End of Cruise/England

 Today, our cruise ended! We spent the day going around England. First, we stopped at Salisbury to see the Salisbury Cathedral. 

We did a guided tour of the inside. which was absolutely lovely. Next, we went to Stonehenge. I have been there a few times, but PJ and her brother had not, so of course we had to stop. 

Finally, we headed up to the Hampton Court Palace, where Henry the 8th lived! It was glorious, there was so much history! So much house! So much land!

After all of this amazingness, we headed to London. We dropped off our rental car, then headed to our hotel, stopping in the Paddington station. This station did not disappoint. 

So cute! This was such a great trip, despite freezing for so much of it! 

To London!

 We are going on another cruise this week, and the time is finally here. We're cruising from England to Norway (and back), flying into England the night before we leave of course. We left Thursday evening from California, our flight left at 10:30 at night. Then we landed at about 3:00 PM the next day in London. By the time we got to our hotel, it was about 6:00 and we were so dang tired, ready for bed. We made sure to stay awake until the regular bedtime to try and get away from any jet lag. After dinner, we walked around our hotel, we were staying at the Tower of London. It was a little cool and gray but a lovely walk around. 

I then ran (I gotta maintain the streak!) and then off to bed for us. 

Last Day in London

Today was my last day in London, so I thought that I would take pictures of the statues I see every day on my run in Hyde Park. There are so many Victoria and Albert statues around here holy cow!

 And then, a miscellaneous Peter Pan statue.

London has been great. All of England is fantastic. There's only one place I wanted to go to that I didn't get to see - St George's Cathedral in Windsor Castle. I hope to come back some day and see that, as well as many things I don't even know exist yet!

Westminster Abbey

On my last real day of England (tomorrow, being Sunday, doesn't count) we did the last thing I wanted to do. We visited Westminster Abbey. It was awesome! We weren't allowed to take pics inside there, being a church, but it was great. We saw the graves of every king and queen of England, as well as Mary, Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth, her cousin (the Queen, I get it). We had a tour with a pastor/preacher/not sure of the title and he did such an amazing job. At least I could get pics of the outside.

 And I like this pic of myself, so I'll include it.

After our tour of the Abbey, we had a few hours to kill. Did we do a last Afternoon Tea service? You bet your sweet bippy we did. It was delicious. 

That night, we went to see Matilda. It was a dang delight, but the band was so loud, I couldn't even hear any of the lyrics anyone sang. We had such a great day, and its a great memory to leave England with!

Tower of London

Today we got to go to the Tower of London and it was a freaking blast! We got to go on an amazing tour with a Beefeater (the Queen's guards and guardians of the Tower) and it was so funny. We saw the place where Anne Boleyn was beheaded and the church she is buried. It was fantastic. I got a pic with a Beefeater, and the place where people were beheaded. They didn't let us get pics of the church, alas.

 Then we met a fake King Henry and Anne Boleyn who were wandering the grounds.

 There's now a glass pillow put where the real beheadings went down.

 And after the tour of the Tower, we saw London Bridge, how lovely.

The time in London is winding down, and I'm not ready! There's still so much I want to do!

Highgate Cemetery

Apparently there are 7 cemeteries in London (I think?) and today we got to tour Highgate Cemetery. There are a bunch of famous people buried there (Karl Marx, Douglas Adams, etc) and so we got to have a tour of it. I took some pictures of cool graves (I hope that's not sacrilegious), I wish we had cool ones like this. 

This guy had a statue of his dog put on his grave, aw.

 This guy had a menagerie (a collection of animals, like a private zoo basically) so he had this wicked cool lion put on his)

 And then Karl Marx's grave was just insane, come on.

It was too cool to see these graves and also to see how they used to be buried. 

Stourton

Today, we visited a place called Stourton. It's a place where they filmed part of the 2005 Kiera Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice. Basically its a giant giant house with an amazing library and amazing gardens. It took us several hours to tour the grounds and we didn't even see everything.

 As we were wandering the grounds, I found this bench and wanted another artsy picture, and I think it worked out pretty good.

 After Stourton, we headed over to Salisbury and went to the chapel there. They have the original Magna Carta, which we got to see (and not take pictures of) and then the chapel was so pretty inside.

 As we were there, we got really cold (although London was so hot, Salisbury was chilly) and since we hadn't brought any jackets, we stopped at a thrift store and bought some jackets. Horace and I had bought these jackets, but the opposite of what we're wearing. After we had been wearing them, we realized we liked the other ones jackets, so we switched!

 I think we look awesome!

Stonehenge

We hopped on a bus today, and went down to Stonehenge. It was so lovely, and we had so much time there, so we got to walk through a forest and that was so lovely.

I got a very artsy picture in the field, how fancy.

 After Stonehenge, we went to Bath and visited an old Roman bath, which was super interesting! I had no idea that Bath the town was named after these baths, so that was cool to learn.

After Bath, we headed down to Bristol, and then took in a play, When a Monster Calls. It was one of the coolest plays I have ever seen - the ideas that they had and how they executed it was so interesting! 

It was so awesome to get to see these small towns of England, I want to visit them all!

Afternoon Tea

Today I went to church in England, and I was sorry to say that it wasn't as fun as I thought it would be. The only reason being...there were no people with English accents in there ! They were all visiting Americans or Americans that had moved there, so that made me a little sad. After church, we stopped for a bite to eat, and had a tea service! It was amazing! I didn't really like tea before today, but then today, I had an herbal peppermint tea and it was so good. The whole thing was fabulous.

I want to do another and another! I wish we had this in America!

A football match!

Today we went to Portobello Road, which is basically a giant farmers market that is several miles long, it was so amazing! Of course I got a few things, and I tried to limit it, since I only have so much luggage space. After the road, we headed over to Wembley Stadium and saw a real England football match. Their national team played the Nigerian team in a friendly, and it was so much fun! The crowd was rowdy, but less rowdy than I thought they would be honestly.

And every person that swore near us, apologized for swearing in front of the kids, so that was really nice. Getting out of there was insane, 70,000 people trying to get into the tube station...it took forever, but we finally made it! What an awesome night. 

The Globe!

Today, we got to go on a tour of the famous Globe theater! We had a tour of the backstage, and got to go around the whole place, hearing fabulous stories. After the tour, we grabbed lunch at what was supposed to be an American BBQ joint - it was actually pretty funny how they perceive what we eat and what we do. After lunch, we saw a play at the Globe, Hamlet!

 It was awesome, but definitely we melted because of how hot it was!

There are just so many great things to do here, I am loving every minute of it,

An Ideal Husband

Today, we had a day of  chilling and then tonight, we went to see An Ideal Husband.

It was so good! And a guy in the play was also a fellow in one of my favorite movies, Stardust! It was a delight to see him! And yes, so fabulous to see a play in the West End of London!

ALEXANDER HAMILTON!!

GUYS IT HAS HAPPENED!!! I don't actually know if I have talked of my love of Hamilton on here, but oh my dude I am obsessed. I tried to get tickets when they came here to Utah, but despite being online for like 9 hours, we didn't get tickets. Then when I came to London, Meg said that she thought we could get tickets, so we tried, AND WE DID! But let's get to the day.
I don't think I even explained why I'm in London. My friend is a professor at BYU, and she's over here for a study abroad thing. So because it's BYU, the classes are at the local church, which I got to see today.

 After the classes were over, we had a delightful English breakfast, and holy cow it was so good!

THEN! Onto Hamilton! We had to wait in lines for a couple of hours, but honestly, worth it worth it worth it. I was so excited to get in there, and we had such amazing seats!

Naturally we had to get a selfie before the play, and our excitement is obvious! 

 This was one of the greatest plays I have ever seen and it was such an amazing night!

First London Play

Today was my first play in London, and it was lovely! After a lovely run in Hyde Park (in which I got lost and ended up running 6 miles instead of 4...) and a chill day, we went out on the town. First we ate at a place called...Nando's? I think? But they had this super cool wall that was made out of soda cans, of course I had to snap a pic.

 Then we went to my first play in London, Witness for the Prosecution. It was so amazing!

 I took my picture with every single program here - that'll be a theme to look forward to haha!