The Tower of London: Dreams Do Come True

The Tower of London

I was so excited to see the Tower.

My second day in London began bright and early, since my friend Chris and I had agreed to meet at the Tower of London at 8:30.  I checked out of the hostel, walked to Paddington Station, and took the Underground to Tower Hill.  From the second I first saw the Tower, I couldn't stop smiling.  I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to visit the Tower of London, and now I was finally here, with a whole day to explore it.  It just seemed so surreal.

The space in front of the Tower was deserted, since it didn't actually open until 10:00 (not 9:00 like Chris and I thought), but the Welcome Centre was open.  I got my ticket from the attendant and asked about a place to leave my overnight bag, since I didn't want to lug it around the Tower all day.  Probably assuming I didn't have a pass for the tube, she kindly gave me a map and showed me how to get to Liverpool Street Station, telling me there was a luggage hold there where I could pay to leave my bag.  Now, London is not laid out in a sensible grid, or anything resembling a grid, unlike most cities, so I got lost several times on the "quick walk" to the station.  Having checked my bag in, I discovered that Liverpool Street has a tube station that is a mere two stops from Tower Hill.  Needless to say, I took the train back to the Tower.

Chris was waiting for me at the decidedly more crowded Welcome Centre, having arrived shortly after I left for Liverpool Street.  We haven't hung out much since his graduation last year, so we had plenty to catch up on while standing in line to enter the Tower.  Once inside, we made a beeline for the Crown Jewels; one of Mom's friends currently living in London had advised me to see those first and avoid the lines.  Chris agreed that it was slightly disappointing that the display was not set up as shown in a certain episode of Sherlock, but the jewels (and banquet dishes, including the biggest punch bowl I have ever seen and a ladle that looked like a scepter in its own right) were spectacular and well worth visiting.  We weren't allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would have many sparkly things to post.

The Yeoman Warder who led our tour

Having oohed and ahhed, we ran back to the moat for the next Yeoman Warder tour, where one of the uniformed "Beefeaters" had just stepped onto his podium to begin.  He told us about the history of the fortress itself as he took us under the arch back into the Tower, showed us where the national mint used to be, pointed out the Bloody Tower and Traitors' Gate, and told us of various nobles and criminals who had met their tragic (or almost comedic) ends on Tower Hill or Tower Green.

A memorial near where our tour ended marks where the scaffolds were once built for executions such as those of Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey.  Tragic and eerie though it may be, there was something fantastic about walking across the same place they had walked.  This feeling continued throughout the Tower - it's simply saturated with history.

Ravens!

For example, the ravens are living traditions.  Legend has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the White Tower will crumble, the monarchy will fall, and a great disaster will befall the whole country.  So the Yeoman Warders keep eight of the birds around just in case.

Charles I's armor

The guided tour over, Chris and I found our own way through the Bloody Tower, which told the story of some of its famous prisoners, including the two young princes who died mysteriously at the supposed command of their uncle, Richard III.  Then we went through the White Tower, where the princes' bodies were discovered under the stairs.  This tower was also home to the Line of Kings, one of the world's longest running tourist attractions.  Royal armor from past kings was shown off here to impress visitors, complete with decked-out life-size figures of horses for jousting displays.  Weapons adorned the walls, including guns, swords, and a few fearsome looking axes.

Henry's bedchamber in St. Thomas's Tower

After the White Tower, we went through St. Thomas's Tower just over Traitors' Gate.  Here were the rooms Henry III and his son, Edward I, had used as a royal residence.  One room was set up as it would have been when King Henry lived there, as well as the chapel where he would have received visitors and even conducted affairs of state.  Up and down a few more spiral stairs, and we were out on the top of the Tower wall, looking over the Thames on one side and looking into the Tower on the other.

By this point we were both getting hungry.  Chris found out I still hadn't tried fish and chips and insisted that I must experience the dish in a true London pub.  So we found The Hung, Drawn and Quartered, ordered our quintessential English food, and talked.  (I don't normally like fish, but the food was actually really good!)

Normally I don't take pictures of my food.
But this was my first fish and chips!

Chris had plans for the afternoon, so we parted ways after lunch.  I headed back to Liverpool Street Station to retrieve my luggage, then went to King's Cross St. Pancras to drop it off again at another luggage hold.  Having no WiFi and therefore no way of contacting my group members to discover their locations, I decided to seek out the Royal Veterinary College on behalf of my sister.  It was closed when I found it, so I took a few pictures.  I then proceeded to get lost while trying to find the nearest Underground station.

A cool bench at the British Library

With no other ideas, I headed back to King's Cross, where I found out that the British Library was right next door!  I meant to look at the manuscripts and exhibitions in this wonderful building, but I was so happy to have WiFi and a place to sit down that I ended up on Pinterest until they announced that the building was closing.  Since they kicked me out, I figured I might as well head to Westminster Abbey to try to find the others for an organ recital they had mentioned.  We did, in fact, find each other, and we managed to edge into the back of the Abbey to hear the free organ recital.  Even though we didn't get to properly tour the church (or even really see much of it over the heads of the other listeners), it was interesting to experience Westminster Abbey for the first time with deep, swelling music from an unseen source while I marveled at the vastness overhead.

Westminster Abbey

Once the recital ended and they shooed us out of the church, we took the tube back to Paddington to grab Marissa's luggage from the hostel, then proceeded to St. Pancras so we would be there in plenty of time for our return train.  I retrieved my own bag from the luggage hold, we all bought some dinner, and the last remaining members of our group joined us at the station for our return trip.  As wonderful as London was, we were all very, very happy to see our familiar flat back in Nottingham.

Traitors' Gate

Another Update
Sorry this post is already so long, but I realized I didn't write anything about last Thursday or Friday.  This was mostly because nothing really happened; we presented our iPad photo projects to Bhav, tried Pimm's at lunch, and toured Bromley House Library (Google it, I'll write another thousand words if I let myself gush about it here).  There are also very few pictures from those days, but we all agreed it was nice to have a few less intense days between Oxford and London.

A Little London Music

London Bridge (not falling down)

We spent Saturday morning dozing as the train zoomed across England toward London.  Our energy levels lifted somewhat with the excitement of actually arriving in the city, especially when we ran over to King's Cross Station to see a certain magical platform.  The line of tourists was ridiculously long, and it wasn't even actually between Platforms 9 and 10 anyway, so we decided to come back another time.  Gavin, our fearless leader for the next two weeks, took us down into the depths of the Underground, which we rode to London Bridge.  After pictures (and me humming about the bridge falling down) we headed for the Tate Modern, an art museum at one end of the Millennium Bridge, facing St. Paul's Cathedral at the other end.

Looking up at St. Paul's 

Gavin encouraged us to wander the exhibitions for an hour or so, pointing us toward one in particular entitled "Poetry and Dreams."  I liked the atmosphere of the building, but the works were mostly surrealism, which I frankly don't understand, so they were only impressive in the sense of "I couldn't paint like that if I wanted to."  I did, however, enjoy several of the photography pieces.

"Early each day to the steps of St. Paul's..."

Soon we all started clamoring for food, so Gavin led us across the Millennium Bridge to eat lunch on the steps of St. Paul's (at which point I started singing "Feed the Birds" under my breath).  The cathedral was breathtaking from the outside, but we only got to go inside for a minute because Gavin hadn't known we had to pay to tour it.  Instead, he took us to the London Museum, which shows the history of modern-day London and the surrounding countryside starting from prehistoric days of flint axes and nomadic tribes.  My favorite part here was the mock pleasure gardens where videos projected on the walls showed tales of Victorian flirtation and intrigue.  There were also a few other things that reminded me of various Disney songs which I subsequently hummed to myself as I walked through the exhibits.

My favorite spot on a mock Victorian street

Our official instruction for the day was over at 3:00, but we'd been given open tickets in case we wanted to stay in the city until Sunday - which of course we all did.  So when we finished up at the London Museum, we found our way to our hostel in Westminster.  Having never stayed in a hostel before, and having heard many horror stories about them, I was pleased with the cleanliness and atmosphere of the place, but I couldn't help feeling that we had somewhat overpaid - especially since there was no WiFi included!  We had booked an 8 bed room with an attached bathroom, so it was just our group.

Despite the heat and tiredness, there was a flurry of activity as we all got ready for our respective evening activities.  Three people went to a concert in Hyde Park, two others went to see Wicked, and Marissa, Ali, and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera.  

Our first challenge lay in navigating the Underground, which actually went quite well despite a line closure or two.  (I was also excited by the fact that we were right by Paddington Station, although I found myself having to explain the nostalgia connected with that name to most of my group who had never read of that charming little bear.)  Then we had to find an affordable dinner near the theatre, and finally the theatre itself.  We ended up just buying food at a Marks & Spencer, then eating it in an arcade next door to Her Majesty's Theatre, where a nice waitress let us sit at an unoccupied table until the cafe got busier.  At the theatre, we bought souvenir programmes and brochures, then steeled ourselves to climb the many, many stairs to our seats in the balcony.  When we got up there, however, the view (both of the stage and of the Irish boy showing us to our seats) was pretty good.  

A hush falls over the crowd...

The chandelier lay under a cloth onstage, waiting.  The prologue scene commenced.  And when they raised the chandelier to the crashing chords of the title song, I got chills.  I will also admit that I cried during "All I Ask of You" and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again."  Every principal singer hit notes that left me in awe and gave me goosebumps.  The sets and costumes were spectacular.  Hearing the music live with such a phenomenal orchestra was intense.  It was, in a word, amazing.

Singing snatches of the songs all the way, we took the Underground back to Paddington and walked back to our hostel.  The Wicked crew returned shortly thereafter, then the Hyde Park group, and we all collapsed into bed.  Exhausted though we were, we did spend some time chatting in the dark about our respective shows and various other things, "like a slumber party!" as one person exclaimed.  Eventually, though, sleep beckoned.    

Hogwarts, Narnia, and Middle Earth

We awoke relatively early Wednesday morning; we had agreed that we wanted as much time as possible to explore Oxford before our guided tour at 1:30.  Besides, we had to return our room keys by 10.  After cramming our luggage in a cabinet in Magdalen College's lobby, we set out to find breakfast at a little cafe we remembered seeing the night before.  It turned out that the Grand Cafe was in fact the site of England's first coffee house!  Needless to say, I became rather excited about this, and proceeded to exclaim over the quality of the coffee and the decor and pretty much everything else about the cafe.

The first coffee house in England!

Delicious breakfast over, we went our separate ways.  I browsed an antique shop right next to the Grand Cafe, where I found jewelry, clothes, trinkets - and books.  Old books from England that end up in used bookstores in the US tend to be pricey, so I was eager to find less well-traveled volumes.  I also found a more modern bookstore in which I purchased a biography of C.S. Lewis and a book about the "Inklings" (as Lewis, Tolkien, and their similarly intellectual friends christened their little group).  Wandering up and down High Street and in and out of shops and churches took up most of the morning before I went back to the Grand Cafe for lunch.  This time I took out my notebook to take notes on the atmosphere of the place, thinking it would make a good setting for a story, but I think I made the waitress nervous with my observing and scribbling.

I met up with everyone else back at Magdalen College, where we now shoved our shopping bags into the cabinet with our luggage.  Bhav and Adam joined us for a biking tour of Oxford, but three of us who can't ride bikes took a walking version of the tour instead.  The guide was quite knowledgeable about funny little stories behind various buildings, but I was more impressed by her ability to navigate the cobblestone streets in heels!  I don't have the time, memory, or inclination to rewrite everything we learned, but here are some of the highlights: the most hidden (and yet famous) tavern in Oxford; the Bodleian Library; the towers that inspired Tolkien to write about the Two Towers; several Harry Potter filming locations, including the bouncing ferret scene with Malfoy and Mad-Eye Moody; the garden where Alice Liddell became friends with Charles Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll); and the pubs where the Inklings spent their time.

Above: the Bridge of Sighs
Left: the Divinity School

 My favorite part, however, was St. Mary's Passage, the alley leading from High Street to Radcliffe Square between the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and another building.  In this passage stood a door with a fierce, lionlike face carved into it and two golden fauns holding up the lintel.  Not far away, in the middle of the walkway, not at all where you would expect it, was a solitary lamp post.  Here, just outside the church where he delivered his "Weight of Glory" sermon in 1942, were the things that inspired C.S. Lewis to write Aslan and other aspects of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.  It gave me chills.

 

After our tour concluded, we went back to Magdalen College to wait for the rest of the group.  And wait.  And wait.  Finally Adam drove up, the others spilled out of the minibus, we all grabbed our luggage, and we angered several drivers by dashing across the street to meet Adam where he had pulled the bus over.  Despite these efforts at speed, traffic and construction stretched our drive out over nearly four hours (according to Carson - I wasn't keeping track).  But we had a play to get to in Nottingham!

Allie and Lauren were waiting for us outside Nottingham Playhouse when we drove up.  The usher let us stash all our overnight bags behind the bar before we slipped in the back, only about twenty minutes late.  The play, "The Full Monty," may be familiar to some of you, but I'll summarize: six out of work men decide, for various reasons, to become strippers for a one-night-only show in which they will go one step further than the Chippendale's dancers, i.e. "the full Monty."  The best part was watching how the lone guy in our group reacted with every sexual innuendo and pelvic thrust (sorry, Carson).

Lauren had called a restaurant at intermission to make reservations for after the play, so we all went out for Indian food and dissected the play, our visit to Oxford, and the inevitability of a group music video starring Carson.  When we finally returned to our flat around 1 a.m., we agreed that going away made us realize how much this place has come to feel like home.

To Oxford! But First, Blenheim Palace

Tuesday was an early start (by our standards, anyway) since we had to meet Adam and Bhav to drive all the way to Blenheim Palace, about two hours away.  We piled ourselves and our overnight luggage into the minibus and several of us promptly fell asleep again.  About an hour into the drive, we stopped at a services station, which included a small grocery store, two Costa coffee shops, a Burger King, and some slot machines.  It seemed essentially like a mini mall, which I thought was weird, but apparently they have these at intervals along major roadways.

Security making sure we don't bother the film people.

When we arrived at Blenheim Palace, our first priority was food.  On our way through the main courtyard, we noticed a film crew and security officers; it turned out they're filming a new series called "Royals" at Blenheim.  The security guy who told us this added, "Yeah, the guy from the Chronicles of Narnia is in it too."  In unison, us girls blurted out, "Which one?!"  (It was William Moseley, who plays Peter, but we didn't actually see him.)  Gaping at the gorgeous courtyard and comparing opinions on the Narnia movies, we found our way to the Water Terraces and sketched while we waited for lunch to arrive.  Bhav gave all of us sketchbooks, pencils, and pens so we could try to draw the architectural aspects that interested us most.  Some of the group are pretty good artists...myself, not so much.

The Green Writing Room

After lunch, we took a tour of the public wing of the palace (the current duke and his family still live in private apartments in the east wing).  I almost didn't know where to look, between the furniture brought over from France, the 24-carat gold on the ceiling, the chandeliers, the portraits, the intricate tapestries and the bronze statue of the current duke's father as a baby (yes, it's just as awkward as you're imagining - apparently he hid it in a closet, but his son found it and put it on display for millions of strangers to see).  So I just snapped a lot of pictures and listened to the tour guide's stories about the battles the first duke won.

And then.

We proceeded through yet another doorway into yet another room, but this one did not have gold on the ceiling or a dozen oil paintings of deceased nobility on the walls.  This was the Long Library, and it was blessedly filled with beautiful, beautiful books.  I squealed, took pictures, wished desperately that I could spend a month or two perusing the collection without the pesky glass between me and the shelves.  It was absolutely breathtaking.

 

The tour ended here, at the foot of a (very flattering, according to our tour guide) statue of Queen Anne, so Bhav and Adam told us to explore on our own and meet back at the bus in a few hours.  Some people went to the Winston Churchill exhibit, others to the gardens, and a few of us wound up down by the lake.  We saw sheep, crossed the picturesque bridge, and marveled at the vastness of the palace from afar.  Our afternoon finished with a visit to the gift shop and some sketching time in the courtyard before heading back to the bus.

Blenheim Palace, looking back from the bridge.

Once the group had assembled, we were off to Oxford!  Well, sort of.  An accident somewhere in the city center brought traffic to a halt almost as soon as we got there, and then Adam went past our lodgings somehow.  Eventually we just got out to walk instead, and Bhav led us through town, weaving through umbrellas and puddles (did I mention that it was raining?  This was also when I discovered that I'd left my jacket at the flat in Nottingham).  At last the spires of Magdalen College came into sight and we huddled, dripping on the flagstones, in the lobby while Bhav checked us in.  The rooms were like any dorm room in the UK or the States, which was a bit disappointing considering how picturesque the college looked from the outside.

Oxford through the rain.

At this point, I had personally reached the angry stage of hunger, so we set out to find a restaurant Bhav had pointed out on our way there.  Blessedly, it had stopped raining, but Abigail very kindly lent me her coat just in case.  We had dinner at a burger place after much indecisive wandering, then found a pub in which to watch some of the Germany vs. Brazil game.  It will surprise very few of my lovely readers to hear that I was among the small party that left this sports-crazed venue early.

More on our adventures in Oxford in the next post, which should be up shortly.

More Time Underground

Sunday was a rather lazy day for me; while the rest of the group took a day trip to Liverpool, I preferred to take the day to recharge.  I found my way to St. Barnabas Cathedral for Mass, where it was nice hearing the familiar prayers and experiencing the rhythms of church (although it was strange to hear the readings in an Irish lilt!).  Upon my return to the flat, I spent the afternoon on a cleaning spree - vacuuming, doing laundry, wiping down every surface in my room, etc. - before settling in to read and watch Merlin blooper reels on YouTube.  I also looked up some bookshops in Nottingham with the intention of exploring, but sadly they were all closed on Sundays.

Fireplace in restroom - thanks, conservation.

Monday morning we met our new professors, Bhav and Adam, for our course of the week: "Architecture & History."  As they explained it, the goal of this class is simply to get us to notice things about buildings that people walking past wouldn't typically see, such as how the tiles on one side of a gable are smaller than all the tiles on the other side.  We'll also be using an app called Storehouse to create a thematic "story" of the architectural things we see throughout the week and sharing these stories on Friday.  (Yes, I will publish a link to mine when it's complete.)

Adam gave us a quick tour of the Arkwright building to highlight the ways conservation efforts can result in an inability to put a space to good use.  Then Bhav led us toward the Lace Market part of town.  There, we took a tour of even more caves - from the same tour guide we'd had in the Galleries of Justice!  However, these caves contained a tannery and an air raid shelter, so we gained some new information about different uses of Nottingham's caves besides what we'd learned on our previous trips underground.

England's only tannery in a cave

After the tour we had lunch at a delicious Italian restaurant...which stretched into two hours.  Like Neville, Steve, and Charlie last week, though, Bhav and Adam proved fairly flexible on the itinerary.  Instead of going to Nottingham Contemporary as planned, Adam offered to try to get us into Bromley House, a members-only library near Market Square.  We weren't allowed to browse the library, but we booked a tour for Friday morning and took a few pictures before reluctantly leaving.  (Side note: I loved being with a group of peers who were just as excited about the library as I was.)

We wandered the Park, an affluent gated area of town, just noting the architectural styles.  It started drizzling on us (which only made me feel more at home) before we returned to campus.  The continued rain prevented our evening activity, which was meant to be a walk around town with another professor, but we rescheduled for next Monday.  Now we might go out to dinner and "acoustic night" at a pub, but our class activities are finished for the day.

This will be a busy week, with an overnight trip to Oxford tomorrow, a play Wednesday night, a tour of the Lace Market Thursday, and our weekend in London fast approaching.  But it was encouraging to have Bhav and Adam emphasizing that this is "our" week.  I've loved the importance placed on the experience aspect of this trip so far; where I expected traditional academic pressures, I've found that the professors and organizers leading us care more about our experience and how we interact with our surroundings.  Of course, we're still learning plenty!

Posts may be sporadic this week since we'll be doing a lot of overnight and evening stuff, but I'll do my best to keep everyone updated.

Dancing in the Streets

Our first full weekend in Nottingham began with...another class.  Or a class-like thing.  At any rate, we had to be on campus by 10.  We met our teachers for the day, Lloyd and Imad, who chatted with us about the various places we come from and how globalization has (or, as in most of our cases, hasn't) spread to those areas.  This was an aspect of our communities several of us had rarely thought of before, so I thought it was interesting to try to describe my hometown to someone in terms of diversity and globalization of culture.

Spontaneous dance number - go!

After this introductory conversation, we went to catch the tram to an area of Nottingham known as Hyson Green, where we would wander and observe the various cultures that shared the once-affluent neighborhood.  However, as we approached the tram stop, we heard some jazzy music and noticed a crowd of energetic people.  An impromptu dance performance had sprung up - and within a few songs, our whole group found ourselves pulled into the ring and dancing along!  We just sort of made it up as we went, having fun with it, and when the tram pulled up just as the song ended and the group dispersed.  Normally when I see that sort of thing happen in the States, I stand back and let others participate.  But this morning I figured, why not?

When we got to Hyson Green we were all still pretty energized from our dance party, so we set off exploring the surrounding blocks in high spirits.  Lloyd and Imad had told us to play "Spot the Stars and Stripes," since very few Americans live in the area, and also to seek out the weirdest thing for sale we could find.  In my opinion, the hot mango mint sauce in the ethnic supermarket was the strangest thing we saw.  How does one make mango and mint spicy, and why would one then put it on food?!

Scarves, purses, jewelry, rugs, fabrics, all hung out to buy.

A few of us bought scarves and jewelry at an open air market, then various sweets with names we couldn't pronounce at a small shop a few blocks down.  There were so many colors everywhere, from the skirts and fabrics on display in the market to the somehow-not-clashing pink and green sign above a store.  Eventually we headed back to where Lloyd and Imad were waiting at the New Art Exchange, but not before spotting the Stars and Stripes on a scarf, a Maryland Chicken sign, and someone's socks!  We spent the rest of the early afternoon chatting and eating at the Art Exchange cafe.

The rugs and scarves were truly beautiful.

Most of the group went to check out a skate park we had discovered earlier, but I went back to the flat.  Unfortunately, my hives had returned, so I called Lauren, who was very helpful and told me where to go to the pharmacy for some more allergy stuff.  The others went out to dinner and then to a comedy club, but I was annoyed with my allergies and wasn't feeling particularly sociable, so I stayed in the flat to read that great book I started (a whole week ago!) on the plane.  Hopefully the rest of the weekend is more like the jazzy fun of this morning and less like the headaches of this afternoon. 

Happy Independence Day from England!

Our neighbors had generously shared their music until about 1 a.m., so I dragged myself out of bed Friday morning with perhaps not the best attitude in the world.  This was a weird morning anyway because we had to take the bus to Wollaton Hall by ourselves.  Nottingham has a really good public transit system, though, so we made it without too much trouble.  Wollaton sits in a nature preserve and deer park, part of which we saw as we walked up the hill to the house.  The building itself makes quite a first impression.  As Neville pointed out, the ornate detail of Wollaton is actually very different from the simpler but striking style of Hardwick.

Wollaton Hall

 We had some time to wander around inside before our guided tour.  Unlike Hardwick, Wollaton has little period furniture set up.  Instead, it houses the local council's natural history collection, including a lot of taxidermy, some minerals, and some insects (which I didn't examine too closely).  While this wasn't really what I'd expected from the outside, I thought it worked well, especially since the man who built the house, Francis Willoughby, was a naturalist.  The park was hosting several school trips; it was funny to see the kids reacting to the animals.  One little boy said, "Hello, lion!" very loudly to the large stuffed cat on display by the staircase.

Some kind of steam machine - I think

At lunch, a curator who knew Neville came over to say hi and offered to take us into the attached Nottingham Industrial Museum, which is only open on weekends.  This museum showcases, as you might guess, industry items connected to Nottingham, including portions about Boots Chemists, Players Cigarettes, and Raleigh bicycles.  It also had machines that made the lace for which Nottingham was once famous, some steam equipment, and other things that I couldn't identify if I wanted to.

We returned to the main house for our guided tour, which took us up a narrow, winding staircase to the ballroom at the top of the house.  I pity the ladies in their finery struggling up those steps, their skirts getting stuck in the tight spiral and their heels catching on the stones - especially laced up in corsets!  But the ballroom itself was amazing, so they probably found their labors well worth it.

Wollaton Hall ballroom

Descending a shorter spiral stair, we went out onto the "half roof," the portion that juts out partway up the face of the house.  Out here, the wind and the view vied for our attention - one whipped my hair into my eyes, the other lay before us in quiet grandeur.  

After the roof, our guide led us to the lower part of the house, which she called the Tudor kitchens.  She showed us the bells that hung in the servants' hall, the rooms where they baked pastries and salted meats for the winter, and the main kitchen.  Then we went even deeper beneath the house into the tunnels, all the way back to a deep pool called the Admiral's Bath, where it's said that the master of the house went to bathe in the (probably icy) spring water.  Upstairs again, the tour ended with Lord Middleton's secret quarters.  This was a sort of medieval panic room, complete with a chamber pot and trapdoor to a strongroom, where he could lock himself away behind a reinforced door should any unrest ever arise.

A bit blustery up here

Once our tour was completed, so was our course of the week.  Neville gathered us on the grass outside to discuss what we would take away from "Museums and Heritage," half-joking that he hoped he had ruined forever our simplistic enjoyment of museums.  He also bought us all ice cream!  While we ate our treats, McKenzie asked Neville about the rules of cricket.  It turned out he always has a portable set of equipment with him, so we all trooped down to the grass below the house to learn (or try to learn) how to play.  Marissa and I were the press, taking pictures while the others bowled, batted, ran, and occasionally scored.

When the game wrapped up, part of the group went to walk around the lake and see the deer.  A few of us preferred to take the bus back into town and return to the flat, where we made dinner and hung out until the others got home.  And so ends our first week-long course in England...on the Fourth of July!