Over-the-top

We got to tour Buckingham Palace yesterday, and it was amazing! It was totally extravagant and over-the-top, and we were glad Grandma & Grandpa got to see it while they were here. We also had a bit of dessert at the Palace cafe (below).

We also took the open-top bus tour and got the overview of the city; thankfully we had great weather.
Punting the Cam Friday was fun, but also a little challenging. It was either raining really hard or sunny and windy. Jacob did an amazing job! And the rest of us toughed it out in the rain. :)

Grand visitors

My grandparents are visiting!! There's nothing more exciting than a visit with Grandma and Grandpa, right? Here are a few photos from the first couple days of their visit. There's definitely more to come, but I have to go so I can keep up with them!
(above: Stonehenge; below: Salisbury Cathedral and a greenhouse at Audley End, grapes growing from the ceiling)

Northern Norfolk

Saturday we took a drive through the county to our north: Norfolk. We drove all the way up to the coast for fish & chips. We also toured two stately homes: Felbrigg Hall (below) and Blickling Hall (above). Felbrigg was dilapidated on the outside but beautiful on the inside. Blickling was just gorgeous overall, including a totally amazing library! It also has a connection to Anne Boleyn (she might even have been born there); her ghost is said to appear at Blickling Hall every year on the anniversary of her execution.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo

This year is what Scotland is calling its Homecoming year; 2009 is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the poet Robert Burns (pretty much the most important person to come from Scotland--even Sir Sean Connery himself would probably agree), and the Edinburgh festivals are drawing massive crowds!

After our visit to Scotland last year, we've been itching to get back. We actually bought our tickets to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo right when they went on sale last December, and we've been looking forward to this trip for a long time. The Tattoo takes place in the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, and it includes performances from around the world. We saw groups from Tonga, China, Switzerland, South Africa, Australia and, of course, Scotland and England. In this setting the word "tattoo" comes from a Dutch phrase from when British soldiers were battling in Flanders in the 1700s.

The castle as a backdrop for the performances was dramatic and beautiful; and some of the acts projected images onto the castle in really cool ways. One of the Swiss acts projected this photo of an Alpine tram (left), and the Tongan group projected a palm leaf pattern.

Here's a video of part of the performance, but it's a little long; if you fast-forward to about 1:10 you can get some good bagpipe action.

The other highlight of our time in Scotland was the deep-fried Mars bar. We also had a deep-fried Snickers and a fried pizza (they put the whole pizza in the fryer), but the Mars bar was the most delicious! They used batter similar to the fish batter (as in fish & chips), whereas at the fair in the US they'd use something more like funnel cake batter. (For those of you who don't know what a Mars bar is, it's like a Milky Way bar, only galaxies better.)

Filming locations, part II (Alnwick)

The other film location we visited was Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, which played the part of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the first two Harry Potter films. (It was electronically enhanced with added towers in the movies.) The Percy family, Earls and Dukes of Northumberland, have lived in Alnwick Castle since 1309; the current Duke and Duchess of Northumberland live there today, and we walked through some rooms that are obviously lived in--it felt like trespassing. It was unbelievable how posh the interiors of a 1096 castle could be! Alnwick (pronounced like "panic") was also a filming location for the Cate Blanchett movie Elizabeth and Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.Above I'm standing at the entrance of the castle (which features prominently in the first Harry Potter movie-- when the kids first enter Hogwarts). Below, Jacob is entering the black forest; he's standing where Hagrid's house was in the first movie.
I mentioned the Percy family living at Alnwick for centuries, and some of you might be wondering what I was wondering--is this the Percy family that includes Harry Hotspur (who featured prominently in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays)? Yes it is! Below I'm hanging out with a statue of Harry Hotspur at the castle.

Filming locations part I (Chatsworth)

We had originally planned a camping/hiking trip in Scotland starting last Friday (leading up to our big plans in Edinburgh Monday), but due to severe weather warnings, we instead enjoyed some fabulous sightseeing in the north of England before heading up to Scotland Sunday.

We first visited Chatsworth House, an important filming location for one of my favourite literary adaptations: the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice. Chatsworth House played the part of Mr. Darcy's residence Pemberley. It is actually believed that Jane Austen was inspired by Chatsworth House while staying in a nearby village. (To the left, the bust of the actor Matthew Macfadyen, who played Mr. Darcy in the film, which was used in the film when Elizabeth Bennet visits Pemberley.)

(While the above is a glowing film recommendation, the following is not. We don't necessarily recommend the following film...)
For those of you who have seen the film The Duchess, also starring Keira Knightley, Chatsworth House has even greater significance. The actual Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer Cavendish (played by Knightley in the movie), lived at Chatsworth House. We learned some interesting information about the historical person Georgiana, which we mostly already knew from the movie, and it was fascinating to know a bit about some of the people who actually lived in that house. Even though we didn't love the movie (it did have interesting moments, but it was depressing), I'm interested to read the biography the movie was based on.

Uffington post

The Uffington White Horse is a famous prehistoric chalk carving of an animal (they say horse--it looks like a cat to me) on the side of a hill. The white horse has been dated to about 3000 years ago, and Iron Age coins have been found with the image of this horse engraved on them. (Does Jacob's body language show how underwhelmed he was?)

Near Uffington is a tiny village called Stanton Harcourt, where some of my ancestors lived in the 1400s. My ancestors who lived there were the Harcourts, and a couple of them were knights. At this church in the village is a special chapel dedicated to the Harcourts where my ancestors Sir Robert Harcourt and Margaret Byron Harcourt have a tomb.

This is an ancestor on my Grandpa Brough's side, so pay attention if you're on that side of the family. Sir Robert was the sheriff of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, Governor of Vernon in Normandy, High Steward of the University of Oxford, and he became a Knight of the Garter in 1464. He was murdered by members of the Lancastrian party in 1471. Margaret Lady Harcourt's lasting legacy is that hers is one of only 2 surviving examples of tombs where women are portrayed wearing the Order of the Garter. (Go girl!)

While Jacob was gone last week I couldn't sleep, so I filled that time doing family history research, and I'm so glad I did!! This was a fun experience. (You can see the tomb in the background of the photo I'm in above, and I included the below photo from another angle so you can see that Margaret is buried next to him--against the wall.)

Oxford and Buscot Park

Sunday we visited Oxford and a stately home called Buscot Park. The latter had a fabulous art collection including pieces from Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Botticelli and Rossetti. It was a beautiful day, and we enjoyed walking around both the city and the beautiful grounds of the estate.

They had a do-it-yourself ice cream machine at Buscot Park, where Jacob was on his way to making the most beautiful ice cream cone in the world. Until it collapsed. The ice cream was really soft and couldn't sustain the weight of a tall ice cream column. (I love so many things about this photo, one of which is that you can see a couple of drops of ice cream falling out of his hand.)

The Cotswolds

Jacob is doing an audit at RAF Fairford for 2 weeks, so I traveled there to spend the weekend with him. The Cotswolds are a region in western England famous for super-cute villages and rolling hills (wold means hill). We spent the weekend traveling the Cotswolds, and it really is England at its most adorable!

Not only are the villages adorable and the countryside beautiful, the names of the villages are great. While Jacob was working Friday I visited Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. We also visited Stow-on-the-Wold, Moreton-in-Marsh and Bourton-on-the-Water. Seriously, the truth is sometimes better than fiction.