Tour of the UK

A few weeks ago we took a tour through the Lakes District, Edinburgh, and York. It was so fun and so beautiful. The Lakes District was home to William Wordsworth. He and his sister would hike all over the place, and he got most of his inspiration and wrote most of his best poetry there. It was really a neat experience for me to read his poetry while hiking through the same mountains. On the way in the bus Nick gave a fantastic lecture about how important and ground breaking WW's poetry was. Reading it while hiking on the mountains was something of a poetic epiphany for me. Poetry has never made so much sense before, and WW's poetry has never been so beautiful. His "Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey" is my favorite.

Edinburgh was so fun too. We were there Wed. evening and Thurs. morning. Thurs morning Elisabeth and I followed Nick and his fam to see the Scottish Parliament building, and on the way we found the cemetary with William Blackwood's grave (he was a magazine publisher in the 19C--Nick has done a ton of work on him, and I wrote about him in my thesis) Nick has never found his grave before, so that was really exciting. Nick, by the way, is so funny on this trip. Much crazier than he is in regular class. For example, he gave a lecture on the bus about Robert Burns, and decided that he was going to try to read the poetry out loud to us in a "Scottish" accent. Except that it was Irish. He kept talking in it for a while. It was so funny. And yesterday, as we were driving home, everyone was getting excited to purchase HP7 as soon as we got back to London. Nick picks up the microphone and says "Sometimes as a professor publishers give you books early. I've got Harry Potter 7 here, and since this is sort of a devotional moment, I think I'll read from the last page. 'Harry Potter's funeral was a fine affair' We'll read some more later" I laughed so hard! Anyhow, here are some highlight pictures:

Our hostel in the Lake District was about a mile a way from the main road, so we hiked to it. Here's the view:

The Lakes in the morning. View from our hostel:

This sign cracked me up. It's at the turning from the main road to the hostel:

York is one of my favorite cities. This is a picture of their medieval street, The Shambles. The buildings buckle and lean, kind of like Diagon Alley:

Yorkminster, huge gothic cathedral:

Some of our peeps at The Shambles:

We also visited the Castle where Harry Potter 1 and 2 where (at least partially) filmed. Elisabeth and I accidentally dressed exactly the same that day with red pants, blue shirts, and light green jackets.

Make way for ducklings. This was also in the Lake District.