We said goodbye to our new friends and headed towards Chatsworth House.
But of course, because we have "squirrel syndrome" we ended up in the village of Eyam.
This was another favorite of mine.
It's a TINY tiny village in Derbyshire, and very old.
During the plague, this village was the only village outside of London that was affected.
Once they realized what they were dealing with, they barricaded themselves inside their village,
with food being delivered to a well outside of town.
They stayed that was for 14 months, losing over half of their village.
One mother lost her husband and 8 children.
Also worth remembering: The story of a girl in the village, who loved a boy outside. Each day they would walk to the fence near the same time and wave at each other..and then one day she didn't show.
She eventually fell victim to the plague as well.
It was a neat place to see!
(Also noted that I bought my favorite gifts here:)
After another quick drive through the town of Bakewell (darling!)
we finally made it to Chatsworth house.
And wow!
The pictures from the front don't do this place justice!
It's HUGE!
I mean huge.
And beautiful!
And people still freaking live there!
No surprises here that my favorite room was the library.
I'd never leave my house!
160 acres of Gardens there.
Wowza.
And they are stunning!
I kept trying to find Mr. Darcy, but I guess I failed...
how sad.
A quick stop at a little village
(where I ate food that was reminded me of Spain)
and we headed on a long drive to York.
We got to York and checked into our "hotel"...or "brothel".
This place was awful.
It was cheap....clearly.
And we just laughed it off and went to explore.
York feels old.
REALLY old.
And a little haunted.
It's a cool place to be.
Romans built it, Vikings took it over for a time,
and it has a little pieces of their history inside. Amazing.
The shambles are rows of old houses, some built back in the 1200's.
They are crooked, and bowed, but still standing in their crooked lanes filled with tea houses and shops. So cool.
We found what's left of the old castle.
(Origionally built in 1086, with quie an impressive history)
I google the crap out of all this stuff...
I can't help myself.
As we were wandering the streets we found some Sisters!
We were excited to chat with them,
and they were thrilled to chat with us!
They said it's the first time anyone has ever stopped them on the street.
Left from CA right from Finland.
York is still surrounded by a medieval wall.
We walked on top of it for a while and then beside it on the way back to our swanky hotel.
So,
we made it to our hotel room and couldn't get the heater to work in our room.
Ok fine, we dressed warm and went to sleep.
The next morning I went to shower to find that the shower WOULD NOT work.
It was funny. And not funny.
So we went to find some help only to discover that throughout the night, the staff left the place and we were left ALL alone. Not a soul in sight.
It's not 10:00 am and we are still alone, so we figured it was time to face the facts:
A shower wasn't in the cards.
We threw on some clothes and went to a cafe overlooking a plaza in the city.
We threw on some clothes and went to a cafe overlooking a plaza in the city.
We sipped cocoa and ate scones and people watched for a while before we did some more exploring.
I was excited to see the York Minster.
My Dad's father, who died when he was 12, had told my Dad how impressive it was,
so I was excited to think he had been there before.
We stumbled upon the ruins of St. Mary's Abby,
because in England you just stumble on history every where you turn!
And then headed to the train station to catch the train to London.
Smelly and tired and laughing about it!
We pulled into Kings Cross and I forced Julie to let me have my Harry Potter moment!
I was embarrassingly excited!
Julie was a good sport.
She has the best pic of her standing there confused captioned "where the hell am I?"
I loved it!
After a tube ride to our hotel in Kensington,
we explored London!
We were so excited when we stumbled on an LDS church downtown in Kensington.
We went inside and found a YSL meeting going on.
It was amazing to see how incredibly diverse the church is there, and how packed it was with people.
We saw lots of missionaries and chatted with a few.
We watched a little video of the history of the building there.
As we left Julie remarked how easy it is to feel at home when you are in an LDS church.
She was right.
It was so nice.
We wandered through Kensington Gardens.
And of course to the palace.
Afterwards we strolled through "Billionaire Street" where we chatted with the armed guards.
We especially loved the BIG guy carrying a tiny glass tea cup of tea. So very British.
We found a few stores to wander in before calling it a night.
A good night!
(Things to remember: finding a Carmel slice in the hotel starbucks. Another TK Maxx. The Mews.)
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