us out onto the other side of the town. It was a very beautiful walk, and as it was mid-day on Friday, we had the wall almost to ourselves. Upon exiting the wall via one of the ancient entrance gates to the city, we went in search of dinner and found a really good noodel place then we headed back to the guest house for a good nights sleep!

Today we traveled to Stonehenge! We woke up to catch the 8:50am train from the Waterloo station to Salisbury, the town nearest to Stonehenge. It was a nice hour and a half long train ride from London. We talked for the first half and journaled for the second, enjoying the comforts of first class 🙂

We arrived in time to catch the next tour bus to Stonehenge and climbed the steps to the second story of the bus for a great view of the town and surrounding country side. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to explore Salisbury, but what we could see reminded us of Canterbury. The bus provided commentary during the ride, pointing out historical landmarks including a few thatch roofed homes. We eventually left the town behind, journeying out into the countryside, full of sheep, cows, a pig farm, and lots and lots of wheat fields. Eventually we started seeing lots of cars and then, over the hill, Stonehenge!

We were dropped off by the bus at the entrance and skipped the long lines for tickets because we had purchased a Heritage pass at Dover Castle which provides us free entrance to all Heritage designated sites in Britain. Yippee!! We got through, were given a pair of audio guides, and headed out to the site. Stonehenge is so much more impressive in person. I had studied the site in my architectural history class in college so it was quite a wonderful experience to be able to stand so close to it. The audio guide provided much speculation as to the exact meaning behind Stonehenge and how it was created; I’m still going with aliens. It was interesting however, to be reminded of the calendar significance of the stone placement. The summer and winter solstices can be determined by the position of the sun in relation to the stones. The people who created Stonehenge could even tell, based on the path of the sun through the stones, which month of the year it was. Surrounding Stonehenge are burial mounds thought to have been part of some elaborate ceremony. The site was really beautiful and the stones so mysterious in their placement, almost as if standing guard.

We finished the tour in about an hour and caught the next bus to our next stop, Old Sarum. Old Sarum is a large earthwork mound dating to before Stonehenge. The site was used over the years as a place of defense by the Normans, Saxons and then subsequent Kings who built a large fortress and castle at the center of the mound. The remains if this structure can still be seen, including a church built on the far side of the mound. We walked among the ruins, reading plaques about specific sections of the fortress. Hardly any of the stones remain as the castle and it’s defenses were dismantled and the stones reused. We caught the bus back to the train station and a train back to Waterloo, arriving in London at around 3pm. One short metro ride, and we were at the Boroughs Market.

We walked among the stalls which were full of all kinds of food. The place wasn’t very crowded, probably due to the large amount if construction taking place in part of the market. We bought lunch/dinner – Ryder bought a pasty and I had an organic salad. We spent about an hour wandering among the stalls, sampling tea, olive oils, jams, salsas, and more. Ryder bought a box if black licorice and I was content with a sampling of dry cider. We took the metro back to our room to get changed for the play. I actually did my hair today and put on some make-up, shocker.

Because we gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the show, we arrived early and spent the time enjoying a drink at a pub down the street. Finally it was time and we bustled into our VERY expensive seats to watch one of the best performances of Les Miserables I’ve seen. This was Ryder’s first time EVER seeing the play and he thoroughly enjoyed it!! I spent the walk and metro ride back to our room humming tunes from the show 🙂

Tomorrow we leave London and head for York!

Phew, did we have a busy day today! I was still sore from the 9.5 miles we walked yesterday when I got up this morning. And then we walked 10 miles today!!! Yuck, I’m out of shape! We made a hearty breakfast of eggs, toast with jam, and an apple then headed out for our tour of Buckingham Palace! We took the Tube in and arrived with half an hour before our allotted time at 10am. So, we meandered through the streets of London, grabbed some coffee at a cafe and headed through the public park to the entrance of the palace. After loitering around the palace, waiting for the gates to open, we realized at 9:59am we were probably in the wrong place. After asking for directions, we rushed around the block to the public entrance, got our tickets (yay! We weren’t too late!) and waited in the queue before being ushered through security and into the first State Rooms!

*Disclaimer* – for the Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abby, photos were not allowed to be taken inside, hence the lack of photos for this post! Tried to sneak a few, but they turned out all shabby.

The term ‘State Rooms’ is applied to those rooms that were designed and built as the public rooms of the Palace, in which monarchs receive, reward and entertain guests, including dignitaries. Today the State Rooms are used extensively by The Queen and members of the Royal Family to receive and entertain on State, ceremonial and official occasions. We received free audio guides and made our way through the maze of rooms filled with royal portraits, silk furniture, crystal chandeliers, gilt gold, ornate rugs, and 19th century style architecture. In a few places, we found gifts given to the Queen by foreign diplomats including a carved jade polar bear and Inuit tribesman from Canada. We couldn’t believe how outrageously ornate and expensive everything was. Of course, the State Rooms are meant to impress upon visitors the immense wealth and power of the King or Queen. In one room, the ball room built for Queen Victoria, there were 8 crystal chandeliers 11ft tall and 4ft wide, each weighing half a ton! We were dumped out of the tour into the Royal Gardens. Unfortunately we were only able to skirt the perimeter on our way out of the palace grounds, but what we could see looked beautiful and tranquil. Oh how nice it must be to be royalty.

After our tour, we headed off to the Churchill War Rooms Museum. It was a bit of a walk, but well worth the pain. The museum is housed below ground where Winston Churchill directed the wartime government during World War II. The quarters were all very cramped in the underground bunker and of course very secret. There was a transcontinental phone line used by Churchill to phone Roosevelt and then Truman during the War. It was housed in a small room, marked as a lavatory in the bunker that was constantly “in use.” Because there were no flushing toilets in the bunker, the staff of the Cabinet believed it to be the only working toilet in the whole place reserved especially for the Prime Minister. The importance of the phone was such that even government officials, working night and day in the bunker, did not know of its existence. The museum was a plethora of detailed information regarding the layout of the bunker, use of each room, and the history of Churchill in a smaller museum dedicated specifically to him. We wandered through each exhibit, ending, of course, in a gift shop. We headed off to find lunch, then find the British Museum.

We bought to-go sandwiches at a small cafe with NO eating space, so we walked over the the nearest train station and found some seats. Ryder checked the proximity of the museum to our location and deemed it walkable. We headed off only to discover half a mile later that we walked to the wrong museum (I can see this happening to a lot of people with a museum name like “The British Museum.” How unspecific can you get??). Bummer. We caught a bus (double decker!!) back the way we came and down a few more streets to the actual museum. Admission was free so we went in and toured the highlights of the museum, namely the Rosetta Stone, Parthenon sculptures, an Easter Island head, and Hokusai’s Great Wave painting. Unfortunately, because of the delicate nature of the painting, the Great Wave was not on display, but we were able to see the other famous works. We headed out to Chipotle for dinner after then on to Westminster Abby.

Westminster Abby was a very interesting place as it has been the coronation church since 1066 and is the final resting place of seventeen monarchs. Among these monarchs, we found the graves of other prominent people of history including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Geoffrey Chaucer, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Darwin. It was pretty spectacular to stand at the monuments of these legends and of course I tried to remember what happened in the Da Vinci Code regarding Sir Isaac Newtons tomb. We finished the tour at the Coronation Chair, commissioned by King Edward I to enclose the famous Stone of Scone (Stone of Destiny), which he brought from Scotland to the Abbey in 1296. The Stone of Scone was used in Scotland as the seat for Scottish Kings at their coronations. The symbolism is just too much. Apparently the stone was allowed to be sent back to Scotland in 1996, but will be brought back to London for the next coronation.

After our walk through Westminster Abby we headed home and are now more than ready for a good nights sleep!! Tomorrow its off to Stone Henge!

Hi everybody, let’s recap the last couple of days… On Sunday, the 12th, Keith and a friend took us on an 18 mile bike ride along the coast to Reculver for some breakfast and to see the Reculver Towers. After our sore butts recovered a little we drove to Herne Bay to see Hollie, Keith’s niece, sing a few songs in her band the Interseptors. They put on a great show! Then we headed home to BBQ with Jill & Keith’s neighbors, who were lovely, and watched the Olympic closing ceremony.

On Monday, the 13th, Keith dropped us off at the train station and we rode into London. We met up with our Airbnb host and then holed up in our room to plan what we wanted to do in London and where we could stay in York and Edinburgh. Once we got most of that figured out we ventured around our place to find some grub. Most of the restaurants we saw were closed but we ended up finding a place called Small and Beautiful. My burger tasted fine but Amanda’s risotto tasted a little like dirt 🙁 We finished that night with some Game of Thrones episodes and hit the sack.

Today, the 14th, has been a long day. Our pedometer recorded 9.53 miles of walking today! I wish it could keep track of the time spent standing though. Then you could really get a sense of how many calories we burned today.

Our first tourist attraction was the Tower of London. A collection of 2o towers in two rings of concentric defensive walls and a partially filled in 160 foot wide moat that protects the Crown Jewels, and previously protected kings, queens, prisoners, and more. We did the hour-long Yeoman Warder (aka Beefeater) guided tour and definitely enjoyed it. To be a Yeoman Warder, you have to have served in the military for over 22 years and have a certain list of badges and qualifications. We stood at the spot where Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, was executed. Lady Jane Grey, the “Nine Days’ Queen”, was also beheaded there.

We also learned about the tower’s ravens. There used to be a problem where there were too many ravens in the tower and they interfered with astronomy work. A legend stated that if all the ravens leave the tower, the tower will fall. Clearly, all ravens could not be removed but something needed to be done. Charles II compromised and decided the ravens would be protected by a newly appointed Ravenmaster, but that there would only be six ravens at the tower. From then on, only six ravens are kept in the tower with clipped wings. WWII bombings brought the live raven count from 6 down to 4 so two replacement and two reserve ravens were added.

After browsing around the tower some more, and doing a tour around the tower walls, we unexpectedly found a Guinness World Record poster in the White Tower (the main tower in the center of the fortress). The record was of the tallest suit of armor for a man. The suit measured 6 feet 8 inches tall. Imagine being on the battlefield and having a giant in a shiny suit of armor swinging a sword or mace at your face. No thanks.

Stepping out of the Tower of London you can’t help but see the Tower Bridge and that’s where we decided to go next. Before we went up top, we waited for the bridge to be raised for a boat to come through. We watched a few funky videos on the design and building of the bridge and were able to see the Thames from up high. There was an engine room tour at the end and that was pretty interesting. The massive steam engines aren’t used anymore as the bridge was converted electricity.

Dinner was next. We stopped at The Pommelers Rest and had some tasty food there. Our intention after dinner was to visit the British Museum but we had mixed up the opening and closing times and found that it was closed. Oopsies. I really wanted to make sure we saw Big Ben so I convinced Amanda to walk the 2.5 miles over to Westminster. Well, it would have been only 2.5 miles if we hadn’t gone across the London and Millenium Bridges. Once we realized what Big Ben was attached to Amanda wasn’t too happy that I made her walk almost 3 miles to see something that we had planned on seeing the next day. Tomorrow we’ll be visiting Westminster Abbey later on in the day which is very close to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.