Hikes 4 and 5: Sweetwater Creek State Park

Yesterday, Aaron had to work all day on a Sunday, so after a late breakfast with him, I took myself off to Sweetwater Creek State Park (near I-20 and Thornton Rd.) to hike several of the trails in my Hiking Atlanta's Hidden Forests list. It was so beautiful and the day was so perfectly cool and overcast and foresty, that I ended up extending both the hikes quite a bit.

Miles hiked: about 10
Hours walking: 5
Ounces of water consumed: 175
Deer seen: 4
Bears seen that turned out to be logs: 1

The first trail I hiked was the red trail, and it was beautiful! It follows the banks of Sweetwater Creek in a place with gorgeous rapids. I had to clamber over lots of rocks. The only downside was that it was fairly crowded. Then, I joined the white trail, which led me beside the still waters of the creek and then looped back though beds of ferns, up into dry forests, and out into meadows that used to be a farming community. This trail was much less crowded.

The yellow trail was difficult, much more elevation gain than the others, but almost empty of people and completely forested and dark and cool. I was the only person on the orange trail, as far as I could see, and it was not difficult. Some lovely old trees with mossy trunks were highlights of this part.

The best thing about the hike was the distance. It's a lot of fun to hike short distances, but when I hike long, the walking is like sandpaper on my mind. It's abrasive and not always pleasant, but at the end, my internal landscape is silk and without splinters.

This old mill sits just off the red trail.

This mixed bouquet was growing right out of a tree!

In my hiking so far, I've seen a lot of sycamores beside water. The small sycamores look like the embodiment of youth.

A Walk in the Woods: Hike 3 in the style of Bill Bryson

(from the series Hiking Atlanta's Hidden Forests in a Year)

On Tuesday, I woke up melancholy. Only the idle rich and the academic can afford to be really and truly melancholic. Other people have to suck it up and go to work. But writing can be postponed, and grading can be abandoned.

I made a few half-hearted attempts to get over myself and work. John Winthrop would have been ashamed of my work ethic (and my lack of Puritanism). I would never have made it though the winter in the Ciy on the Hill, and I couldn't make it through a stack of summaries either. I gave in and went hiking.

Not the John Winthrop, hike into the wilderness in search of food and Indians to oppress kind of hike, but the kind of leisurely hiking favored by the idle rich and the melancholic academic.

Because my ennui made me too lazy to drive very far, I chose Vickery Creek, a familiar system of trails in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, though it doesn't actually include the Chattahoochee River, but a tributary, Vickery Creek or Big Creek. I had walked the trails near the Roswell Mill, but this section, which I entered from Riverside Rd, was new to me.

I walked about 5 miles and saw many exciting sights, including a very comely bridge, an Easter Island head (which turned out to be a log), a bear (which turned out to be a log), and a turtle (which was real and alive and not a log. I texted Aaron and Livy to let them know everything I saw, including the things that turned out to be logs.

The turtle let me get very close and photograph him (phone screen broken, so no photos in this post), and he didn't even pull his head into his shell. He just looked at me, not the least concerned. It was like he knew that I was no John Winthrop, and I was much to lazy and filled with melancholy to bother turning him into soup. Eventually, he broke our eye contact and wandered away.

On my hike, I listened to a Planet Money podcast, which was not so incongrous with a nature hike as you might imagine because it was about cookies, and when I am hiking, I always wish I had cookies in my backpack. Then I listened to a Buddhist Geeks podcast and a bit of a Pema Chodron lecture about how to notice when we are about to act on a negative habit and stop that chain reaction before it gets going. I do actually find Buddhist ideas appropriate on a hike because they make me focused on my surroundings (lovely and teeming with life), on my feelings (My melancholy was still there, but hiking is a delight even when, maybe especially when, one is melancholy.), and on the sensations of moving my body (my chest rising and falling chest, my feet raised and then planted again). Hiking makes it easy to put Buddhist ideas immediately into action.

As I walked, I fell into a rhythm, a breathing, arm-swinging, foot planting rhythm, and myself as metronome is much less melancholy than myself as academic. My feeling never went away, but I was no longer a person who felt, only a person who moved and looked and breathed. I completely forgot about wanting a cookie. Puritans probably knew this: you walk, you hunt, you mend, you read the Bible, you weave, you cook, you pray. And the rhythm of a life of doing leaves little room for the melancholy of the idle rich or the academic.

Hiking Atlanta in a Year: Hikes 1 and 2 and lots of pictures

Aaron and I will not be traveling quite as much as we normally do this year. It's not a bad thing; in fact, our long-term plan will have us on the road more often. But I need more adventuring this year.

I bought this book: Hiking Atlanta's Hidden Forests: Intown and Out. I like it because the hikes are so geographically focused; all 60 hikes are within 30 miles of Atlanta. Many of them are new to me, though I've hiked the Chattahoochee and Kennesaw Mountain trails pretty thoroughly.

And so my adventure was born. I love themed trips where you collect all of something in your adventure. Aaron and I want to visit every Grand Canyon of X state. We want to drive all of Highway 1 from Key West to Fort Kent, ME. And now I want to hike all the hikes in my new book this year.

I hiked Leita Thompson Memorial Park on Sept. 10. It was a familiar hike; in fact, it was where we hiked for my birthday in January of 2015 with Zahra and the Caseys and Josh in his bow tie. :) It was where Cynthia, Jenn, and I hiked and talked and talked and talked very recently. But on the l0th, I hiked it alone. It was overcast, I listened to my QM lectures, I ran a little, and I avoided, pretty unsuccessfully, an annoying leaf-blowing tractor.

I posted all this on Facebook, but SCREW THAT.

The real new info is this: I hiked a new trail yesterday. I did the Historic Hill Trail and the Trestle Rock Multi-Use Trail at Old Rope Mill Park off exit 9 of 575. It seemed to be focused on mountain bikers (the two short trails I did were walking only), so it makes me a little nervous to contemplate walking the other two. However, checking them off the list in my book and completing this year-long, put-all-the-trails-in-a-virtual-bucket project is worth getting run down by a speeding mountain bike, so I'll go back and do those two as well.

The hiking was very pleasant on this cloudy, cool, Thursday morning. I walked alone, listening to a Freakanomics podcast, then a Buddhist Geeks podcast, then a lecture by Pema Chodron about getting hooked by shenpa and how to get unhooked. I walked very slowly, as I've been sick, and I looked at all the things. Here are some cool ones I saw:

Some of the most fun and cheerfully colorful graffiti I've ever seen:

Under this old railroad bridge:

SO MANY WILDFLOWERS! The dry ones that come in fall and will last, slowly losing all their color and becoming texture alone, in fall and winter.

Beautiful views of the creek:

And the happy, happy dogs in the creek:

The place was full of sycamore trees, which are jumping I did in my childhood into piles of their leaves. The light on the leaves on the sycamores was the most lovely thing I saw, but alas, I couldn't quite catch it with my camera.

A pair of young people let me take a picture of their hammock set-up, and they complimented me on my TARDIS phone case, so I know they were the best kind of people. 

The bridge over the creek:

Proof that fall is coming to GA. I usually see fall drop on us like an anvil; I get up one morning and the leaves are all red, or we skip that and trees go from green to bare. But I caught these leaves in the middle of changing color, and I was so pleased to imagine the last little packets of chlorophyll hanging on to dear life. 

Carpool to the Colonies: Days 8 through Infinity (cause it's been that long since I blogged)

Day 8 (Washington, D.C.):

• Air and Space Museum (super crowded but we did see the Apollo exhibit, planets exhibit, and an IMAX about racing airplanes)
• ate awesome Indian food (We got extra Indian food to take home for the next day.)

Day 9 (driving in Pennsylvania):

• drove through Maryland and into Pennsylvania listening to The Logical Leap and arguing about induction and the history of science and listening to Over Sea Under Stone by Susan Cooper
• stopped in Bald Eagle State Park, hiked back to a gorgeous nature inn (which was sadly booked up), hiked along a butterfly trail (which should be called Bunny trail because we saw 14 bunnies on the trail)
• Livy and Aaron were tired enough and nice enough to wait for me at the car while I ran/hiked another trail in the same area. Sunsets over the mountains--gorgeous.
• We restocked our cooler at Walmart, got a hotel room, watched the end of Batman Begins and the beginning of The Dark Knight, and ate our leftover Indian food.

Day 10 (driving in Pennsylvania):

• Went to the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania (more formally called Pine Gorge) and looked at its gorgeous, glacier-carved depths from the overlook deck
• hiked down to a really pretty and less populous overlook of the gorge
• drove through lots of Pennsylvania listening to The Logical Leap and Over Sea Under Stone
• decided that PA is my favorite state
• stayed on the border of NY state

Day 11 (NYC):

• drove into Queens and checked into our hotel
• took the train into Manhattan and walked around near Times Square and the Empire State Building
• ate Thai food with Colleen and Travis and Alistair
• went back to their place in Brooklyn, had a beer, and chatted
• got confused riding home on the train because they switch them all up at night and ended up making transfers and shuttles and walking and riding trains for 3.25 hours
• drank several glasses of wine and passed out from exhaustion

Day 12 (NYC):

• ate Indian food for lunch that was pretty good, but not fabulous. I had chicken balti, but it wasn't London, that's for sure.
• went to the Top of the Rock and looked at the whole city. Livy much impressed by the Empire State Building, which was the main thing she wanted to see on this trip.
• rode the Staten Island Ferry. It was GREAT! We saw the Statue of Liberty very close, the Manhattan skyline, Ellis Island, a really pretty bridge, and an old fashioned sailing ship with several sails (maybe a sloop?). Livy loved it, and so did Aaron and I.
• ate Indian food for dinner at the best freaking restaurant! It was called Haveli, and it was mostly Pakistani. I had outstanding Kirahi, Aaron had Balti that was great, but not London, and Livy had Kurma that we all loved. We shared around and everyone enjoyed every dish. We hope to go back there one more time tomorrow before we leave.
• Now, we are back at the hotel, about to watch The Dark Knight.

Days 5, 6, and 7: Williamsburg Con't and D.C.

More stuff we did:

• finished a spy game at Williamsburg (Livy's favorite)
• toured the public gaol
• heard a reenactment of a Benedict Arnold speech trying to convince the people of Williamsburg to return to the loyalist cause
• walked through some colonial gardens
• saw the parish church of Williamsburg
• returned to the Wythe house to do more watercoloring
• watched a reenactment of General Washington reviewing the troops
• ate a local tavern
• drank amazing local beer "Old Stitch" (my favorite)
• Aaron went off by himself to the museum and saw a presentation on the British view of the Revolution (which he said was "meh") and a tour of some old maps (his favorite)
• drove to DC mostly listening to Susan Cooper's "Over Sea Under Stone"

Stuff we did in DC so far:

• grocery shopped to refill our cooler with half and half, ham, pepperjack cheese, Rainier cherries, pepperoni, yogurt, etc--we are picknicking all but one meal a day
• rode one of those big open-topped buses around the city to see the sights
• took a boat ride on the Potomac by the monuments (which was awesome and included beer)
• spent an afternoon in the Natural History Museum, where Livy was really into the galaxy exhibit with info on the birth and death of stars and how far away different galaxies are
• ate at IHOP (going to a breakfast place is always Aaron's big treat)
• ate at a cool Mexican tapas restaurant
• swam in the pool and sat in the hottub both nights

Days 3 and 4: Too happy to do any travel blogging

I was gonna write about our trip to Kitty Hawk on Monday and our day at Williamburg today. But I am too excited because I got my first accepted publication. It's only a small one, a chapter in a book about bring home experiences to bear on work in rhetoric and composition, but it's so exciting I can hardly think straight. My chapter will be about how being a parent and practicing positive discipline parentins has made me a better teacher and student. When I submitted my proposal, I did not dream in a million years that they would accept it. I am more than thrilled.

So, since I can't be bothered with writing about all our stuff, you are gonna just get a list.

• Drove down the Outer Banks almost to Rodanthe.
• Hiked a nature trail out in a marshy area in the sound.
• Saw bunches of turtles and water birds.
• Picnicked at a shady pavilion.
• Visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial Museum at Kill Devil Hills.
• Worked on a Junior Ranger badge about the Wright Brothers.
• Livy and I walked up the hill to see where the Wright brothers started their glider runs.
• Drove to Newport News, ate terrible Mexican food, saw The Amazing Spiderman.

In Williamsburg today, we:

• visited a blacksmith shop (Livy's favorite)
• visited a printing shop (Aaron's favorite)
• heard a reading of the Declaration of Independence on the courthouse steps and then heard the Fife and Drum Corp and then saw some guys fire muskets and then saw them shoot off 3 canons (my favorite)
• went to the Wythe house (signer of the Declaration, law prof at William and Mary, teacher of Jefferson, scientist)
• saw a renactment of slaves talking about being sold in the Palace Garden
• complete the first mission of a spy game
• Livy and I wrote our names with a quill pen.
• visited a silversmith
• visited a working tobacco farm with pigs and gardens and oxen and drying tobacco

After Williamsburg, we ate steak and then swam in the hotel pool. So the past two days have been amazing and wonderful, but the best thing to top it all off is this book chapter!

Days 1 and 2: In which we listen to and prove upon our own skins “The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas”

I woke up this morning, day 3 of our trip, in a tiny 1950s looking beach hotel in Nags Head, NC with turquoise blue faux-leather chairs that delighted me even at 11:30 p.m. when we managed to finally get settled into this hotel room.

We are extremely sunburned, enough to get me the bad mom of the year award, probably. But we’ve had 2 great days of swimming and driving.

We left Marietta on Saturday at the time we actually planned, 9:30 a.m., and those of you who know us will understand how amazing it is for us to both be on time and to be on time early in the morning. We listened to music, sang, and talked all the way to Charlotte, NC. We focused our efforts on Bloodhound Gang, They Might Be Giants, Waylon Jennings, and the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou.

We spent the afternoon with a group of lovely friends at Cynthia Roeth’s pool. Cynthia was there and Faye and Tim and Henry Cheadle and David Baucom, basically the Charlotte ATLOSCon crew. We were sorry to miss Neil and the smaller Roeths, but they were on their own trip. Livy swam and swam, wetalked and talked, and we ate yummy burritos.

We left there at about 7 and made it nearly all the way to Wilmington, NC by 10:30. We dropped exhausted into our beds.

On Sunday morning, we made the rest of the trip to Wilmington to go to the beach with Aaron’s sister Lisa and her two kids, Theory and Marissa. It was a stellar beach day. The slope of the beach was very gentle, so Livy got to go much farther out that she had on our last beach trip, and, because there wasn’t a ginormous storm, the waves were much more fun for her to play in. She hardly got out of the water the whole 4 hours. Aaron and I played in the water, chatted with his sister, and watched the kids.

Apparently the amount of sunscreen I think is good enough is not good enough for a sunny day from 11:30-3:30 on the beach. We are cooked, especially Aaron who reapplied sunscreen a bunch of times. Burned though we are, we had a wonderful late lunch after the beach at a delicious seafood restaurant (where I got Mahi stuffed with a crab cake, Livy got shrimp scampi and spinach over pasta, and Aaron got a steak—it was all lovely) and then we drove toward Kitty Hawk, listening to Sherlock Holmes stories most of the way.

We wanted to spend the night on the mainland and drive out to the Outer Banks in the morning so we could see how pretty all the bridges and water were, but there was no room at any inn until we got out onto the island and up to Nags Head. By the time we finally got checked in, Livy was very tired and too sunburned to really sleep comfortably in the car, so we had much whining from her and from Aaron who is not used to sun and its effects. I got them rubbed down with aloe and tucked in, ate my delicious seafood leftovers, and went to bed myself.

Favorites Festival

This weekend is the first annual Favorites Festival! Jenn and Brenden left town for a wedding, and I am keeping the kids. Livy and I I have moved into the Casey house until Sunday. In order to make all the kids think that I am the coolest person in the universe (cause I want them to be rational and know the truth), I have invented the Favorites Festival. It's the weekend when we do everything we like best and get to see what the rest like best. We are going to eat all our favorite snacks and foods, watch our favorite movies and TV shows, read our favorite books, and generally revel in the best stuff we know in the world. My rule for the weekend is this: Will it kill you? If the answer is no, then my answer is yes! Here are the things we are gonna do, eat, watch, and read:

Morgan's favorites

drink: Shirley Temple
snack: cookies
meal: steak
game: Risk
TV show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
movie: Goldfinger
book: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Ryan's favorites

drink: chocolate milk
snack: donuts
meal: rump roast at a Brazilian steak house
game: War
TV show: A-Team
movie: Home Alone
book: the second book of The Great Brain

Livy's favorites

drink: milk
snack: ice cream
meal: rump roast from Brazilian steak house
game: Uno
TV show: Firefly
movie: X-Men
book: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Sean's favorites

drink: chocolate milk
snack: Skittles
meal: Ritz crackers
game: Angry Birds in real life
TV show: Phineas and Ferb
movie: Phineas and Ferb Across the Second Dimension
book: Winnie the Pooh and the Missing Acorns

Kelly's favorites

drink: wine with the prettiest label
snack: chips and salsa
meal: rump roast from Brazilian steak house
game: Taboo
TV show: Doctor Who
movie: Mama Mia
book: The Ox-Cart Man

Follow us on twitter with the hashtag #FavoritesFestival.

Savannah and Celia

My first trip to Savannah was the summer when I was 18.

I was working in a restaurant with a girl named Celia who went to college with me. She had olive skin and dark hair and wore flowing dresses. She was the daughter of Delta planter and lived that summer in a rented house on Jump Off Road with a papazan chair and a huge garden that we tended in our underwear. We were working on our tans, and the house was utterly secluded. She took me to a family dinner at the house of her landlord once. We drove to the bottom of the driveway, and when the car couldn't go any farther, his son picked us up on a four wheeler and took us up to the house. There was a fire pit with a whole deer roasting over it, and the father was frying fish. Celia was the kind of person who had adventures.

One night, late, after the restaurant closed, we decided to drive to the beach. We got in her car at about 2 am and drove from Sewanee, TN to Savannah, GA through the night. We got to Tybee Island in the morning, cleaned up a little in an Arby's bathroom, and went to the beach.

We spent the day lounging on a sheet on the beach. Celia played the guitar, but I could never hear it. The wind blew the sound away from me, and the ocean roared. I can only remember what it looked like--a beautiful dark girl, mouth moving through lyrics I couldn't hear, the wind blowing her hair and the sand.

We slept that night on the beach on our sheet. I went to sleep sunburned and sweaty and woke up freezing.

A high school boyfriend wrote once that between 17 and 21 I turned  from a sword to a ploughshare, and he must have been right because tonight I felt no desire to sleep on the beach. Instead, I walked in the wind as the darkness dropped down over the water. I put my toes in the lukewarm surf and sat on a swing, watching the waves and remembering Celia for the first time in years.

Decoration This Weekend

Since Decoration generally kicks off summer for me, I thought I would blog about it and maybe try to actually keep you updated on all my summer adventures.

Here's a list of stuff we did:

1. On the drive to MS and back, Livy and I listened to Amelia Peabody books, while she worked on multiplication, read Dr. Seuss, and drew both imaginary scenes (for instance a dragon fighting a zombie T-Rex) or sketched things we found (like a big leaf and a dead butterfly).

2. My mom and I found the oldest grave in Egger Cemetery, a lady named Anne Egger, who was born in 1763. We talked to her great, great, great, great granddaughter, who told us that they probably came to Caledonia by way We also found a set of Kirkpatrick graves nearly that old and were excited by the name. Probably early Scots-Irish immigrants to the area. The name Caledonia certainly suggest Scotland.

3. We decorated all our people, and the graves looked lovely.

4. Livy and I went with my mom and Mimi to the little cemetery chapel service on Sunday morning, which I haven't done since I was a child. The piano was out of tune, just the way I remember it, and that made the singing even better. We sang old hymns that I knew well, and it wasn't so terribly hot as usual.

5. I got a great idea for a book. The first book I have ever really thought about writing.

6. On the way home, Livy and I drove highway 278 all the way across northern Alabama instead of taking the interstate.

7. We slammed on the brakes and turned into a road labeled Natural Bridge and ended up hiking around the longest natural bridge east of the Rockies. It was beautiful and we saw a snake. A motorcycle lady is supposed to facebook a picture to me for identification.

8. We found a monastary in Cullman, AL. We walked the Stations of the Cross, culminating at the abbey cemetery and a pretty little chapel with those brightly colored statues that Catholics seem to be fond of. Really cool find.

Now we are home. Livy has gone to her dad's house, and I am headed to Savannah this morning. More posts from there, I hope.

A long drive for a pretty hike

I never got around to blogging about our Savannah trip, so since I am on another trip now (posts coming on that), I thought I'd catch up.

We wanted to get out of town. Well, I wanted to get out of town, and Livy and Aaron were their usual "up-for-my-adventures selves. We talked about going north to Clingman's Dome in TN, but there was a snowstorm, so we decided to drive south. We didn't know where we wanted to go, but we packed our stuff and starting driving south on I-75.

Finally, we decided on Savannah. We left in the mid-afternoon on a Saturday and arrive in Savannah about 5 hours later, after dark. We drove through the downtown just to see it, and then we got a hotel, ate our picnic supper on the floor, and went to bed. The drive down was nice. Aaron and I took turns driving and reading Anne of Green Gables out loud, and Livy read a book to us as well.

The next morning, we got up kind of early and headed to Skidaway Island State Park. It was very cold, but we took an awesome hike. A lot of the ground was sandy, and there were tons of palm trees and saw palmetto on the path. We saw beautiful marshes, and there was even an observation tower to climb and look down over all the grasses and marshland. Livy loved playing on all the twisty coastal trees, and she liked the live oaks with Spanish moss in them enough that on the way home she drew a picture of one for her nature journal.

After our hike, we went to the Visitor Center to see the reptile feeding. We were the only people there, so the park ranger talked to us the whole time. We learned a lot about their animals. We saw 2 different snakes swallow mice, a baby alligator under a heat lamp, and tons of turtles and frogs and lizards.

The visitor center also had an amazing bird viewing room with big glass windows that looked out onto a patio with lots of bird feeders. We sat with binoculars and a bird book and identified cardinals, a blue jay, tufted titmice, and Carolina chickadees. There were so many birds swooping this way and that, and we could have stayed there a long time. Except that we were HUNGRY!

So we drove into Savannah for lunch. I wanted seafood, but we wandered up and down the street a while and ended up in a non-so great brunch kind of place. It was overpriced and not fantastic, but I did have an amazing bowl of she-crab soup.

After lunch, we headed home. It was really nice mini-trip!

Things I Learned on My Travels Aside from the Order of Succession of the Monarchy

I learned many things on my travels. I know a lot more about the early kings and queens of England, and that's saying something because I knew a pretty good amount before. I know more about human evolution, about meteorites, about Roman mythology, and about online writing centers. Here are some different lessons that I learned:

1. Always, always wear your barefoot shoes. No matter how stunning you think you look in your new black boots, DO NOT WEAR THEM FOR WALKING ALL DAY! How do people wear shoes like these all the time? They weren’t even heels!
2. When in England, eat Indian food at every meal.
3. You get used to extreme cold and wind after about a week and don’t need your scarf and extra layers anymore. You always need your gloves, though.
4. Don’t bother with an umbrella. No matter how much it is raining, the wind is always stronger and really does turn umbrellas inside out! I thought that was just in movies!
5. When you travel alone, you meet lots of interesting people. The days I was on my own, people talked to me everywhere I went. I met a Hungarian Ph.D. student, a father of a choir member, a man sitting at a café, a man taking the same walk I was who shared my distaste for a piece of modern art, and a nice old lady at church.
6. Always take the guided tours at cathedrals. The guides are always hilarious old people who know EVERYTHING and use the word “jolly” a lot.
7. Don’t pay attention to the reviews of English hotels. They are written by Americans who are used to convenience and space, and they always rank hotels low for being small and inconvenient. This isn’t helpful because everything in all of England is small (except for cathedrals) and inconvenient (except for drinking alcohol).
8. Never drive in York.
9. Cornish pasties are pretty good, but they do not rhyme with “tasty.” Instead, they have a short a sound, like nasty. A pAYsty goes on a stripper’s nipple.
10. The British believe very strongly in religious services and tradition and cathedrals, but not so much in god. In contrast, Southerners could worship in an outhouse if someone brought a New Testament with the words of Jesus in red.
11. If you have the misfortune to be in a train station with Aaron, go ahead of him. Then you don’t have to watch him be slow, stop randomly in the middle of walkways, and wonder which way is out when the sign saying “WAY OUT” is right in front of his face. Just go through the station and wait for him patiently outside.
12. If you want even passable service at restaurants, stay in America.
13. No matter how long you stay, there will be things you didn’t see that you wish you had. Apparently, you can never be done with a rich, interesting country like England, especially London. Samuel Johnson was right: “A man who is tired of London is tired of life.” For example, I never made it to Samuel Johnson’s house.
14. Pack half of what you think you need. In one week, your cleanliness standards will drop to the point that you won’t care if you are wearing dirty clothes. Plus, they have washing machines in England. They are small and inconvenient, but if you are worried about that, see #7.
15. 3 weeks is a long time to be away from your own beloved child, but some trips can be worth it. Even if you dread putting the sleeping child into her own bed for days after you get back and you actually think watching her do needlepoint is interesting. :)

Canterbury, the Final Day: Day 21

(written yesterday)

Today was my last day in England. Tomorrow we fly home. I am ready to go home; I miss Livy, our friends, and my home. I am also really ready to get back to work and school next week.

But I’m sad to be leaving, too. This is the longest trip I’ve ever taken, and, though I was afraid I would get sick of being away after 3 weeks, I loved being away this long. I feel like I got really settled into traveling. I got over the frenzied feeling of needing to see everything and relaxed into a pace that works for me. Aaron and I had lots of time together alone, which was awesome, and we also stayed long enough to want some time alone. Time alone in England ROCKS.

So today, I went to Canterbury on the train by myself. I walked to the cathedral and toured it with a guide. The highlights for me were the tombs of Edward the Black Prince and Henry IV. It was funny to me that they were buried right there next to each other when Henry IV, dreadful usurper that he was, killed off Edward’s son, Richard II, to get the throne. But I guess people don’t care who they end up hanging out with when they are dead.

It was cool to see the place where Thomas Beckett was murdered, but thanks to that douchebag Henry VIII, may harpies plague his spirit, the tomb, Beckett’s body, and everything to do with him was destroyed. Henry even dared to wear a jewel off of Beckett’s tomb on a ring. And guess who also wore it before it disappeared? Blasted Mary Tudor.

Speaking of Mary Tudor, have I blogged about our household gods? We have a space on the mantle where we keep images of historical figures we love. Right now, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and Einstein are up there. I’ve been looking for Isaac Newton for a long time; somewhere on the internet is a finger puppet of him, which would be perfect, but I can’t find a way to order one. On this trip, I bought a Darwin bust to add.

I also started a new tradition associated with our household gods. I bought too hated figures to put up there as voodoo dolls, with pins through their vitals. First, Mary Freaking Tudor, of course. When I stick her, I will think of Thomas Cranmer, an Anglican priest she burned (among the many people she burned) who wrote the beautiful Book of Common Prayer. I also got William the Conqueror, who will get a pin in honor of my beloved Anglo-Saxons. If you ever find that you need to buy me a present, here are the other figures I want: Newton, Asimov, Keats, Henry VIII (able to be either stuck with a pin or beheaded), E.M. Forster, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Chaucer, and Werner Von Braun, who needs to be hit with a V-1, but a pin will have to do.

Back to Canterbury.

After the cathedral, I went to the super-cheesy and oh-so-wonderful Canterbury Tales “Museum.” Basically, you get an audio guide and walk through scenes from the tales, while Chaucer tells you basic context about pilgrimages to Canterbury and retells some of the most famous tales. It was dark and the mannequins were creepy! I would not take small children there because they would be terrified. The Wife of Bath mannequin in particular was ghastly. As the audio guide tells the tales, lights shine on different parts of the scenes. You start in the tavern, move through the Knight’s Tale (with stained glass window projections of the brothers), the Miller’s Tale (with moving wooden butt that hangs out of the window at the right time), the Wife of Bath’s Tale (more stained glass looking projections), the Pardoner’s Tale (with creepy silhouette of the friend’s funeral that the 3 dudes see), and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale (with a movable Chanticleer that goes up a tree).

If you can imagine the animatronics of the Rainforest Café, combined with a wax museum, combined with the Canterbury Tales, you’ve got the right idea. After the stories, you see a scene of Beckett’s tomb in the Cathedral. This place was just awesome, and I wouldn’t have missed it for all the dignity in the world (which I had to check at the door and one other time when I had to ask for directions to the “museum”). It was the world’s biggest ball of twine for English majors.

In the afternoon, I took a walk through Canterbury, by the Norman castle, along the river, and back to the city center. I had hot chocolate and read for a while and then went to Evensong at the cathedral. The choir was very good, and I liked the arrangements better than any I’ve heard on this trip.

Now I am stuck on a delayed train somewhere between Canterbury and London, and these train people need to know that they are delaying my birthday dinner of Chicken Balti!!

Back to London: Days 19 and 20

I am too tired to write up an interesting post, plus I am ready to come home, which saps my blogging energy. But I am afraid that I will not be able to remember the details of what we did our last few days, so I am going to make a boring list.

Sunday, Jan 1

• Moved our luggage to Mayflower Hotel at Earl's Court
• Ate a crappy Chinese lunch (The Chinese food I had at the restaurant in our airport hotel the night before was the best I've ever had.)
• Natural History Museum (amazing animal exhibits, felt guilty for going there without Livy because she would have LOVED it, missed Livy more because of how much she would have LOVED it, boring minerals compared to Tellus Museum, okay evolution section that gave us many things to look up, awesome volcanoes, earthquakes, and tectonic plates section (must learn more about the continents and their movement patterns)
• ate delicious Indian food by myself while reading new Rick Riordan book

Monday, Jan 2

Aaron and I split up today. He went to the Museum of Science and loved it. Better than Museum of Science and Industry or Smithsonian, he says. I did the following:

• Return visit to the National Portrait Gallery to see Victorians through contemporary
• Lunch at the cafe in the NPG
• Walked around the Westminster area, across several bridges and along the Thames
• Return visit to Westminster Abbey, went to special prayer service in Edward the Confessor's Shrine (which is usually closed to the public), heard Evensong in the Abbey
• Walked from Abbey to our hotel (a pretty long walk), which was brisk and cool. London is a beautiful city at night.
• Met an ecomonics PhD student from Hungary who walked with me the last 10 or 15 minutes of the walk home. She is staying in London a few days by herself. Made me want to do solitary travel.
• Met Aaron at the hotel and had Lebanese food for dinner. Too much lamb, but delicious lemony sauces. 

My Second-Best Goose Chase Ever: Days 17 and 18

Yesterday, Aaron and I embarked on a crazy wild goose chase, destined for failure. We saw Holy Island on the map, an island just south of Scotland in the North Sea, where Lindisfarne Priory was (and its ruins still are). That priory is where the gorgeously illuminated Lindisfarne Gospels were made. Besides that huge draw (at least for me), the island can only be reached by a causeway that is underwater at high tide. We wanted to drive up on a whim and see if we could find a B&B to spend the night in on the island.

Sounds lovely, right? Well, the reason it was a crazy goose chase was that I knew for a fact that the Priory would be closed to visitors (for the winter season) and there was a good chance that all the guest houses would be as well. If we hunted one up for too long, we could get stuck on the island for 6 hours until the tide went back out with a place to stay. If the guest houses weren't open, chances are that the pubs and cafes wouldn't be either. And, we don't have a phone or any reliable internet access away from whatever hotel we are staying in.

However, we went. Why not? This trip is for adventures, and this island certainly qualified. It turned out BEAUTIFULLY.

We drove up from Penrick mostly in the rain, but not a hard rain. Seeing the causeway was even neater than we thought. We drove out to the island at nearly dark and marveled at the escape towers out on the sand, at the grasses and seaweed that lives both in dry and wet land (depending on the tide), and at the small part of the island itself that floods twice a day. It was pouring rain, but we managed to find out that the entire island closes down after Christmas until April. No hotels, no restaurants, no priory, no nothing but amazing views. We were expecting that there would be barriers preventing cars from entering the causeway at the high tide times, but all there was was a sign with tide times and a picture of a submerged car as a warning to follow them.

We drove off the island at dark, just as the tides were about to come back in and cut it off from the mainland. Luckily, we found a hotel one mile from the causeway with a restaurant and pub attached, and the rate was very reasonable because apparently we are the only people crazy enough to come to Holy Island in the winter.

We weren't ready to eat, so we drove into Scotland. Just to the tip of it, just to say we did. Scotland looked much like the part of England that was 5 feet away.

We had dinner in the pub, including a few pints of cider for Aaron and way too much wine for me, read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" until we were sleepy, and konked out early.

We got up early to go to the causeway at sunrise. We timed it so there would be light and the water would still be out over the road. We were able to walk out onto the road as far as the water and watch it recede in front of us. We saw an animal poke its head up above the water again and again, swimming in a sleek graceful way across the water. We couldn't decide what it was at first--too graceful for a turtle, too big for snake. We saw later that this part of the North Sea has a huge seal colony, and it must have been a seal! There were also millions of birds, flying against the orange sunrise and purple clouds. It was amazingly beautiful and one of the highlights of our trip.

We had breakfast after and headed south along a coastal highway, back toward Newcastle where we had to return our rental car. The ocean was stunning! I had never seen an ocean that didn't meet the land at a beach, and we saw cliffs dropping away into the waves, beaches, and fields full of cows sloping down to the water.

We drove right up to a beautiful castle in Bamburgh (picture); it was closed for the season, but I walked down along a path that ran at the bottom of the walls where they were built right out of the stone. From the top of the hill, we could look out over the North Sea to the Farne Islands, tiny islands (only some of which are visible when the tide is high) and see a lighthouse and a tiny chapel.

On the drive south, we also passed through Alnwick, which was my favorite of the northern towns we saw. It had an old beautiful downtown, like Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed, but it was also thriving and clean and busy. I wish we had had time to go to the Gardens, but we did stop and walk on a path through a sheep pasture beside the river Aln. When I say through a sheep pasture, I mean it, too. We went right up beside the flock. We have seen a lot of sheep on this trip, enough to make me cynical about their existence (kind of like armadillos), but I thought it was neat to be so close to them. On the other side of the Aln was Alnwick Castle (our view of the castle), more beautiful, I thought, than Bamburgh Castle, though Aaron disagrees. Alnwick Castle was used in the filming of Harry Potter, and you can see it here in a still from the movie.

If we have a chance to return to Great Britain (probably on a trip to Scotland and Ireland), we would definitely return to the Northumberland Coast. I would love to visit the Holy Island in the summer, when the hiking would be pleasant, and I would like to spend a day or two in Alnwick, exploring the castle, the Abbey, the footpaths around the town, and the lovely city center.

Now, we are on a train headed back to London. It's the crazy train, for sure. So far, here are the nutty people I've seen (while Aaron sleeps, oblivious to the crazy):

• A lady with a dog who starting hysterically shrieking and running down the aisle when she missed her stop, causing the dog to hysterically bark
• A family with possibly the worst behaved children I have ever encountered, even in Walmart, who made me wish to be nearer the barking dog
• A little boy who got himself locked into the bathroom and banged on the door until someone let him out, the only person on the list I felt sorry for

We are spending the night tonight at a hotel near Heathrow (to be away from crazy New Year's Eve partiers), and then tomorrow we are back to our dear Mayflower Hotel near Earl's Court (the site of the beginning of my love of Chicken Balti).We have a few more days in London before we go home on the 4th of January. I will return home, now aged 33, satiated on adventure for a little while, and glad to see Livy again.

Driving through Hell: Days 15 and 16

So the last two days really sucked. There were moments of glory that I'll tell you about, but mostly big suck-ola.

We left Newcastle yesterday in a rental car, headed along Hadrian's Wall. I was very excited about this part of the trip, so when it turned out to be a miserable windy and rainy day, completely unsuitable for hiking. I was very disappointed.

There were a few highpoints. We saw a neat part of the wall, so straight and regular and well-preserved compared to the more modern boundary walls. There was also a moment that may have been my favorite of the whole trip when we fought our way down a path to a Temple of Mithras in the middle of a sheep field against 50 mph winds and freezing rain. It sounds awful, I know, and Aaron thought it was awful and only went because he loves me so very much, but it was exhilarating! I could lean back against the wind a little and not fall over! And it made my coat blow out behind me and made my cheeks red and bright. There was something primal about fighting the wind, almost like fighting backward against the current of time rushing at us, fighting to get to that temple. I left a coin to propitiate Mithras (and so along with Jesus and Sulis Minerva, whom I have already propitiated with candles and coins, I ought to be covered!). We also saw some lovely hillside country and a lot of sheep and a Roman fort or two on the hills.

We spent the night in a cozy little B&B and set out again this morning for York and the Viking Center. The drive was nice, and we loved seeing the country change from hills to flat land that I think might be moors (but no ghostly hounds were there to make me certain). The awful part came when we tried to get into York. It was comical how terrible it was. We learned never, never, never to drive in York. There is a ring road that looks on the map like it would be easy to stay on, like I-285. Oh no, that is not the case. There are hairpin turns, about 40 roundabouts that are unlabeled, and apparently the Brits haven't learned east and west yet. Once, we actually ended up in the middle of an intersection in a pedestrian only area. We had to honk at people to move to get out of the shopping area. We hated it so much and got lost so often that I groaned every time I saw the York Minster Cathedral in front of us, though I had been wanting to see it.

Finally, finding the parking lot that we had been struggling toward for over an hour and there not being any spaces and York Castle looking a lot like a sheep fold we saw this morning, just set up on a hill, we escaped out the first highway we came to and cared not a jot for the Cathedral or for the Vikings.

We ended up at the Yorkshire Air Museum, which was small but a lot of fun. Aaron got escorted by a worker into the private workshop to see a Harrier, which is a jet that can take off vertically, in case you are the British Air Force and don't have any carriers or other defensive technology other than planes designed in 1961 that are still in use. The man was super nice and seemed so sad that the Royal Air Force and Navy were so reduced. We also saw a big ass beige airplane that they named the Nimrod.

We wandered the hanger and a couple of outside planes, just like we do at Warner Robbins, and it turned out to be a lot of fun, though it rained on us. Rain here only lasts about 5 minutes, so we just ducked in a building and waited it out.

Tomorrow we are doing a crazy plan. It will probably turn out miserably, and I'll write about how ridiculous it was tomorrow night. But we don't care because it will be a truly great adventure, even if it's a disaster. We are going to drive through the North Yorkshire Moor National Park (because I am just fascinated with moors) and up to the Scottish border. We are going to wait for the tide to go our, drive across a causeway that is only available during low tide, visit Lindisfarne (a priory and castle famous for the amazing illuminated manuscripts produced there) though we probably won't find it open, attempt to find a room on the island (Holy Island) on the spur of the moment (because you can't book them on the internet), and drive back out to the mainland late at night, when the tide is low again if we can't get a room. We'll report on this adventure later.

Aaron comments:

1. I can't believe that people don't gamble more when there are gambling machines EVERYWHERE. No one is ever using them.
2. If I were a sheep, I would just off a cliff (like a "theoretical lemming") if I had to live in this weather. (But, says Kelly, as Aaron insisted yesterday, sheep cannot jump or else cow grates would not work on them.Maybe the dissatisfied Aaron-sheep would just fall off the edge of the cliff passively.)
3. Yorkshire has crossings for deer, tractors, ducks, cows, and TANKS!!! 

Kelly's extra comments:

1. Aaron is very good at driving a stick shift and on the wrong side of the road. However, he is a timid city driver and stops at green lights just like Mamaw. He needs to take amphetamines before heading toward a city center, especially a pedestrian-only zone. 
2. If we sound slap-happy, we are. It's the only way to survive the city of York with your soul intact.

Lazy Day and Train Day: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 13 and 14

Boxing Day was a lazy day. We slept late in our posh hotel; I have a visit to the steam-room, sauna, and pool; and we walked out for lunch in the early afternoon. One artichoke pizza and one fight later, we were back in the room, watching Dexter and hanging out. I took a little walk along the Thames, but only a little one. Later, Indian food. Total lazy day, total awesomesauce.

This morning we got up early, packed up, and headed out of London. King's Cross Station is a nuthouse. How on earth Mrs. Weasley gets all those children and owls and such into there and onto a train is beyond me. I commented that it was worse than London itself, and an old, toothless man overheard me. He cackled gleefully and said (at least 4 times): "I used to live here. I wouldn't come back for a thousand pounds." I'm a little of sick of London too, so I smiled at him in camaraderie.

We took the train to Newcastle, which is  so far north that it's almost in Scotland. I looked out of the window at the lovely countryside the whole 3 hours. The fields are bordered by hedges, filled with either black, loamy dirt or sheep grazing. In the distance, we saw villages far away enough to lose any flaws and just look charming, and there were often pretty little churches in the center. We saw some factories too, enough to keep Aaron interested in whether or not they were nuclear power plants or oil refineries.

Now we are settled into our hostel, which is a VERY LARGE step down from our last hotel. :) Like, a step the size of the Grand Canyon. But we like it. It's cheap. There are bunkbeds!! Aaron is unimpressed by bunkbeds, but I love them and called dibs on the top bunk! We are doing laundry this afternoon, an essential task at this point, as Aaron is one day from commando.

I'm very excited to be on the move again. I had a nice rest over Christmas, but I'm ready for adventures again. We are going to rent a car in the morning and head out along Hadrian's wall for some scenic driving and hiking.

Aaron's comments:

• There was a Hari Krishna riding a little scooter in his full orange garb with orange Vibram Five Fingers  to match.
• England doesn't seem to have trailer parks. I need to check their tornado rate, but I'm assuming it's nothing like ours because clearly trailer parks cause tornadoes.
• I'm surprised they have solar panels at this latitude.
• London has the most bizarre strikers ever. They planned and had signs announcing the Underground strike on Boxing Day. In a real strike, they surprise everyone and stay away until they achieve some goal. This should have been "call in sick to work day."

Our England Christmas: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 11 and 12

You may have noticed that I skipped day number 10 (probably not, though, because you aren't so methodical). This is not because I have a secret day that I am not going to tell you about; instead, it's because I messed up my numbering (pointed out by Aaron, Mr. Methodical himself) and am now correcting it. I counted 2 days of travel as day 1. So, Christmas Eve should be day 11 and today, day 12.

Now that that VERY important detail is out of the way (major sarcasm alert), let me tell you about our Christmas.

As I said earlier, we got a much nicer hotel than usual for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day, so that when all was closed and there wasn't much to do, we could be in a spacious room in a hotel with room service and amenities that we are used to (Every Motel 6 in America has a bathtub and in-room temperature control, but not here!) Our room is very nice, and the hotel overlooks the Thames and Tower Bridge.

After we checked in on Christmas Eve, we ate amazing Thai food (all the Asian food here is amazing so far), and we went to Harrod's (big mistake, but we were looking for something specific). It was slammed full of people and slammed full of expensive stuff we were afraid we were going to break. There were Christmas crackers that cost 400 pounds with silk handkerchiefs and jewelry inside. We got out of there as soon as possible with very little trauma (except for Aaron, who can't even stand to go to the Marietta grocery store). Mama, we were very right to avoid it.

After that miserable interlude, we went to do fun stuff. We saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie at Leicester Square, and it was great fun. I thought it was better than the last one without all the crazy coming back from the dead stuff. Aaron thought it was too silly to be better, but we both still loved the relationship between Holmes and Watson. After the movie, we went back to our favorite London neighborhood, the one near Earl's Court, where we stayed for a few days before Bristol and Bath. We ate at our favorite Indian restaurant (more chicken balti!), bought some champagne, and tried unsuccessfully to find Christmas crackers that cost 4 pounds instead of 400. After we got back to the hotel, I took a bath (A BATH!), which I have missed so much. Showers can only make you feel so happy; the biggest amount of happy requires a nice, immersion bath.

We exchanged presents, too, all of which came from Blackwell's Bookstore in Oxford. Aaron got me a lovely illustrated version of Cooleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," which he would have to have been blind and deaf to not get me, as I oohed over how beautiful it was for 10 minutes. (It was after this that I suggested we get each other book Christmas gifts to exchange.) He also got me 2 surprise books--From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages by Michael Adams and The Time-traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century by Ian Mortimer. I love my books, but we realized after packing them up that it might have been best to get something lighter for Christmas. I got Aaron The Gun: The Story of the AK-47 by C.J.Chivers, If Rome Hadn't Fallen: What Might Have Happened If the Western Empire Had Survived by Timothy Venning, and Alexander the Great Failure by John D. Grainger. Aaron likes What-If books and guns and has found that he has "huge gaping holes" in his knowledge of the Roman Empire, so I think my gifts were a win.


Today, Christmas Day, we slept in until noon and ate a ridiculously over-priced lunch in the hotel restaurant. For Aaron, the price was not as bad as for me, since he got to take home 2 noise makers and a mask. Apparently, Brits celebrate Christmas with the trappings we use for New Year's Eve. The person who gave Aaron his stupid whistle and horn should be tortured for all the hours I have been tortured; he takes every opportunity to blow those awful things. Too bad I can't just send him off to David's house with them, like I do when Livy has some super loud and annoying toy.


I used went down to the fitness center of the hotel and relaxed in the steam-room, sauna, aromatherapy room (that's a warm room that smells yum), and swam some lazy laps in the pool; Aaron actually did a real workout. Later, I went to the spa for my foot and leg massage, which included buffing my feet, exfoliating my feel and legs, and tons of wonderful massage. Aaron was considering doing one too--his feet have been hurting from all the walking--but I don't think he would have enjoyed being buffed and exfoliated. Maybe I should just rub his feet for him. :)


For dinner tonight, we had more Indian food. We may start to smell like curry, but that's okay because if both of us reek, we won't notice it on the other one. As we ate (chicken balti!), we watched a bit of the second Bourne movie on TV. Now we are hitting the sack. We had a very happy Christmas, and we hope all our friends and family did too!

P.S. Lest you think we never try any new Indian dishes, I wanted to tell you that we always get an order of chicken balti and something else. I just mention the chicken balti so often because compared to it, all other curries are red-headed stepchildren, squibs, and B movies.

Bristol and Bath: Running of the John Bull Line, Days 7, 8, and 9

Bristol and Bath were next on our trip, though it's hard to remember, as I am so relaxed from our luxurious Christmas hotel with steam room and sauna. :)

We stayed in Bristol, but we really didn't see much of it. It wasn't a place we really wanted to see, but it was much cheaper than Bath and within 15 minutes of it by train. The only cool Bristol thing we did was see Rory. He came over on Thursday afternoon from some place in Devon to hang out with us. We ate a late lunch, wandered all over Bristol, looked in at the cathedral, and ended up yapping in a pub. It was awesome, and we finally had someone to ask all of our questions about England. Have we been tipping correctly? (Pretty much, maybe a little too much.)Which button do you press on the toilet? (He can't figure it out either.) Should people walk on the left side of the sidewalk and stairs? (It's a crazy free-for-all, mostly.) And finally, why the hell didn't you go to Oxford? (Apparently, British people make stupid mistakes in their youths as well. Why didn't I go to Oxford, after all?) We were so glad to see Rory again, and it was even more fun than the last time.

Each day in Bristol, we took the train over to Bath. The first day, after leaving London, checking into our hotel in Bristol, and going back over to Bath, we just ate and wandered. Bath has an amazing amount of shopping, and after this first day, we managed to avoid those areas. :)

The next day, Thursday, we went to the Roman Baths in the morning before we saw Rory. They were bigger and more extensive than I remembered, and it was very interesting. Going to see them with an engineer made a difference in the focus; I do not remember Mama and I spending so much time looking at sluice gates and pipes. :) But seeing those things closely made me appreciate even more the amazing building abilities of the Romans. 

We especially enjoyed the section on curses. Apparently, a lot of folks came to the baths (dedicated to Sulis Minerva) in order to curse people who stole from them or messed with them in some way. They would have a scribe write their curse on a piece of metal and then throw it into the spring. Archaeologists have found a lot of them, and they go something like this: "Dear Sulis Minerva, someone stole my gloves from the baths. I think it was . Please make the culprit pay for this crime with his blood, his eyes, his fertility, and the lives of his children. Amen." We had fun reading them, and I loved trying to figure out the Latin. I threw a coin into one of the baths along with a curse for Sulis Minerva; we'll see how effective she is. :)

Friday, I went to Bath much earlier than Aaron for a Jane Austen day all to myself. I walked by the Circus, the Royal Crescent, the gravel walk, and down Gay Street (all mentioned in her books). I toured the Jane Austen Center which is primarily about her life in Bath. I bought ALL the cool Jane Austen souvenirs. I got a Jane Austen Choose Your Own Adventure Book, a quiz book so Aaron can entertain me with Jane Austen trivia on the train, her History of England By a Partial, Prejudiced, and Ignorant Historian (a delightful parody of schoolroom history books on the monarchy), and graphic novel versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The people at the Center were all very knowledgeable and all in period dress, and when I went back outside onto the regular streets, I was a bit disappointed to be in 2011.

Aaron went to Bath in the afternoon to try to go to the Hershel Museum (the guy who discovered Uranus, hee, hee), but it was closed for all of the holiday season. Darwin's house too, except for Dec 31, so we might still make that. The scientists aren't making a very good showing in England. I'm so glad that he got to go to the History of Science Museum in Oxford. Rory reminded me that Lyra went there in His Dark Materials and that she met Mary Malone there. It says something about my interests that that fact made it twice as appealing to me.

We left Bristol and Bath on Christmas Eve, heading back to London to spend out Christmas in a much nicer hotel that we would usually get, since there is nothing open and not much to do. I'll blog about our Christmas in another post.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Our Days in Oxford, Home of My People: Days 5 and 6

Oxford is not really the home of my people, not like you would think. My family isn't from there, and I've never been there before. But being in that city was like coming home. From the second I got my first look at the spires and read the lines I had printed out about when C.S. Lewis first saw Oxford, I was in love, in awe, in bliss.

On the first day, we visited the Bodleian Library. It is housed in the original medieval building, books on the shelves in the same order, but no chains holding the books in place like they had until the 1700s. (There were actually complaints that the library was too loud because of all the clinking and rattling.) The library tour was my favorite thing we have done so far because I got to learn all about the founding of Oxford University and about the use of the library in the past. Aaron thought it was gonna be dead boring, and even he loved it!

My next thing to do when I get home is to look at their archives online, find something I can research there in classical or medieval rhetoric, get a grant, and spend some time actually working in that library. It would be AMAZING!

I saw St. Mary the Virgin church, where Thomas Cranmer (among others) was martyred for refusing to be Catholic during the reign of Mary Tudor (who just keeps coming back like that damned cat in the song.) It was also the scene of John Wesley's last Oxford sermon before he got booted for being all Methodisty.

Later that evening, after it got too dark to gawk at beautiful buildings and pretend I am a fellow of some Oxford college in the early 1900s (and that they let women do that), we went in THE MOST AMAZING bookstore in the world. To my mother: It puts Square Books to shame. It was Blackwell's, and though they have other locations in the UK, Oxford was the biggest. They have a huge section for classical texts, in translation and in the original, a huge section of history divided into very specific eras (for instance, a full ceiling-tall shelf on the Anglo-Saxons, including both scholarly and popular titles), 4 full floors of books and the kind of books that you wouldn't find in your run of the mill Barnes and Noble.

I partly enjoyed the bookstore (cause really, it was so interesting), and partly, it made me feel terrible. I had a crisis moment when I realized how frivolous I have been in my reading. I can't believe how much there is to read and how I have frittered away my time. I am going to start on a much more serious reading plan when I get home (not in Marianne Dashwood style, though, as I am going to be reasonable and not get all carried away with plans I cannot carry out). I am going to sign up for the Anglo-Saxon language class that I have been putting off, rejuvenate the Sex Vultures, and read more classics, especially from Greece and Rome. I realized that by age 33 (my age on Jan 3), Jesus had lived and died, been a messiah, and started a religion. I haven't even learned Sanskrit. So I have some work to do.

We spent a second day in Oxford because it was so great. I got up early and took an earlyish train from London by myself to fit in more awe. Aaron joined me later for lunch. Before I met up with him, I toured Bailiol College and Trinity College. I enjoyed the grounds, chapels, and history of both. Oxford colleges are so weird to me. They are so independent of the overarching university and have so much personal character; their isolation within a greater body is fascinating. The tutorial system is also foreign and intriguing to me. I had a chance to study abroad in Oxford as an undergraduate and passed it up, and I regret it deeply. It makes me sad to think of the mistakes that I made because of how little I understood myself back then. I was ON THE PATH to grad school and world domination, but as it turns out, I am more relaxed and a soak-in-the-atmosphere kind of a person. Oxford would have been perfect. I also didn't apply for the Rhodes scholarship (which would have been unlikely), as I was busy getting married and stuff.

Aaron and I had lunch (not Indian food, strangely, since that beloved stuff makes up about 80% of our diet), and then we split up again. Aaron went to an exhibit at the Oxford History of Science Museum on timepieces, astrolabes, and stuff like that, which he liked A LOT. He says that the highlight of the visit was a metric clock where they tried to divide the day into 10 hours with 10 divisions each. It didn't catch on. :)

I went on a walking tour of Oxford that I printed out from a C.S. Lewis fan sight. I saw where he stayed when he first arrived in Oxford, saw the pubs where the Inklings met, and toured Magdalen College where he was a fellow. It was my favorite college so far, by a landslide. The buildings were spectacular, especially the cloisters and the chapel, and the grounds were amazing. I couldn't believe that I was still in Oxford. It was totally quiet, and I was almost completely alone. I walked for miles and miles on the paths that Lewis walked, along the Cherwell River, past the Deer Park, and around Fellow's Garden. Part of the paths are called Addison's Walk, and that walk was the place where Lewis was convinced to convert to Christianity by Tolkien and another Inkling whose name I cannot remember. I walked there for most of the afternoon. In the chapel, I lit a prayer candle (not as a prayer, but as a memorial and a symbol of affection) for Lewis and for all the kings and queens of Narnia from Frank and Helen on down to Tirian and for Reepicheep. Lewis might have rather had a prayer, but I think he would have approved the gesture.

I didn't finish my walking tour because I spent so much time on Addison's walk at Magdalen. I did stop in at a tiny churchyard nearby to hunt out the interesting dead, and I looked at the outside of Merton College where Tolkien was a fellow. I intend to go back on Boxing Day to tour Christ Church College and try to get a look inside Merton. And to visit the bookstore again like I would a religious shrine. :)

I cannot accurately describe to you the feeling Oxford gave me. It was like a religious experience, like coming home after being away many years, like coming to the surface of the water and taking a deep breath just when you had run completely out of air. It was a mixed feeling, half glory, half grief. Glory because a place like that exists and people like me must have made it and might still inhabit it. Grief because the giants of that place, my people, are not easy to spot anymore, if they ever were easy to spot and if there are any left. I felt at home and at the same time horribly lonely. It's the feeling I always have when I read a Matthew Arnold poem: this guy and I are just alike, and he and I will never meet. I can only describe it as sublime.