Weekend in the UK!

Alrighty! As promised, here's a VERY brief picture summary of my grand adventure in the United Kingdom!

DAY 1: London

We left Brussels to London early Saturday morning. This trip was brought to you by the Eurostar. This is the high speed that connects cities across Europe. This lovely piece of equipment goes as fast as 186 mph! The other fascinating part about it is that the track is built under the English Channel! There are actually 3 tunnels that are 40-50 meters below sea level. The tunnels are big enough that they take freight trains carrying cars through them! It's unbelievable. The tunnels were built about 15 years ago, close to the same time the Eurostar came into operation!

We "landed" at King's Cross/St. Pancras station. After fighting through hundreds of people, we made our way to as many attractions as possible! Our first destination was St. Paul's Cathedral. It is HUGE! I can't even begin to describe it. It is as big as about 4 city blocks. Unbelievable, really! The architecture is amazing, too. It's like the whole building is made out of extremely intricate lace, but stone. Its amazing!

Here's me at the front of St. Paul's Cathedral. Check out the size of those pillars!

All over London (and England, really) are these sweet telephone booths. And, the best part is, you can turn into superman if you go inside one! Here's me, preparing for the transformation! ;)

The next spot we visited was the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. This is not the London Bridge, but it is the most famous bridge in London. It goes right over the Thames River. We walked across the bridge to get to our next adventure. It reminded me of an old roller coaster ride. Almost like the Tidal Wave at Lagoon... Bright blue paint, pink accents... It was seriously a sweet bridge. Very decorated...

Another view of the Tower Bridge.

From Tower Bridge, we made our way to Big Ben. I loved this angle. This is another building that looked like stone lace. It was so ornate, so beautiful! And for the record, I heard Big Ben strike 3:00 pm. It was great!

The next stop was Westminster Abbey. Yet another incredible sight. There weren't as many people here as other places. That was pretty surprising to me. We couldn't go inside. It was closed to prepare for Sunday mass. The outside was still so great!

We made our way next to see Buckingham palace. No, I didn't see the queen. No, the guards didn't have their sweet hats on. Yes, it was heck-a sweet. Yes, I saw the changing of the guards. All in all, it was a neat building, but I was much more impressed with the decor of the churches and other buildings. Don't get me wrong, it was cool. I just think I would have had my palace built a little differently! :)

However, the queen has a sweet park outside her casa. St. James Park. It is beautiful! The flowers are gorgeous. There is a nice pond that covers a large portion of the park that is a home to hundreds of birds. In fact, there was a sign that said "Please Do Not Feed The Pelicans." I laughed. And took a picture, but that picture didn't make it to the 25 posted here... 

Once we were "done" with London, we picked up our happy rented Chevy (pictured in the post "Ode to Chevy") and made our way to Oxford. We got there after dark, so everything was closed. We were able to find, however, this wonderful building. It is where they filmed the Golden Compass, and... drumroll... the great hall in Harry Potter. Yes, that's right folks, as excited as I get about that movie, I still took a picture. It was an amazing building. It's on one of the campuses at Oxford University. What an incredible place! I loved the town, and I loved the building.

DAY 2: Northern England & Wales

We stayed with some friends of Rachel's while we were in England. Props to Ben and Susan. They are the best! They are two hours from everything, so they made a great spot for "home base." Sunday we explored the northern side of England. For all you Pride and Prejudice fans, these are the houses they used in the long A&E version of the movie. This is on the grounds of Chatsworth house, the house they used as the inside of the house in the movie. The grounds were incredible. And there were lots of sheep.

Here's a nice shot of the house. It was huge, and closed for the winter. :) The grounds were equally huge. I loved it!

The property used as the grounds in the movie, as well as the outside of the house, is at a place called Lyme Park. It is run by the National Trust, so it has been preserved wonderfully! I loved Lyme Park. There were rolling hills and it was green everywhere. It was also drizzling while we were there, which really gave an added effect.

This is the door that Mr. Darcy comes running out of in the movie... Except that's not Mr. Darcy, that's me...

The farthest north we ventured was to a town called Chorely, which is where the Preston, England temple is built. It is so beautiful! The church owns a decent sized block and has done remarkable things with it. On this block there is the temple, a huge church house, a distribution center, the Preston MTC, a family history center, and a house for the temple president (which is split into 3 parts: the house part, a big conference part, and housing for the sister missionaries at the MTC!). It really is incredible. Lots of trees and plants. It is a beautiful block, reached by a street named Temple Way. 

Our last adventure for the day was Snowdonia National Park, in northern Wales. This was exquisite! Long, curvy roads. Water. Trees. Hills. Beautiful skies. It was incredible! Here's a few views for your pleasure!

This picture is one of my very favorite pictures so far this whole trip!

Here's another picture of Snowdonia!

DAY 3: Southern England

Monday was the most memorable out of all the days we were in England simply because of a few very cool experiences. We headed out early towards Stratford-upon-Avon. Our goal: get a picture by Shakespeare's birthplace. We made it there at 7:45 in the morning. Unfortunately, the house didn't open until 10, but we were going to get a picture anyway. While we were wandering around, we ran into 2 guys: Ian and Dave. Ian is the night guard at the house, and Dave is a curator. After chatting with them a few minutes, Ian decided to let us into the visitor's center so we could get the best view of the house for our picture. Dave, upon discovering we had come all the way from Utah, was kind enough to give us our own personal tour of the inside of the house! He even let us take pictures, which no one is allowed to do!!! It was so great! He knew a ton, and it was so neat being the only people inside the house! What a gift!!! 

Here's a shot of our view for a large majority of the day... Beautiful, huh?

Our next awesome adventure was to a place called Benbow Pond. It is a church history site. This is where Wilford Woodruff baptized all 300+ members of a United Brethren congregation in less than a month! He cleared out the pond, and there baptized them all, plus about 45 preachers. (For more information, go to http://www.lds.org.uk/benbows_farm.php) There was such an amazing spirit there. It was unlike anything else that weekend, that's for sure! This is the trail we walked to get to the pond.

The pond itself is owned by the Church, but is located on Hill Farm. There is an awesome lady named Louise who lived there. She was kind enough to talk to us for a little bit and give us a little history. She knew so much! It was great. Here's the actual pond. It was so neat!

We heard about a place called the Gadfield Elm chapel that was pretty close to Benbow Pond. It is the first and oldest LDS chapel in the whole world! It was donated to the early church by the United Brethren. To get in, you had to solve a few clues to crack the code to the combination lock on the door. See how you would have done:

*Apostle Heber Kimball's middle initial?

*How many chapters in the book of Enos?

*The age at which children can be baptized into the church?

*How many degrees of glory?

*How many books in the Book of Mormon after the book of Moroni?

*1st letter of Brigham's surname?

The number for the missionaries is posted if you can't crack the code, but it was pretty fun to know the answers! The inside was so cool! Low ceilings, except in the chapel. Wooden pews. Rock floors. It was so amazing!

The last stop of the day was Stonehenge! What an incredible experience! There was such a distinct feeling there. You couldn't deny the fact that there is a greater presence, something beyond. It was a feeling of being such a small part in the world, but knowing that everything is here for a reason, including us. It was awesome. It pops up out of nowhere. Seriously. You're driving down the road, and then Bam! Stonehenge! It was amazing, though. You can't actually touch the stones, but it was an incredible sight to see!

After all this, we headed back to Brussels. Even though it was a short adventure, it was jam packed and worth every penny it took to get there!