Castles, Cathedrals, and Ancient Monuments.

There is one thing that you really can only see in Europe...Castles! Of course while we toured England we went out to see the major sites and wanted to see some of these amazing castles.
The first Castle we visited was High Cliff castle. The cool thing about this one was it's renovations. It was destroyed in a fire and the local government has been slowly restoring it to draw in Tourists. The Castle was not really the Medieval idea of a castle but it was impressive in grandeur. One of the informational displays was about all of the Gargoyles in this castle There were some really neat ones. Again if you want to see more look at the picture on my picture page by following the link on the side.
We took a tour of the insides of the castle too where they have been trying to put together all of the rooms and reinforce the weakened structure. This was in teh kitchen that showed a history of all of the renovations that had occured during the life of this Castle. I really took the picture though to show off the stylish hard hats on Marika and her sister!
We also visited Westminster Cathedral. I had lots of time to take pictures here because Marika and her Mom and Sister went shopping so I was left to my Own devices. Unfortunately we did not see the inside of this cathedral. I did have fun playing with different angles and lighting in my pictures on the beautiful day we were out to see this cathedral.
We later went to see Windsor Castle. It is absolutely the most amazing palace I have ever visited. It is truly immense. I think my whole neighbor hood would have fit within the castle walls. It is unbelievable what the royalty of England lived like. Of course we could not take pictures inside of the castle. The decoration was incredibly ostentatious. There was one room, which looked a lot smaller than it probably was, that had carved wood paneled walls showing all different kinds food, lobsters, fish, deer, wheat etc. Speaking of food, There was also a room displaying the Royal China sets which were commissioned for the inaugural celebrations of different monarchs. On display was this amazing china set which actually put a company out of business to complete. It was an elaborate set that showed all of the vast variety if the British Empire at its greatest. The China set was not completed in time or the first celebration and was still not finished by the next crowing of a monarch. And like I said finally put the comissioned company out of business.
Inside the castle was the Cathedral of St George chapel. This was not a chapel in my sense of the word. The choir part of the chapel has elaborately carved with different seat representing all of the Knights of the Noble order of the Garter. Again the elaborate decoration was incredible.
I also took more pictures of gargoyles around the castle and the chapel. Again visit my picture page. I warn you though there are hundreds and hundreds of pictures.
Finally, we visited Stone Henge. It is really impressive the way that it just rises out of the field and countryside. It is surprisingly smaller than I expected. But to think that it has been around for Thousands of years and to think how it was built is really neat. Even though there have been many archeological digs and finds at this site they still don't know why it was built in the first place. They think that it is a big calender marking the solstices. I personally think that Merlin the Magician built it by enslaving giant aliens. That was not an option the gave on the tour but if you combine all of the myths and legends of Stone Henge that is what you would come up with.

I had to share this picture because again like to put flowers into pictures in unique ways.The last cathedral we visited was Salisbury Cathedral. We were actually allowed to take picture in this cathedral. We were not allowed to take pictures of the Magna Carta that is kept here though. It was really neat to see an original copy of that document. I did not know that the Magna Carta called for teh establishment of standardized systems of measurement especially weight to help improve fair trade of goods.

I hope that all of the loyal followers are enjoying the blog and following along with our adventures. The last blog from our trip will be about the short time we spent in London.

Happy Columbus day time to tell more of the England travel tales.

One thing I have to start to learn with this blogging thing is that sometimes less is more and to let the pictures to the talking. The next few days in England were relatively uneventful. We were living in a rather upscale hotel in Bournemouth (without free internet) lazing around. We did some wandering around and saw some sites, I have a hard time sitting around though.
Bournemouth had a neat little central garden area that you can see below. Bournemouth is a southern beach town by English standards. None of us were very anxious to spend time on the beach as the temperature was usually in the low 70s and it was windy, occasionally rainy and the sun was rarely out. But these conditions did not stop the British. They were out on the beach on all but the rainiest and windiest days.
The picture on the left is a view of the hotel we were staying at, it is the big white one. The picture on the right was colorful but it also showed all of the beach people.

From the hotel we could see the some of the white bluffs that make up the Jurassic coast and on the second day in the hotel we did a little boat tour where we got to see the coast. There was talk of renting Kayaks but I was skeptical about how everyone would be handling the kayaks in the stiff breeze and rolling swells, I would not have been comfortable bringing my camera in a kayak, and it was quite cool. We could have gotten a closer view of the Jurassic coast but I think we definitely enjoyed the boat ride.
There were some cool facts about the Jurassic coast that we learned on the boat ride. There used to be more pillars on the right in the picture above. During WWII the British pilots used them for target practice and whittled some of them down to little stumps. The picture below shows that on the left side of the cliff the layers in the rock are running vertically instead of horizontally as you might expect for rock layers. We this shows an exposed fault line where one set of rocks were being pushed over another set of rock. They said that this is one of the few exposed fault lines in the world.
I guess I should enjoy lazy days more I certainly can procrastinate and laze around on my own time, but when I am traveling I like to be on the move. We got to relax over these days and did get out to see the sights and we went to a British movie theater to see Mamma Mia (This wasn't our first choice but the others were sold out, the girls had a good time I was mildly entertained).
I hope to finish the rest of our foreign travel tales soon. We only had a few more days left.
Was this post a little better for length?
Happy Columbus day (a little perk for teachers getting these occasional three day weekends to update our blogs, play with the dogs, and do yard work)