so my brother's girlfriend is named Derya, and hails from Turkey, her mother recently visited them in Philly and taught my brother and Derya how to make yogurt. "It's Easy!" they all agree.
The last time I was in london I went to the Tower and enjoyed it so much I thought it was worth it to go a second time. Since my last trip, they've added this crystal sculpture where the beheadings used to take place with a crystal pillow on top of a disc type thing
Cambridge is a truly beautiful place. The town sort of winds and sprawls all over the place and felt a lot more pedestrian friendly than it actually turned out to be. So this is the river by cambridge.
now I'm back and it's time to play catch up. Things were so jam packed the last few days in london it was hard to get everything I wanted to done, but it does leave me with a nice excuse to go back. Though, even that has always seemed like a funny thing to say about a place, because honestly, no matter how long I've ever spent anywhere, there was always stuff I wanted to do or see that I didn't get to . . .
My flight home was slightly eventful, not the flight itself, but the pre-flight. I got this shuttle thing to take me and my friend to the airport, and it delivered me to the airport with EXACTLY the amount of time to get through security and get to the gate in order to board. When I used my passport to get my e-ticket, it told me to report to the info desk. At this point, I was convinced I had been placed o the no-fly list for reasons unknown to me, perhaps a joke I made while somewhere with cameras. The UK has a 2-1 Closed Circuit Television to Person ratio (per Chrissy, also loosely quoted), so it seemd relatively likely that they had overheard some portion of some story I'd told and all of that paranoia . . .
as it turns out, they wanted me to volunteer to go on standby, and in return, they would give me a free roundtrip ticket to anywhere Virgin flies . . .GREAT! I thought! I'M IN!!
so, I show up at the gate, because that's what you do, and low and behold, I was selected for the standby, put on the 2:30 flight. So I go to the transfer desk halfway across heathrow, and they tell me that they still have a seat. So they made some calls, and it turned out they had room for me anyway.
so I ended up in the crappy middle row. Though I was next to two hilarious english ladies and a college student returning from Kenya. It was GREAT!
anyway, the following is a catchup of my last few days.
so, the tower item I mentioned in the last post was actually called "West Gate" in Winchester. Originally, it was the gate of the Roman city, then got taken over and taken over, and repurposed, and at some point, because a debtors prison.
The most elaborate is a floor board which was saved. They believe the man who carved it was a shoemaker based on the the shoe imprint, as well as the leather peice he put over the tracing on his hand, indicating the leatherpeice worn to push needles through leather.
so, my aunt Suzanne suggested I include myself in more of my photos, so I set the little timer and ran around!
so, 1.25 hrs later, Lisa and I arrive at Winchester, where we encounter Alfie, the first king of England, that's right, this big ol' statue of King Alfred, who ruled Wessex from Winchester.
Next, we arrive at Wolvesley Castle built by Bishop Henri de Blois:
Apparently, in the 50's, 60's and 70's they were still using this building as a court while they were constructing the newer court buildings after the old-new court buildings proved insufficient, can you imagine?
Lisa and I ventured out of London today to visit Winchester, a small town which was formerly the capital of England (we're talking a whiiiile ago)
It was off a train leaving from Waterloo station so we took the opportunity to walk.
Along with this display of sewing machines . . . which I'm trying to bewitch or something . . . not sure what's going on there.
so, we got a special tour of the british library along with seeing their "treasures" including: The Magna Carta, Handel's Messiah, an early hand drawn map of New Amsterdam, and the envelope on which Paul McCartney wrote "Michelle".
so, on the left is the grating of the entry gate. On the right is an homage to the olden days of librarianship where they'd chain their books up, this is also cleverly, a bench!
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