Carbon Copy

Seriously?

No sooner did I posit that spring had finally come than we had a day like this yesterday:

{Picture taken from the freeway, which is why it looks so ugly.}

And then this morning, I opened my front door to this:

WTF, Mother Nature?! I know it's Utah and that it normally snows until the end of April, but that's usually a nice, light snow dusting blossom-covered trees. This is still heavy, wet, winter snow. And no blossoms yet. I think I need a different climate.

Happenings

Last night I went to see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. I enjoyed the movie, but I LOVED the set design and costuming. It was so glamorous. Plus, it had one of my TV crushes, Lee Pace from Pushing Daisies.

Otherwise, I've been working hard helping my mom get ready to move. This takes place on Tuesday, and I will be so relieved to have it over with. The fun thing about packing up, though, is coming across items from my childhood. For instance, this is a piece of my great grandmother's crystal.

I love this crystal. I loved setting the table for holiday and fancy meals when I was growing up because I could use the crystal and the silver and the table would sparkle. There are only four pieces left, though. Some day, I want to figure out the pattern of the crystal and get my own.

I've also been dog-sitting in what I found out today is the 34th safest city in America! This has also given me access to a wealth of recorded television, so after working hard at my mom's packing up, I come home and watch television that I've always wanted to see but never have. And I've discovered a new TV crush. I'm a little embarrassed to admit who my new TV crush is, though, because it will reveal my nerdy love of TV shows with spaceships. Here he is, Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the spaceship Serenity

Sigh... his wit and bravado make my heart pitter-patter. Too bad like all good TV (um... Veronica Mars, Arrested Development and now, most likely, Friday Night Lights), Firefly didn't last long - only one season.

I think spring has finally come to Salt Lake, despite the fact that it snowed on Thursday and some of the leaves and bushes were iced over.

So the big move is on Tuesday and then I start working here as a copywriter on Wednesday. And that's the haps.

Here Comes the Bride

One of my dear friends, Jenn, got married last Saturday. Many of you may remember Jenn as my roommate at Purdue, the orchestrator of such lavish affairs as pumpkin carving and gingerbread houses. I was there when she first started dating Kyle, so I was so happy to be there for their wedding.

The bridesmaids line up for their big entrance.

And here comes the bride. (Sorry, the video is sideways.)

I somehow made the mistake of cleaning out my purse before I went to the wedding and discarded my tissues, which was a huge mistake, as I found out during the ceremony.

After Kyle and Jenn were made man and wife, we all ate and toasted. Kyle's brother, Kelsey is a very entertaining toaster/storyteller.

Kyle and Jenn (and everyone in the room) were thoroughly engrossed.

The dinner was fantastic. The flowers were lovely.

And the company, more than delightful.

I was so pleased to see Meredith again. She's a big shot now, getting her PhD at UC-Santa Barbara. I'm pretty sure she sits on the beach all day long. It's a far cry from Indiana.

The newlyweds stopped by our table.

I snapped a photo with them.

And then the dancing began.

It really was a joyous occasion, but I couldn't help but feel a little sad. Getting married meant that Jenn would be moving to Galveston. And that meant that our bi-weekly dinners where we talked over everything would be ending. I guess it's for a good cause, though. The happiness of a dear friend. That pretty much trumps everything.

Visitors from the Big Easy

I was sad to leave England. Everything was so green there, the trees were blossoming, there were daffodils... and I had to come home to the blah of Utah, which is in that horrible brown stage when the snow is gone (for the most part) but it hasn't greened up yet. The bright spot in coming home, though, was that my sister and nephew were coming to visit. The real purpose of Amanda's visit was to help my mom get ready to move. I had the arduous task of watching adorable Peter.

Peter will turn one at the end of April. Right now, he's all about cell phones and wouldn't have anything to do with the old cell phone that didn't work anymore. He's pretty clever.

We don't have a lot of real toys at my mom's house. We had to improvise, but Peter liked his box just as well.

Pete's also really into climbing up on things.

He tasted his first fudge bar.

I think he liked it. I couldn't get over how cute Peter is. I mean, look at this:

And these tiny little feet!

Grandma introduced Peter to the keyboard. He liked the drum effects the best.

And one morning, a friend came to play with him.

Basil really liked playing the keyboard. Peter just liked having a friend, and kept wanting to grab Basil.

Peter discovered the real piano just before he left to go back to New Orleans.

The week went by too quickly.

!!!!

This is my 500th post on this blog, which is coming up on its four year anniversary at the end of April. That's four years of music, photos, hair cuts, self-portraits, travels and whatever else this blog is about.

London

Maybe it was a mistake to save London for our last outing. To be honest, we almost didn't go. After Stonehenge, Salisbury, Bath, Yorkshire, and Paris, we were, simply put, tuckered out. But I couldn't go to England without going to London, and the airport doesn't count. So we took the train early in the morning and decided to start the day off at the Tate Britain. The closest stop was the Westminster one, and when we climbed the stairs to the outside we saw this:

Well, not that exact view because that photo was taken from on the bridge, but the House of Parliament was right there as you leave the tube.

And of course, we had to take a self-portrait with Big Ben.

Although, this wasn't a self-portrait. Kris had to crouch down on one knee to get this picture. All my self-portraits ended up just being my eyes all squinty in the sun. Last time I was in London, I took about a million blurry photos of Big Ben (the photos are missing right now, but that bug will be fixed soon). It was much easier in the daytime.

I'm pretty sure this is a closer photo of the parliament, but it looks so much like a church that I can't tell.

I'm so accustomed to Classical architecture in my government buildings that all that ornate detail seems like an unlawful mixture of church and state.

We visited Westminster Abbey on our way to the Tate Britain. But opted not to enter. Once again, it was at the end of my trip when money was tight. Some day I'll actually go inside. But what I loved about the exterior of the building were its windows.

Finally, we made it to the Tate Britain.

We couldn't take photos inside the museum, but it was lovely. I saw this painting by Sargent that I've always loved. And, amazingly, we ran into a drinking fountain!

I never knew how much I loved drinking fountains until I couldn't ever find one. That and Diet Cokes with lots of ice. Aww... America.

Something I appreciate about London, though, is how they remind people which way to look.

It really is helpful because the cars there drive on the wrong side of the road. After the Tate, we went to Picadilly for some lunch and shopping.

And then to the Tower of London, which came highly recommended by several people. I stopped by the tower on my last trip, but couldn't afford to go inside. This time, we took a tour led by a beefeater nameed Bob.

Houses inside the tower:

The White Tower, the building all the other buildings and walls are meant to safeguard:

And this guy was guarding the crown jewels, which Kris heard somewhere are fake. The real ones are stashed somewhere else. This made them seem not as impressive to us. Plus, you stand on a moving walkway that moves you past the crowns. Tacky.

We explored the tower for quite some time. Here are some of the things we saw. First, the chapel in the White Tower. The White Tower is pretty much an armory now and shows all the old weapons and suits of armor. I was hoping it would look like the living quarters of a real castle.

This is one of the rooms in which they imprisoned people.

Not too shabby. And some of the rooms even overlooked the Thames.

With a view of the Tower Bridge:

And we got to walk on a wall again.

In all of our exploring, I was really hoping to come across these amazing papercuts that a girl I kind of know through friends of friends did last month, but I should have done more research as to where they actually were because I never found them. I guess I could have asked someone, but that would require doing something I don't like to do - ask. So I'll just admire them from the blogging world instead of in real life.

When we'd had our fill of medieval castle life, we walked down to the Tower Bridge.

Here's Kris:

and here's a self-portrait:

We stayed to watch the lights come on.

And then we were going to stop by Portabello Road because of this:

But it was getting late and we really just wanted to get home. I still had to pack for my flight the next day. Like I said, we probably should have visited London earlier in the trip. The combination of exhaustion and the fact that both Kris and I had been there before affected the expected wow factor.

Paris: the Last Day

Sorry to be so neglectful. I've been busy spending time with my sister and adorable nephew who have been visiting from New Orleans (post forthcoming - believe me, you will want to see these pictures) and helping my mom prepare to move at the end of the month. I only have one more post after this one about my trip to England. It's amazing how quickly the time went by. But back to the task at hand, chronicling my last day in Paris.

We had actually gone to the Musee d'Orsay the day before, but realized we would only have an hour and half (if that long) before it closed. Remembering the rush at the Louvre and knowing that there would be many pieces at the museum that we would want to see (I'm just a sucker for Impressionism), we wisely decided to forego it and return the next day. So first thing in the morning, we crossed through the Tuilleries, over the river, and entered the museum.

First of all, I just need to say that I am enamored of train stations at the moment. And train stations transformed into museums are simply incredible. Look at this:

That ceiling! And I think a converted train station is the perfect locale for works by Impressionists (and others around that era) because of their concern with urban life and their inclusion of places like train stations (I'm thinking Monet's Gare St. Lazare). I didn't take as many photos in the museum as I would have because, stupidly, I had forgotten to bring my camera battery charger to Paris with me and after three days and hundreds of photos, I was worried that it would give out on me. But something I absolutely love about my camera (a little Sony Cyber-shot, for those of you interested) is that the battery life for it is absolutely amazing and it lasted the entire trip. I didn't even have that annoying low battery flickering. In lieu of taking photos, I wrote down in my little book about four pages of artists I loved and wanted to look into more. (I've found the museum's index of works is really helpful in re-identifying the illegible names I wrote down.) I did take some pictures, though. Here are a few.

{I love the face on that cat!}

{A detail from Seurat's Cirque}

{One of the galleries with train station architecture.}

More photos, of course, on flickr.

I also loved the huge clock.

{If you look closely, you can see Sacre Coeur.}

Kris and I explored the museum on our own and met up again at a certain time. I got there earlier than she and was very glad for the chance to sit down for a bit.

But we decided we weren't quite done yet. Neither of us had made it through the museum and both wanted to see more. I'm so glad we did because otherwise I would have missed this:

On our way back through the Tuilleries after leaving the museum, I was pleased to see children playing with sailboats in the fountain. I had expressed disappointment earlier that day to Kris that I hadn't seen any and that I would have to photoshop some into my photos because it felt like such a quintessential sight. I'm glad the children saved me from that hassle. (And don't even get me started on how strange it is that I would be willing to create photos of something I felt like I should have seen.)

Our final destination in Paris was Pere Lachaise Cemetery.

When we first got there, we looked at the map and excitedly wrote down a list of graves we wanted to find. These included people such as lovers Heloise and Abelard; the artists Pissarro, Seurat, Delacroix, Daumier, Corot, Ingres; musicians Jim Morrison and Frederic Chopin; and writers Oscar Wilde and Balzac. After trying to find Pissarro in a little corner of the cemetery without the aid of the detailed map we were too cheap to purchase, our list was narrowed dramatically. Turns out, the only graves we really wanted to see enough to hunt for were Chopin

and Oscar Wilde

I read in our guide book about another grave there with an urban legend. Apparently, if a woman rubs a certain spot on the bronze effigy of Victor Noir (the pseudonym for a female journalist that was shot and killed), she will become fertile. Kris and I were strangely determined to find this. After combing section 92, we did.

It was getting late and we had a train to catch, so Kris and I headed back towards the Metro stop. I guess I hadn't realized how late it was getting because the two gates out of Pere Lachaise were already locked tight. We were starting to get nervous when we came across a guard who asked us if we were hoping to sleep there that night. As much as I love cemeteries, I had no desire to stay overnight. We made it back to our hotel to pick up our luggage and then across the city again to Gare du Nord where we had to wait in the cold and with the pigeons for our train to show up on the old fashioned time board that makes the most delightful clicking noise. I'm so glad it's not digital. And then through the tunnel and back in Jolly Old England where we were stopped at Baker Street and ushered off the train because of repair work on the underground. We thought we weren't going to make our train back to Didcot that night, but luckily, with seconds to spare, we sat down exhausted on the train to Cardiff, that just happened to stop in Didcot.

Paris: It Has Buildings

I think one of the basic ironies of life is that when you need your umbrella, you don't have one. I have this really cute umbrella that I got for Christmas. I made sure to bring it with me on my trip because it seemed to reason that in England I might need an umbrella. I hadn't yet had a chance to use it. It had rained, but it happened to rain on the day that we had set aside to rest and upload photos and catch up on the Internet. The umbrella was in the car when Miles dropped us off at the train station for our trip to Paris, so I grabbed it. I carried it around with me all day Monday without need, so when we looked out our beautiful window on Tuesday morning and it didn't look like rain, I left it at the hotel. About an hour into our day, it started to drizzle. A lot of people were prepared for this while we waited in line to visit St. Chapelle, but we weren't.

I'm not sure when St. Chapelle first caught my fancy. I guess it was that first Art History class I ever took, in high school with Cheryl Hughes and I remember a story she told us about how on her first trip to Paris, she only had a few moments at St. Chapelle so she ran inside and was completely disappointed because she didn't realize that all the stained glass was in the upper level. We had seen beautiful churches already on our visit, but they were so large. St. Chapelle has this weird combination of intimacy and grandeur. I guess I'm also just a sucker for stained glass.

Here's the exterior:

And some of the interior:

I loved the floor, and how the light is reflected on it, too.

I was worried that because of the cloudy, rainy day, it wouldn't be as spectacular inside. But those fears were unfounded. We took our time inside St. Chapelle, and tried to read the stories depicted in the stained glass (which is actually really hard), but we had more to see. Since we were seeing things that we had read/seen pictures of in books, we kind of wanted to see that big Metro entrance. You know, the Art Nouveau one with kind of a collar of glass around it, but we had no idea where in Paris we would find it. While browsing post cards on Monday, though, we found one of it and deciphered that it was the Port Dauphine stop, which is a terminus of the Number 2 line, which happened to be the same line for Sacre Coeur (our next stop), so figured we'd ride the metro out there and see it. It was actually a pretty long ride. And when we got there, I'm not sure it was worth it. Looks a little run down. And there was some annoying guy standing right in front of it ruining my photo.

Oh well... off to Sacre Coeur, but first we stopped for lunch and for other necessities.

It felt strange using a toilet in the middle of the street, especially since, even though I knew the door was closed, it didn't really seem closed and I feared that at any moment, it could open. Nothing like the fear of exposure to hurry you along. hehe... We had kebabs for lunch. I was so excited to have kebabs in Paris because I thought it would be as delicious as the kebabs in Innsbruck. It wasn't. But the fries were really good and there was Sacre Coeur right ahead of us.

We climbed most of the way up and turned around to see the view.

The whole time, I just kept thinking of this scene from Amelie and was hoping to find some blue arrows.

You wouldn't think from the first picture I posted with the nice, blue sky that there would be a sudden hail storm, but there was one. I guess I should have known by how the clouds were darkening in the picture I took half way up the steps.

Since I didn't have my umbrella, we were among the crowds of people rushing to the covered entrance.

But the storm didn't last long. Within five minutes it was over and we rounded the building to see water gushing from the gargoyles.

We visited the Place du Tertre for a bit...

but we felt awkward around all the artists clamoring to draw our portraits. so we left and just wandered the streets aimlessly and looked into a few shops for some classy souvenirs.

But it was getting cold, and we needed a plan. We decided that we wanted to see some of the other famous sites in Paris, but not necessarily go inside them, especially since it was getting late. So we took the metro (let me just insert a photo of some awesome chairs in the metro here)

to the Opera.

I wish I had thought ahead and bought tickets for the opera while we were there. We settled for resting on their steps and taking photos. I really think Paris has the best lamp posts of any city I've ever seen.

After being sufficiently rested, we took the metro again (we were making good use of our mobilis pass) to the Centre Pompidou.

Nearby, I found this little street and took a hasty picture.

Something about the muted, blurred colors reminded me of one of my favorite paintings, A Street in Venice by John Singer Sargent.

Since it was our last evening in Paris, there was one more place we wanted to visit, just for the photo op.

And then home to rest. It's exhausting to see so many wonderful places. And I had Wuthering Heights to finish.

Paris on a Monday

We took our time getting ready in the morning. We had decided that we didn't want to rush things in Paris. I hate those vacations where you're so busy running around trying to check things off a list that you never really feel relaxed or like you got to experience the city. So we slept until we woke up and then got ready for the day. The hotel had courteously placed a plug adapter in our room, but it still didn't work for me. I had to piggy back.

So there's the European plug with a UK adapter with a USA adapter and my hair dryer. I worried that it might not be safe, but there were no sparks or explosions, so I guess it was ok. We had checked out the TV the night before to see what channels we got. The only one in English was CNN and I watched an interesting story about the election in Russia. They were replaying it in the morning as we got ready, so I found something else.

Beverly Hills 90210 is much better in French. At least, Dylan's voice is better, but I didn't know what was going on. It was an episode from one of those late seasons when everyone stopped watching. We finally made it out the door at 10 or so and got a little lost wandering the streets looking for something to eat.

What to do on a Monday when all the museums are closed? We decided to return to Notre Dame.

We didn't go inside because we had already paid to go inside so many churches and I thought I didn't need more pictures of stained glass. We contented ourselves with the exterior and just enjoyed the sunshine by resting for a bit in a little park behind the cathedral. Parks are nice and free and open on Mondays, so we decided to visit another park, the Tuilleries. We took the Metro.

I think the Tuilleries would be better in full summer, or even in the fall. Right now, it all just seemed bare and brown, and we didn't want to just lounge by the fountain because there was a strong wind blowing that made sitting around for too long a bad idea. So we mostly walked through it to get to the Musee de l'Orangerie on the other side.

The Musee de l'Orangerie is the home of Monet's waterlilies and a collection of Impressionist works. I had seen some of the large canvases of the waterlilies in Cleveland for spring break last year, but I loved seeing them at the l'Orangerie because of how they were situated, curving in bright, elliptical rooms.

There was this family there with two little boys that were on the floor coloring. Super cute, right?

Except that one of the boys was singing to himself the entire time, which at first was still adorable because little boy/French/singing... but after a while it started to get on my nerves. I took some video just as his mother, I think, came up to tell him to be quiet, or something. That lasted for a few minutes and then the singing began again.

Anyway... the rest of the museum held pieces from the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection. I would've read more about it, but it was in French and that made my brain hurt. But there were these darling miniature rooms that showed how the pieces were arranged before moved to the museum.

After the museum, we decided to walk along the Champs Elysee up towards the Arch de Triomphe, finding something to eat along the way. But first, we crossed over the Place de la Concorde and this amazing fountain.

The Champs Elysee was totally packed and we had a hard time finding a bench on which to rest while we enjoyed pain au chocolat and a crepe. When we did find a spot, we stayed there for a while and watched people as they passed by. We played a little game to see if we could guess who were tourists and who weren't. And I tried to imagine what the fug girls would say about this lady.

And there it was, the Arch de Triomphe!

After a sufficient amount of oohing and awwing and an awkward encounter with a woman asking for money, it was time for the Eiffel Tower.

Let's pause for a minute and notice that cute blue scarf I have on. I bought it that morning from a street vendor for 5 euro. Two days later, when I wore my jacket again, I noticed the whole front of it was blue and Kris pointed out that the back of my neck was also a smurf-like hue. Oh well...

I think that last picture shows exactly why everyone kept mistaking Kris for a Parisian and would speak to her in French everywhere we went.

The pavilion over by the Eiffel Tower felt like a huge party. There were tons of people there taking pictures (we even ran into some fellow American tourists! - Girls that were obnoxiously taking pictures of themselves leaping in front the Eiffel Tower. It made me feel really old because I was crotchety about their exuberance and wanted them to just calm down) and there were also dancers.

And apparently, no one has told the Frenchies that rollerblading is totally passe.

I think I took about a hundred pictures just of the Eiffel Tower. I couldn't help myself. It's just so pretty.

As a sidenote, something else I found just so pretty in Paris were these trees.

Back to the Eiffel Tower. We tried to time it just right so that we could see the tower in the daylight but also at night. We were just a little early. So we wandered around for about 2 hours, drinking hot chocolate because it turned freezing cold. At least trees were blossoming and there were flowers and the grass was green so that it looked like spring, even when it felt like winter.

And finally, the lights came on.

Arriving in Paris

As part of my two week adventure in England, we braved the chunnel (overcoming our common fear that somehow the walls will collapse and water will come rushing in and we will be drowned) and ended up in Paris. Here's something you should know about me: I have always wanted to go to Paris. I'm surprised it's taken me this long in my life and that I didn't go during my study abroad in Austria because my list of places to go has looked something like this ever since I was about five years old. 1. PARIS 2. Paris 3. Paris 4. Paris and 5. Somewhere else in France. I think this love came from my francophile father, who was a missionary in France and Belgium and always ingrained in us a love of all things French. So going to Paris for the first time was no small matter. However, I tried to trick myself into thinking it was no big deal so that my dream version of Paris wouldn't be completely shattered.

The trip started off with an early morning train ride to London where I had to pay an outrageous £4 for a one way trip on the underground from Paddington to St. Pancras. That's about $8!! But I won't sully this entry with talk of finances. After waiting for about an hour at St. Pancras, we boarded the Eurostar. I have to say, I was impressed by station.

We made our way from Gare du Nord to our hotel, learning the hard way that you should never pull your suitcase behind you through the Metro turnstiles, and then rushed off to the Louvre after checking in. Since it was the first Sunday of the month, the museum was free and we wanted to take advantage.

We only had about an hour and a half, which really wouldn't even allow us to put a dent in all that the Louvre has to offer. So we narrowed it down. It's a given what you have to see at the Louvre. Huge signs in every entrance will point you there.

We found the Venus de Milo first:

And then, of course, Mona Lisa.

I am much more interested in the crowds of people that view these works of art than the works themselves, I think. I can't get over the need people apparently feel to see them and to be photographed with them and then move on. In the case of the Mona Lisa, especially, you couldn't even really see the painting. There was no way I could just stand and look. I was jostled and crowded and it was so loud and there are flashes going off and it's absolutely ridiculous. But I totally had my picture taken with it. Because it's behind bulletproof glass.

And one of my favorite things to see at the Louvre:

The Nike of Samothrace. Isn't it divine? So much better in person.

We also wanted to see Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa because it's something we studied in Art History.

I knew it was big, but I was still amazed by the scale. Not just of Gericault's masterpiece, but of every painting in the room, all of which I had studied in one Art History class or another. It felt like celebrity sighting. I kept saying, 'OMG, there is Death of Sardanapalus It's Liberty Leading the People!' But that's just how Paris was in general. We'd walk around the city and come face to face with all sorts of buildings or monuments that I had heard about and seen pictures of all my life. Back to the Louvre...

I think my favorite part of the Louvre was just the building itself. It was incredibly beautiful in every detail - marble halls, pillars, archways, even railings.

Unfortunately, the Louvre closed and we were forced out of those marble hallways and into the courtyard.

Where we took a number of self-portraits to convince everyone that we were ACTUALLY IN PARIS and AT THE LOUVRE! And that it was windy.

Afterwards, we picked up something to eat and I was forced to put into practice the 5 years of French I took off and on throughout high school and college. It didn't go very well and for the rest of the trip, I got by with "Je voudrais..." and pointing. I think the next part of the evening was one of my favorites, though. We just walked along the Seine and it was twilight and there were lights and OMG there's Notre Dame and that spire must be St. Chapelle and there's the Eiffel Tower and that's Pont Neuf and yes, I am finally in Paris. Sigh.

p.s. I know I said in an earlier post that I was trying to show restraint regarding photos in these entries because you can all see them on flickr, but it's Paris, and I can't. So please be prepared with a fast Internet connection.

A Day in Bath

It's already been confessed here that I'm kind of Jane Austen nerd, although my search for clips from Jane Austen movies to show how I imagined Bath before visiting proved that I am by no means the biggest of Jane Austen nerds. The winners of that esteemed title go to people who create videos like these:

Believe me, there are hundreds of them. And I confess, I watched a few last night. Still, if there's a new Jane Austen movie, I will see it (even horrible ones like that new Persuasion), and I even started that painful book Mr Darcy Takes a Wife, although I didn't get very far. So you can see why I was so excited to go to Bath, where parts of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, two of my favorite Austen books. We even had a local guide. Austin, a friend of Kris and Miles, grew up not far from Bath and thus took us on a personal tour.

People were dressed a little less formally than in Austen's day.

Including Kris, who happened to be dressed as a spy.

There are so many places to visit!

Of course, the first place we visited was the Roman Baths, which we gained access to through the Pump Room. I thrilled at the signs of places I had read about so often.

The details of the room made it very easy to imagine Catherine Morland or Anne Elliot walking around and around.

We took a tour of the Roman Baths, but I must confess to disappointment. I mean, sure, it was interesting hearing about the Romans and the Goddess Minerva, etc, but all I wanted to hear about was just why it appeared that the only purpose of the Pump Room was to walk around and around in circles and how the Roman Baths were used in Jane Austen's day. I went to Bath for Jane Austen, not ancient civilizations. It was still pretty, though.

Afterwards, we walked over by the Abbey, where crowds of people watched street performers and Austin told us to keep watch on our possession because of pick-pockets.

We walked around Bath Abbey, but decided not to pay the fee to enter (we'd already seen so many churches and our pockets were light). Instead, we walked down by the River Avon.

Despite how convenient it would be to ask each other to take pictures of us, we all still took self-portraits. They're usually just so much cooler.

We wandered the streets, full of crowded little shops, people, and pigeons. It was inevitable that one of us would get pooped on. I'm just glad it was Austin.

I may have satiated my desire to connect Bath with Jane Austen had I only visited the Jane Austen Centre located right there in Bath, but we didn't go in.

Kris and I browsed the shop while Miles and Austin went to get the car, though. What we found was less Austen than Darcy. His portrait was for sale, girls were fawning over him in at least three languages, and, if we had been very lucky, we could've timed it right to take tea with Mr. Darcy!

I know, I know... it's Mr. Darcy and Colin Firth's portrayal of him is very swoonable, but it all seemed a little ridiculous.

One last place to visit before heading out of town... the Royal Crescent.

We drove through some of the very steeped hill and curved streets of Bath before heading home, but since I had to take pictures out of the car window, they didn't quite turn out. All in all, it was very satisfying, and now I can smugly say whenever watching Persuasion or Northanger Abbey that I have been there.

Enjoy Everyone's Catchprases

I'ma take a break from blogging about my trip for just a minute and post something infinitely better. For fans of Project Runway (and if you're not, you should be), Amy Poehler as Christian Siriano. So perfect.

The Ruins of Fountains Abbey

I really like ruins. I almost ruined my love of ruins once, though, by writing a paper on them. The thesis was something about how Washington Irving uses ruins (and fake ruins) throughout The Sketchbook as a means to ponder his own mortality. Yeah, I know... it sounds cliche here, but I think I had some pretty good ideas in the paper. The problem was it was poorly executed, and the shame of it (because I knew I did a horrible job while I was writing the paper) still lingers. I'll never be able to think of ruins without thinking of my ruined paper. But I digress...

The Fountains Abbey was first built in 1152 and thrived for 400 years, with different parts of the building being added in different styles until The Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539. Then it was basically just abandoned and the lead roof was melted down and sold to people in York. Over 450 years later (the length of time seriously boggles my mind!) it is ruins (and a World Heritage Site). And incredibly beautiful. It's nestled in a little valley about an hour west of York near the town Ripon. You can just see the top of the tower over some hills where sheep graze.

Then you walk down a steep hill and there it is. It just gets bigger and bigger as you get closer to it, and there were so many rooms to explore. We kept discovering little corners and decaying staircases and trying to put it all together again in our mind's eye.

Here's me, trying to look monumental and permanent in the face of so much decay... or something.

There were more rooks (or ravens, I couldn't tell) here. And pigeons, of course. Pigeons are omnipresent, and I'm beginning to think that rooks/ravens are, too. They kept circling the towers. It was so silent there, otherwise, despite the fact that there were really quite a lot of people there. Somehow, though, we hardly ever saw anyone and rarely heard anyone speaking.

When we bought our ticket, the clerk told us that we just had to see the gardens. Thinking, once again, that it would be like the amazing gardens in South Carolina, I was eager to follow her advice. Turns out, this is the garden.

It's a water garden, and it was nice and all, but I wouldn't say it was worth the extra mile of walking while faint with hunger and in the cold. I was just a bit disappointed.

But not disappointed at all with the ruins. Seriously incredible. I would post many more pictures, but I'm trying to learn the art of restraint. You can, however, see them on flickr. Fountains Abbey concluded our trip to Yorkshire. We had a 3 hour car ride home.... through beautiful country. It's a hard life I live.

York

It seems forever ago now, but really it was just last week that we were in York. Our plan was mostly to use York as a point of departure for other things in the area, but we ended up liking it quite a bit. The inner part of town is full of great streets and shops and is surrounded by an old Roman wall. We arrived in the early evening and checked into our hostel.

I had accidentally booked our room for the next evening (I'm blaming jet lag), but luckily, they still had one available. It was a little attic on the fourth or fifth floor (I lost count) and quite comfy. Here's where we stayed, Blossoms Hostel:

And then we hit the streets. We knew that there was a big cathedral in York, York Minster, which is apparently the largest cathedral north of the Alps. We were just walking towards the center of town when we turned a corner and there it was. It took us completely by surprise.

We just wandered around that evening. Pretty much everything was closed, except for a few places to eat. It's so strange to me how a city can empty out at 6 pm. But we chose a restaurant in town with a very traditional menu and each tried a lamb dish. I'm not sure either of us really liked lamb, but it's apparently what you eat in Yorkshire. Kris ordered the Yorkshire pudding, which isn't really a pudding at all, nor is it a dessert, but it was quite tasty - kind of like a scone. My dish had a delightful honey mint sauce. Something that's great about traveling with Kris is that we both enjoy calling it a night early and going back to the room to read. That's what we did. I was re-reading Wuthering Heights and Kris had picked up Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and we were both quite content.

In the morning, we explored the town when things were actually open. Our first stop was the wall that circles the town. We walked along a portion of it.

Wouldn't it be amazing to live in one of these houses by the cathedral? They were so stately and had such beautiful, green gardens! I'm so glad that England is green. The bland brown of Utah winters was really getting to me.

Our next stop was York Minster. I took about a thousand pictures (all on flickr), so I'll just post a few here.

I think this is the most massive stained glass window I've ever seen.

Remember how I said there were lots of little English schoolkids going on fieldtrip? Well, here are some more.

This is a little street in York called The Shambles. Apparently, it's where they used to butcher pigs. Now it's a tourist attraction. Funny how things work.

And look - another group of kids on fieldtrip.

We couldn't stay as long as we would've liked to because we wanted to visit the ruins of an old abbey before heading back home. But I loved how almost everywhere in town, we could see the tip of York Minster.

Well, my holiday has come to an end. I leave for home tomorrow afternoon. But once I'm there, I'll have ample time to blog while looking for a new job, so stay tuned.

Blog Break

Sorry about the blog break. I just got back from Paris. Hopefully I'll be able to write more about York and other adventures tomorrow.

Visiting Bronte Country

The first time I read Jane Eyre I was in eighth grade, and I liked it better than Pride and Prejudice, which I also read over Christmas break. I read Wuthering Heights in ninth grade, but I didn't really get it. Then I read Agnes Grey, Villette (which was a challenge because of my two years of middle school French), Shirley, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and The Professor, so that I had pretty much covered the whole Bronte repertoire before I entered high school. I used to read a lot more than I do now. I only mention this to explain why I desperately wanted to visit Haworth and the moors. When I first discussed visiting Kris in England, we had all sorts of grand plans that included Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Paris, along with Lyme Regis, Brighton, Bath, London, etc. Basically, anywhere in the United Kingdom you have possibly ever heard of or was mentioned in a Jane Austen novel. I've gradually had to pare those away to just the basics. But I couldn't get rid of Bronte Country. Even that started off as a trip to the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District and then a jaunt over to the seaside. But we found that once we got up here, it took all our time to visit Haworth, York, and nearby Fountains Abbey. The trip was well worth it and we saw so much and took so many pictures that even now I have to pare down a blog entry in which I should be able to detail our whole trip into three separate (hopefully short) sections. First off, Haworth.

Kris has this genius little GPS device that helps us navigate our way around the winding roads of England. The voice that gives us our direction is, of course, British and sometimes very insistent. I've nicknamed her Victoria. I don't know why. But sometimes Victoria takes us on the strangest paths. We think she's set to scenic. And sometimes scenic is over strange hills and around narrow little corners all with a 60 mph speed limit. Sometimes we think Victoria may be trying to kill us. But sometimes it's worth it. She took us over a little mountain with a beautiful view on our way to Haworth.

And she took us to the parking lot at the very doorstep of the Bronte Parsonage.

Doesn't it look lovely and charming? You would never suspect that it was completely surrounded by the best, most morbid cemetery I've ever seen. You can't even get away from it inside, since a simple glance through the window reveals tombstones.

But before I go on, I have to post a picture of what is just a tad more morbid than the cemetery in the front yard.

The sofa Emily Bronte died on. And it's just as I imagined.

What you immediately notice at the Bronte home, though, are the rooks. They are everywhere and their calls are so insistent. I had to take a video just to try and get the feel of it. They're all over the trees and hopping on and off tombstones. It's fantastic.

Here is the church where the Brontes' father was parson. It's just on the other side of the graveyard from the parsonage.

Kris and I started up this path, which we later found out will take you to the top of the withins, but it's an 8 mile journey and we had other places to see.

Here's a final look at Haworth before we took off for York.

And of course, the moors covered in heather (wouldn't it have been lovely in the summer, all covered in purple?)

The view climbing out of the valley was so lovely, I made Kris pull over so I could take a few pictures.

More of York and Yorkshire later. For now, I'm off to bed and off to Bath tomorrow.