To England: Old York, Feels like Home

York was the town which I could most clearly see myself living in.

There was a lovely ruined abbey, which used to rival York Minster in size.

So many lovely intricate details.

York had city walls, and I walked around a good portion of the walls that are left.

Also, York Minster of course.

The sweet pyramid dome thing is the chapel house, iirc.

idk my bff roof?

I took the York Minster tower tour, but enjoyed the Bath one more. This one was straight up and down with less inner workings/information. It also made me feel more claustrophobic. The good news is that my legs had adjusted by now and hurt a lot less, although I did have some blister issues in York.

Not that there was anything WRONG with the view. Note the tiny abbey ruins in the background.

One evening, I ventured to sit outside the Minster and listen to bell practice which was incredible. Sat on a bench eating cherries. Another night, I went to Evensong. I just managed to snag a single seat in the quire. It felt more Catholic than I was expecting.

Amazing stained glass. I'd love to go back after they finish their big one.

After Evensong, I went on a ghost walk/terror trail. Lots of stories of torture. My favorite creepy tale was the girl who they locked up because they thought she had the plague, but she ended up dying of starvation, crying out for food. Eek!

I went to Clifford's Tower which wouldn't have been worth the price of admission but was free with my English Heritage Pass. Quite plain but very interesting motte of a motte and bailey set up, which didn't commonly survive in their original form. It never made sense to me but now it does--such a steep hill, might as well plant yourself on top with a tiny fortress like "just try and get at me, bro".

I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a straight picture of the dumb thing--until I went inside it and it was all completely tippy. Oh.

I visited the Yorkshire museum which was small but totally jampacked with things that would make or break a collection in other parts of the world. Haphazard like "oh some random old crap we dug up" exCUSE you, amazing Roman, Viking, and medieval artifacts.

Just gonna casually leave our Roman sarcophagi outside because why not.

Railway museum, which had been recommended to me but was a bit boring except the royal carriages. I was hoping they had the Hogwarts express, per the recommender, but they did not any longer.

York was a good place to study layers of history all jumbled on top of each other.

I had kind of a lazy time in York. Settled in and made it like home, coming back in the afternoons to watch Wimbledon or Netflix and nap!

To England: Liverpool is in my ears and in my eyes

The one big thing I'd do differently if I were to do this trip again (besides a second day at Wimbledon), is spend one less night each in Conwy and York and spend these two nights in Liverpool instead. I let people talk me out of Liverpool when they compared it to Pittsburgh, drowning out my inner voice telling me "yo Caroline you adore Pittsburgh, maybe you should stay there BECAUSE of that."

Besides, it was quite a pain in the butt getting to Liverpool which severely limited my time there. I tried to leave Conwy and all the trains were canceled. A nice Irishman helped me out by telling me how to take the bus to another train station nearby, Lladudno Junction. Just across the river from Conwy and much bigger. So I hopped on a train back to Chester, and then grabbed the same original train to Liverpool. HOWEVER halfway to Liverpool, they made us all get off at some rinky dinky station because the train was broken!

I feel like they were trying the "let's all get out and get back in again" plan but it didn't work. We got mixed messages: another train is coming in 5 minutes, no wait it's not, we'll send a bus, no wait, run back to the platform, there's the last train for awhile coming through now!

Made it to Liverpool but without time to do much of anything before my Beatles tour. Besides eat a street hot dog, which was both delicious and given to me by the most immediately talkative person I'd met randomly to this point in England.

The tour was a bit silly. I had just read a detailed book about the Beatles (seriously--it only went to 1964 and it was almost a thousand pages) so I recognized a ton of the things we talked about...but even so, mostly it was just driving past old churches and being like "the Beatles used to perform in this basement" or "Paul and George went to school here" and they'd point to a building across a field or halfway down the street.

I believe this was one of Ringo's homes.

This was quite close, another place Ringo lived.

This was definitely a George house. So skinny and tiny and blue collary, huh? People still live here so we had to be all hushed.

This was John's. (I only remember this because the blue plaque is reserved for Britons who have been dead so long).

Well this is clearly Paul's.

Penny Lane is one of my favorite songs because it's such a clear tribute to a city.

This was my favorite bit, because I didn't know it was real. The Shelter on the Roundabout referenced in Penny Lane. The guide said they are talking about tearing it down, but there's some interest in preservation. I hope someone steps up.

The Strawberry Fields gate.

It does remind me of home--its own unintelligable dialect, people who act like they've known you forever, city pride--not to mention the similar histories and subsequent changes. Parts of it are quite rundown, but it gets under your skin. The way the Beatles resisted moving to London for so long, trying to make it big from their rundown city. How when he comes to town, Paul supposedly still lives in the house he bought his dad in '64. And the way none of them have forgotten it, still lending names and money and attention to projects in town.

I want to go back. I'd take the tour which takes you in Paul and John's houses, and spend much more time in the museums along the pier, including the Tate Liverpool, some Beatles thing, and the local history museum.

To Wales: Congegrating in Conwy

The nearly complete and absolutely gorgeous Conwy city walls.

I got pooped on by seagulls twice in two days in Northern Wales while staying in Conwy. Other than it, it was one of my favorite stops!

Conwy Castle as viewed from the other end of town. Notice the evil Welsh seagull.

This is where I stayed. My window is the one that looks like the second floor, on the right.

Very tiny but all hills and city walls. The first night at dinner, I was writing furiously in my journal, and the couple next to me while we were both finishing our food finally were like "hey what are you writing?" We chatted for about an hour before finally asking for our respective checks. Very friendly!

Legit moat around Beaumaris

The next day I trekked to Beaumaris Castle. It was interesting. Huge and obviously built for defense--not thrills. It got a bit repetitive after a bit--all of the turrets were copies of two floor plans.

Potty or merely sitting spot? Draw your own conclusions.

Tons of potty holes, very narrow passages.

I'm sorry, I got quite obsessed with figuring out how people in the past used to go to the bathroom.

You can see here how the castle was left unfinished. One side was completed, the other was never finished, not destroyed.

On to the next one! Caernarfon.

Fixed up and restored--it was only ever partially finished, too, and not used for a very long time which just seems so silly. Such a waste of a building project. This was the "Prince of Wales" castle so there was a lot of royal history, including recent royal history. Well as recently as the 50s anyway.

Well? Trash hole? GIANT TOILET?

After that, I went on a train up Snowden, getting there the easy way. The view at the top was like a cloud, but the views on the ride were nice.

I stayed in Conwy the last day and saw Plas Mawr, which is a gorgeous Elizabethan house, all restored and painted and well-furnished.

Detailed and gorgeous high chair.

A lot of the decorations were gaudy like this. It's so interesting to think about people of the past living in such bright places, because we usually assume they were subdued for some reason.

Cat hole. I want one.

Then I went in Conwy castle.

I think I might have finally been getting castle-weary by this point.

Still, I found the unique beauty in it, like the way it rose right out of the chunky harsh bedrock.

Also saw the smallest house in Britain which I thought about moving into with Puck. It was two stories but teeny tiny. I do not have a picture of this but it was really quite small, although certainly doable for a girl who was in the middle of traveling with nothing that can't fit in a backpack for a month. :)

The toilets hanging over the city wall in Conwy. I'm in love. Sadly, this was like the one part of the wall where you couldn't walk along it.

Northern Wales reminded me a lot of Maine--Maine WITH CASTLES. So it clearly resides near the top of my running list of favorite places in the world. They were similar in terms of weather (misty but still nice), homey, fierce people with funny voices (including saying something like "hiya" as a greeting which sounded really Mainiac to me), the sea and moody outlooks and rocky shores, adorable communities without sprawl, sheep, lobster traps, and a town called Bangor.

To England: Side Trips, Part Two: Chester

After two weeks of being in the country, you would've thought I'd be better at stuff. I got to Chester and spent a pound to take the bus into the city center, only to get to the information place and for them to tell me the only place to leave my luggage is back out of town...I had looked this up but somehow just decided to be an idiot anyway.

So I had to hike back out almost to the train station to drop off my bag. UGH.

Victorians, ruining and preserving things at the same time since 1837.

Chester is one of the few British towns with a lot of its walls left, so I set out to walk around them. However, most of the rest of the town had been grossly Victorian-ized.

There were Roman ruins and a really neat church with cool graveyard ruins.

I visited the Grovsenor museum, which had a fun little collection of local stuff, which of course includes artifacts reaching back to Roman days.

Cathedral I didn't go in.

That was about it for Chester.

Ducklet in a canal

To England: London Town, Part Six. British Library, St. Paul's, and Abbey Road

On my last day in London, I started out at the British Library. LOVED IT! First Folio, Gutenberg Bible, Magna Carta, Beatles song lyrics scribbled on random scraps of paper.

I took a long time on an annotation in a copy of the Canterbury Tales where the writer/reader had mentioned Shakespeare. I just read a book by Bill Bryson about how learning about Shakespeare is this weird random treasure hunt like that, and we only have so many mentions of him.

I also thought about this friend I had once who was appalled that people would write in books, and her point was "would you write in a three-hundred year old book?" My response was "no, but if it had contemporary notes, I would treasure that." And scholars do, too, so there.

Anyway, the British Library is tops on my list to visit again if/when I make it back to London. I adored it. Spent about two hours there and it wasn't a big museum.

After that I went on to St. Paul's.

I'm not really sure why I chose this of all the things left in London, but I'm so glad I did because I was surprised by how much I loved it. It seemed so much more modern than the 1600s--Wren's vision of a simple church, majestic but down to earth and uncluttered. Unimposing but grand. It's so bright, light, and airy. If the Victorians hadn't half-ruined it, then it really would be amazing.

I loved walking up to see the three domes.

I marveled at the views inside and out.

Later, I ventured to Abbey Road, and giggled about the tourists doing their tourist thing on a semi-busy road.

And that was my last day in London. I was shocked by how much I didn't want to leave, by how much I'd packed into seven days but how many things there were left to see.

To England: London Town, Part Five. WIMBLEDON.

Tuesday was the best day of my life, period, hands down, end of story, every other day can go home now. I entered the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon!

I woke up around 4:50 and caught one of the first trains of the day from near my hostel to Edgware. However, the first train going to Wimbledon wasn't until 40+ minutes later--so check on that if you go. Make it to Southfields which is, ironically, the proper station for Wimbledon. Then walked quickly in a light crowd, trying not to rudely brush past people. Almost cried for the first time that day, thinking about childhood dreams and how many years I've centered two weeks of my summer around watching it and it being UNBELIEVABLE that I was there.

Only a very small bit of the queue. Imagine several football fields filled like this.

You get to this field and there's just rows and rows of people. I felt a bit cattle'ish after awhile because every so often they'd move up the queues and you'd just follow forward but not really know if anything was happening yet or not.

The staff were all very knowledgeable and friendly.

At some point early on they hand out your queue card (and your guide) and you guard it with your life.

Sat/walked in the field until about 10 or 10:25. Almost four hours, all told, but it went by in a flash. I think I listened to my ipod, read, just sat there and marveled about where I was. I was worried that I'd get really bored (or tired) and throw my whole day off but, like I said, it sped by.

Finally my bit of the queue started really moving, but we still had a long way to wend through a woods and to security. Security had metal detectors AND a bag search. Lots of lines and very efficient though. You could take any food and drinks you wanted, including certain quantities of alcohol which I thought was sweet--but technically only one bag.

More walking to the actual ticket counters after that, kind of reminded me of Kennywood lines, but there was no more queue after security so I went up and handed over my 20 pounds and suddenly....I WAS IN.

And now I did cry. A lot, actually.

I just barely made it in by the time the matches started at 11 so I settled in to watch Marcel Granollers straight away.

 Me watching Marc Lopez watching Marcel. The weirdo in the bug-eyed blue horrible sunglasses.

I had food in the middle, but it took Marcel 3.5 hours to win his match in four sets, and I stayed until the end.

Then I went to find Feliciano Lopez. There was a weird/terrible queueing system for getting into that court. Feli was hilarious--he was in full-on Feli meltdown mode even though he really wasn't playing badly and he won, I think in only three but it may have been four.

How obviously FELI he is here. Hahaha.

Had some spare time so I wandered around and found Henman Hill and gobbled down my second strawberries and cream of the day. Worth it.

The view from the Hill. Actually a super nice spot, though quite busy this time of day.

I went to watch Tommy Robredo's match. He just managed to finish in four sets, it would've been called for darkness if it had gone on much longer.

I stretched out leaving for as long as I could, trying not to cry again. I thought to myself "Can I sleep here and do it again tomorrow?" Which, yes, actually, they encourage that--if only I had a sleeping bag and a tarp!

The day went SO FAST. From waking up at 4:50am to getting back to my hostel after 10, I felt like maybe two hours had passed. I thought I'd be exhausted by lunch but I wasn't.

I REALLY wish I had gone back on Wednesday. I try not to live with regrets, and I really try not to travel with regrets, but this is one regret I still have. If I'd thought of it, seriously, a bit earlier in the evening, then I could've booked it home after Tommy instead of lingering, and gotten my things re-settled and packed for the next day. I really wish I had.

It was weird after spending so many years at Cincinnati to be somewhere new. It was weird to be somewhere where I didn't know every corner of the grounds and all the tricks for getting around. It was SUPER weird that the men's games were so long, I felt like I got to watch a lot less things because the matches were so much longer.

I think I enjoy Cincy as a whole more, but....this was WIMBLEDON. Nothing compares.