Day 28-July 29

Today we took a train to Stamford. We've been traveling outside of London a lot lately...but I LOVE it because I would never just go see all of these places on my own if I ever came back to England, and they are way cool. The first thing we did was take a bus to Bourghley House (aka Lady Catherine De Burghe's house in Pride and Prejudice.
It was SO cool! I love going to places that I'm familiar with, especially when they're in my favorite movies! haha. One of my favorite features was that they had their own herd of deer on the grounds and they were super friendly and would eat out of your hand.
The deer were awesome! They'd only come close to you if you had food though. Good thing we brought some carrots with us today! Healthy snacks are good in more than one way. I should remember that.

The house was really pretty inside and our tour guide was cool. We saw a bunch of work by Grinling Gibbons who was a really famous carpenter and does amazing carvings. They were incredible! My favorite part of the tour was when our guide asked "are you ready to go to heaven now?" and then "do you want to go to hell?". haha. There were two rooms right after one another and one was all painted with murals representing heaven and the other with a depiction of hell. They were pretty cool actually. I also really liked the dining room (which is in the Pride and Prejudice movie when they're eating dinner). It was really pretty. All of the walls and the ceiling were painted to look like a palace and it's really large and open. We had lunch under at the cafeteria in the basement and I tried a scone with clotted cream and jam. It was delicious! I brought another jam and bread sandwich for my lunch. haha. We really need to go find some peanut butter. The weather decided to be naughty again. It was pouring rain after lunch so we didn't spend very long taking pictures in the gardens but they were really pretty.

There was only a very small area that you could go in anyways. I was, however, incredibly excited because Susie Tibbits and her friend Terri (who is also in England with us) do floral arrangements for weddings and I'm going to start doing it with them!!!! I'm just filled with so much happiness now! I really do love weddings and I have wanted to learn how to do the flowers for forever. After Bourghley House we stopped in Stamford for a while and just had a couple hours to look around the town. It's a quaint little town and they did some filming there for the Pride and Predjudice movie (when they're walking around town and the soldiers are there, etc). It was cool. A typical building on the streets of Stamford

We looked in the little shops and stuff and I bought some chocolate truffles and some bread to snack on at a bakery. It was still raining though so that wasn't quite so great. Amanda's umbrella broke and she had to buy a new one! haha. DON'T buy umbrellas from gypsies...they won't last very long. When we got back to London, Ashley and I went to Leicester Square (where you get all the discounts for Broadways) and bought tickets to Les Miserebles for tomorrow night. I'm SO excited!!!! I've always wanted to see it! Amanda and I went to Harrods after that, the biggest department store in the world. It was cool but it's just so big that it was kind of overwhelming. We didn't stay there very long. We also stopped at H&M and I didn't buy anything but Amanda found some stuff.
We have to get our pictures by H&M in every country for our H&M's around the world! Gotta love this store...

When we got back to the flat I was about to go running and then the fire alarm went off. That was kinda annoying but it actually turned out to be a bonus because while we were all chillin outside waiting for the alarm to go off I gained some running buddies. I was just going to go by myself but Erica and Jeanette both ended up coming with me. It was a nice little run. I just had a sandwich for dinner when I got back and I was going to do my laundry but I got too lazy. Basically I just did homework and went to bed. It was great!