Hello my friends!

It's been over a year since I've written a new post for this blog. I've been keeping it up here simply so I can read and comment on all your posts occasionally (though the busyness of school seems to leave me little time for that). I will continue to keep this up for that reason, but I wanted to let you all know that I now have a new blog in case you're interested in reading it. It's an art blog which I'm sharing with several other students at PAFA...we'll each be posting about our work and our learning process at school. I thought I'd let you all know about it in case you want to know about what I'm up to in school these days!

http://theacademystudents.blogspot.com/

Anyway, I do still enjoy reading what's going on in all your lives and I hope you are all well! Cheers!

~Laura A.

Hello friends!

Dear me, I'd better post the rest of these pictures quickly, or else it's going to be next summer by the time I've finished posting about England!

Alright, well, from where I left off last...

The next morning, my dad and I got an early start while my mom hung out back at our bed and breakfast, and we drove to a place in Buxton where there were a bunch of pretty trails to walk on. This part of England was absolutely beautiful--gorgeous, green, rolling hills that went on for as far as you could see...it was amazing. I'd really enjoyed driving around on the hills, but I was determined that I'd actually get to walk up one. So, my dad had found this trail, and we both climbed up the beautiful hill right outside of the town of Buxton. I'm not sure exactly what the hill was called (if it even had a name), but at the top of the hill was this darling little tower called "Solomon's Temple." Anyway, from up in the tower the view was just breathtaking--you could see the whole town of Buxton below! It was such a beautiful day too...sunny and pleasant but with a strong wind that made it just a little bit chilly. When we were up on the hill, dad took loads of pictures (particularly of me, since I was the only one up there to pose for him ), so here are some of the best of them:

Isn't this view beautiful???

Solomon's Temple:

In case you can't tell, it was really windy.

Later that day, we visited Pemberly--THE Pemberly, of course. The actual name of the estate was Lyme Hall, and it was indeed the house that was used as Pemberly in the BBC production.

Anyway, here I am, walking around in the beautiful hydrangea gardens that were there:

The house itself, as seen in the movie...isn't it pretty???

The beautiful gardens there:

Here is a picture of me on the stairs where Darcy runs out of the house in the movie to catch Elizabeth as she's trying to leave...as Sarah said, I have now been on the same ground that Colin Firth has walked on.

Another view of the house:

Me on the pretty walk that we took up to "The Cage" which was this stone building a short distance from the house...I've no idea why it's called "The Cage", except that they must've wanted it to sound all scary...it was apparently mainly used as a hunting lodge, though felons were also sometimes imprisoned there....hmm.

And that's all for now, folks! I really will try to post again sooner....I still have tons more pictures left!

Cheers!

~Laurie

Hello!

Alrighty, here is my first post on England...I'm afraid that I'm probably going to be posting more pictures and writing more about England than any of you will want to see or read...but I'm a very thorough person, so that's just how I do things! Anyway, I do hope you enjoy it, even if I go a little overboard at times...

Ok, we left Thursday evening...the plane took off around 9 or 10:00 that night (it was delayed about an hour or so), and we finally landed around 9:00 the next morning (England time). All things considered, the flight went pretty smoothly, and we all managed to sleep a bit, which was very good. Still, I absolutely hate flying, so it was not a very enjoyable experience for me...

Here's a picture of Emily and I hanging out at the airport waiting to board the plane:

Anyway, after we arrive in England, we drove on to Buxton, which is where we stayed for the first half of the trip. Buxton was a very quaint town, though it was not quite as old as some of the other villages we saw...I think most of it was built in the 19th century, so the architecture was more Victorian style. We stayed in a very cute little bed and breakfast there called "Twelve Trees" and Emily stayed in a nearby hotel with the rest of the Gilbert and Sullivan cast. Fortunately, the town was quite small, so instead of driving around it, we were able to walk everywhere. (I should add as an aside here that driving in England was quite an experience, because, of course, they drive on the other side of the road and the steering wheel is on the other side of the car  They also don't have many stoplights and intersections. Instead, they use roundabouts, which are kind of complicated and hard to explain, but basically, you go around in a circle until you come to the road you want to turn off to...once we figured it out, we were able to see that it actually is rather clever--it makes it so that you almost never have to stop the car, so there's no sitting at traffic lights! )

Here's a pretty picture of the road which our bed and breakfast was on:

More pretty buildings...isn't it quaint?

This is a picture of the Pavilion Gardens, which was this beautiful park that we were staying right next to:

The Old Clubhouse, a very nice pub where we went out to dinner:

The opera house in Buxton where Emily and the Gilbert and Sullivan group performed their show, Iolanthe:

 Haha, that building was so very Victorian and overdone...beautiful, but also too ornate and overly decorated, imho. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of the inside, but the ceiling and walls were all decorated and painted very ornately with Victorian style scenes...it was a bit much, hehe.

While we were walking around in Buxton, we stopped by a really quaint old church (I believe it was called St. Anne's Church), which was built in the 13th century, I believe. It's the oldest building in Buxton!

Ok, I promise I am going to post some pictures with people in them...hehe.

Anyway, that was the first day...we just hung around Buxton and went to bed early since we were still recovering from jet-lag.

The next day we got an early start and began by visiting a little village called Bakewell. It was incredibly quaint and old...we stopped by the church there (I think it was called All Saints Church), and it was built in the 12th century, I believe. They had a little plaque there which listed all the vicars of the church since it was built and the first one was from 1193!!!

The church was built on a hill, so you had a lovely view of the village from there...and there was a really nice path through the graveyard leading up to the church--alot of the tomestones were really old!

Some views of the church:

A beautiful view of the village from the hill:

Some pictures of the interior of the church (sorry if some of them are a little dark...):

There was this really friendly lady there who was doing some cleaning for the church, and she just spontaneously started talking to us and told us lots of really fascinating things about the church...

Some of the wooden carvings on the pews actually did date right to the middle ages...the newer looking ones were Victorian replacements for the orginals which had gotten too worn down:

Baptismal font from the 14th century, I think:

Those little stone arches were apparently where the extra priests would sit during the Eucharist if they weren't needed to serve communion:

The altarpiece which you can see here was a Bavarian wooden carving (not sure when it was done...). Below it are sculpted figures of the twelve apostles:

All these stones here were tomestones with celtic carvings and symbols on them dating back to the 7th or 8th century I think!!!

You can see the carved symbols more clearly here...the lady that cleaned there was explaining to us what they think some of them might have meant:

Well, it's getting late, so I think that's going to have to be all for now! I hope I didn't bore you all to death with that!

Cheers!

~Laurie