Rock, Church, Movie (Shoot)

Whew!

Gosh, today was exhausting.  We traveled to three different towns today as the culmination of our orientation week here in Bath (which I have finally started pronouncing "Bahth"): Stonehenge, Salisbury, and Lacock.  We also had our first brush with real English weather-- we woke up to RAIN.  It was crazy.  We all had to break out the umbrellas and raincoats and waterproof shoes... no one was ready for this.  Thankfully, it cleared up by the time we reached Salisbury (and Stonehenge really is much better in the rain-- it just feels like it is supposed to be foggy and rainy and misty and stuff-- greatly improves the effect). 

I'm just going to backtrack for a moment first (I know, I'm sorry, you want to hear about the rocks and stuff, and I just want to tell you a funny story).  Last night, my friend and I were making dinner in our house.  I was making home fries for the both of us, and he made pasta for himself and I made eggs with spinach to go with my home fries (which makes a lot more sense than pasta).  Anyway, we didn't have olive oil in the house yet-- we just had margarine, or, according to the package, "buttery".  So I put some buttery in the pan, and heated it up.  Then I put the potatoes in.  But they weren't cooking.  So we're looking at the pan, and Clay says, in a lovely accent, "Needs more buttery!" at which point he adds an enormous blob to the pan.  We laugh about this, but it actually starts to work, so we continued adding giant pats of buttery to the pan, yelling "Needs more buttery!!!".  It was pretty fantastic.  Maybe you had to be there.... sorry.
Oh, but the exciting part was this:

"I beg your pardon, but there appears to be a feather stuck to your egg."

Speaking of buttery....sort of.... Andrew Butterworth, one of the most fantastically stereotypical British men in existence, who is our programme's internship and education placement director, was our tour guide on our trip this morning.  He is hysterical-- going off on all sorts of tangents and such-- but he knows basically everything that there is to know about Bath and its environs.  We all like to follow him around, listening to whatever he says, because it's bound to be brilliant or fascinating; we also enjoy simply saying his name in a British accent (try it-- it's pretty fun).  Fun fact: Andrew Butterworth is, in fact, married to Mrs. Butterworth.

ANYWAY, Stonehenge.  We took a bus early in the rainy morning off to Stonehenge, about an hour away from Bath, through lots of lovely English countryside filled with livestock:

Huh...looks like Williamstown.

Then we passed what our driver (only sort of) jokingly referred to as "Strawhenge":

Then, we got to the astounding, the magnificent, the awe-inspiring, looming, epic rocks of Stonehenge!

Oh hello, line of tourists with umbrellas....and really tiny circle of rocks. Hm.

So, ok-- it's a bit smaller than it's usually made out to be.  But it's still really fascinating.  Stonehenge was constructed in three stages, beginning in 3,000 BCE.  These stones, most of which are hidden below the ground by this point, weigh an enormous amount, and were dragged to this site over 240 miles, from South Wales.  They were then cut (this is pre-Bronze Age) into perfect rectangles, with tongue-and-groove joints to connect the lintle pieces to the upright ones.  Not to mention the fact that they got these rocks to stand perfectly upright, get the big rocks on top, or line the entrance up perfectly with the summer solstice.  

With me, for scale. I was standing about 100 yards or fewer away.

(First use of my raincoat-- don't I look happy?)

  This is how it looked originally.

So then we hopped back on the bus and drove to Salisbury-- a really cute little town, which seems to have lots of markets and such.  I didn't get much of a chance to look around, as I spent my time in Salisbury following Andrew Butterworth around the Salisbury Cathedral, which was worth every minute that I spent there.

Part of the town-- in the middle is one of the gates to the cathedral, which is to this day shut at 11:15 pm, and reopened at 7:15 am, so as to keep the rabble away from the cathedral at night.

The cathedral is breathtaking-- three times grander than Bath Abbey (which is saying something)-- and completed in only 38 years, back in 1220 CE.  It is really old.

p.s.-- The spire (the big pointy tower) is 404 feet tall.

The cathedral contains: one of the four original copies of the Magna Carta, Europe's oldest working clock, and the tombs of many English bishops and royalty:

Part of a very cool tomb, just hanging out along the wall of the apse. Such tombs lined practically every wall, and divide the central nave from the side parts that you walk through (aisles? I've forgotten what they're called).

And did I mention that it's gorgeous?

The courtyard

The nave.

The choir, with the altar in the back.

I can't properly describe how huge this place is, or how astoundingly beautiful it is... guess you'll just have to see it for yourself!

Then we continued on to Lacock-- a medieval village which has remained largely unchanged, thanks to the fact that the entire village belongs to the National Trust.  The only thing that gives it away are the cars parked all along the streets:

Because of it's largely untouched nature, the town is often used as a backdrop for many films (for instance, it serves as Meryton in the BBC version of "Pride and Prejudice").  

Lacock Abbey, which later became the Talbot Estate, and is now the Lacock Abbey/Fox Talbot Museum of Photography (Mr. Talbot invented the photographic negative), is particularly famous for its use in this little movie that's not really a big deal.... something called "Harry Potter":

Cauldron from the movies!

The rest of the Abbey/Estate is also lovely.  I'll give you a brief tour in photographs:

I couldn't help but feel like I was in Mr. Darcy's parlor....

We finished our excursion with a trip to The George Inn-- the oldest pub in Lacock, and the oldest liquor license in England!  We had dinner there (I had roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and a chocolate torte for dessert), and had a quiz to see who remembered the most information from the day-- my group came in second, due to the fact that we couldn't remember how many King Georges there were.

All in all, a most excellent trip.  We had lots of fun, saw lots of interesting, different things, and got to listen to Andrew Butterworth talk all day long-- what could be better?

I leave you this evening with something that I found rather hysterical:

And old church chandelier, refitted with compact fluorescent lightbulbs...

but they're just kinda hanging there...marvelous contrast between the modern and medieval!

Classes start tomorrow, already!  Can't believe it.  I'll probably be updating a bit less frequently from this point on, but I promise, I will keep you up to speed-- it's just that I'll have much less to talk about.

Cheers!