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!

Day 27-July 28

Today we had to meet at 7:50 and took a train to Oxford. It was about an hour to get there. Then we got on a double decker bus and headed to Blenheim Palace.
Our lovely double decker

Blenheim Palace was gorgeous! It's perhaps my favorite place we've been (the gardens were, anyways). We all arrived there as a group but then we just had the whole day to do whatever and take as much time as we wanted. It was nice.
This is a view of Blenheim Palace from the gardens

View from the inner courtyard

First we went and saw the grounds and they had the most luscious green grass. We probably spent a whole hour just frolicking on it with our bare feet. It felt SO good!!!!

We were so pumped to about the grass and we hadn't been barefoot outside in so long that we just had to do some heel clicks to express our excitement

Then we went to the secret garden which was absolutely beautiful!
Part of the secret garden. It was way peaceful in there

Chillin on a bench in the garden as we experienced heavenly bliss

We checked out other parts of the gardens as well and they were all really cool. We definitely took our sweet time and I don't think I've taken so many pictures in one place since since the Roman Forum. My poor camera is totally starting to break down because I've taken so many pictures. The button takes forever to register now. Another one of my favorite part on the grounds was the rose garden.
there were SO many roses!
It was so pretty and smelled SO good! It just was such a beautiful day and I was so happy. We had lunch in the little cafeteria under the palace. I had brought my own lunch so I just ate that. I was so proud of myself today because I brought tons of healthy snacks! We ran out of peanut butter yesterday though so our sandwiches just had jam on them. haha. After lunch we toured the inside of the palace. It was pretty inside. Blenheim Palace is where Winston Churchill was born and raised and we got to go in the very bedroom where he was born and everything. It was cool! They had a bunch of his paintings and stuff on display too and they had been made into hallmark cards. I didn't even know he was an artist. On the upstairs floor they had a video/acted out tour which was kinda cool but we had to speed through it at the end. We went through all three of the gift shops and then we took a stroll over to the pleasure gardens. We took a little train over and they just had a bunch of fun things like a butterfly observatory/greenhouse, a maze made of shrubberies, and a bunch of games and stuff (like life-sized chess). It was cool.
I was fascinated with looking at the butterflies. I've always had a thing for them

Everyone left the butterfly room without telling Amanda and I and we had no idea where they'd gone so we kinda got lost for a while and were freaking out but we finally found them after 15 minutes so that was good. The train stopped running before we were finished playing so we had to walk all the way back to the palace, which was probably about a mile. Then the front gate to exit the place was closed, for some crazy reason. Who does that? So we had to take a way roundabout way to get out of there and it took forever! It was after 6:00 by this time so we really did spend a long time in there.
Our little detour did end up being pretty scenic so I guess it made up for the extra walking that we had to do.

Eventually we made it out into the town again and found the bus stop. We barely caught the last train back to London and I just bought a hot ham and cheese sandwich at the station. I was so hungry and cold and it tasted so delicious! I was very pleased. We didn't really get to walk around Oxford much but I guess that's ok. It seemed like a really cool place though. It has lots of quaint little buildings and cottages. I read the BOM the whole way home and when we got back to our flat we just did homework and then went to bed.

Day 26-July 27

This morning began with a chain of unfortunate events. We took the train to Salisbury and spent the day there. Before getting on the train Amanda and I bought a custard filled doughnut at the krispy kreme stand (because we’re really bad at giving into peer pressure and following the crowd). It totally ended up on the floor of the train station before we even ate it. Gross. BUT ten second rule still prevails and we ate it anyways. It was sooo delicious! I was glad I only had half of one though because doughnuts always make me feel gross. The train ride was way long but it was good. I got some book of mormon reading done (I’m trying to finish it before efy…don’t really know how that’s going to happen yet), and then I konked out for the rest of the way. I’ve never slept so good traveling in my life! (not counting the overnight train that we took from Paris, but that’s different because we were lying down) Anyways, when we finally got to Salisbury we were kinda hungry and everyone was getting hot chocolate, with Cadbury chocolate in it no doubt, so I decided to try some!
The lovely train station.
Megan, Kylee, Michelle, and I totally got left behind in the train station because we were the last ones to buy our hot cocoa. So then we were running around the street trying to figure out where our group was and luckily we found them, but a few minutes later I realized that I had spilled hot chocolate all over my new hoodie. Haha! Don’t worry though…Becca is miracle woman and has a little kit in her bag with everything you would possibly need for every situation. I was well taken care of and with a baby wipe and a tide pen I was as good as new again.
This photo is to commemorate us being lost with our hot chocolate and not knowing where to go.
We took a bus to Wilton House and for some reason we got one-way tickets and didn’t realize it so we had to buy another ticket on the way back and it cost a ton! Wilton House is where the Earl of Pembroke lives. It was pretty sweet. They had a bunch of art from famous artists like Van Dyke and stuff and downstairs was one of Thomas Chippendale’s best pieces of furniture. It was cool…it was a big old hutch made for musical instruments but now it’s used as a bookcase. A bunch of movies were filmed in Wilton House, like Pride & Prejudice, and Sense & Sensibility so it was cool to see it because of that. The grounds were beautiful!
This was the most beautiful little bridge on the grounds at Wilton House.
After our tour they gave us strawberry lemonade and pastries and I felt like I was at a tea party. They had the SWEETEST playground in the whole world and we totally went and played there afterwards!!!! It was so awesome and it was totally sized to fit even big people so we had a blast. I felt like I was on swiss family robinson or something! After Wilton House we took the bus to Salisbury Cathedral and we talked to the cutest little old ladies on the way there.
The cathedral was pretty sweet. I’m getting burned out with cathedrals and museums though. When I get back home I will not want to see another one for a while. We got to take a tour and go up into the tower and that was cool. There was an awesome view from the top! Salisbury is a really cute little town. Our tour guide wasn’t super interesting though, or maybe I was just really tired. We tried to find some food for lunch and I ended up just settling for a salad in a café. I figured that would be a pretty safe choice and it was pretty healthy so it would make up for all the junk I’ve been eating. It looked way good but it was disgusting! I couldn’t even finish it. It tasted like vomit or something and all of the other girls had bad luck with their food too. Oh well. Josie and I washed it down with some chocolate and went around the nearby shopping mall buying candy and stuff. I definitely failed eating only one treat today. Our next great adventure was Stone Henge.
It was SO cool!!!! I loved it. It’s kind of out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by hay fields and stuff. I was kind of expecting it to be surrounded by hills and stuff and it seemed a little out of place but it was sweet. We didn’t spend very much time there but I’m pretty sure I took at least fifty pictures of it. After Stone Henge we took the train back home to London and Megan told Amanda and I her whole dating story before she got married. She has the cutest stories! I love hearing about people’s love lives. Anyways, we got back pretty late…like 9 or 10, so I stopped in at a little restaurant with Becca, Whitney, and Mallory for dinner and got a doner kebab. It had lamb meat in it which I’m usually kinda sketchy about it was way delicious! I also stopped at the Tesco and picked up some groceries for the next couple of days. After eating we just caught up on blogs and then went to bed. It was a long but exciting day.

Day 25-July 26

No pictures today. Sorry. It was our off day and we didn't really do anything so we didn't have anything to take pictures of. We slept in and then Amanda and I went running. I love running here. It makes me rejuvenated. Then we came home and I showered and ate breakfast. For most of the morning I caught up on emails and blogs and then at 2:00 we went to church. The singles ward is just a few blocks away so we got to walk and it was nice. It was so great to go to church again! I loved it! I haven't been all month because we always travel on Sunday. I felt like all of the meetings were way good. In sacrament meeting a general authority from the quorum of the seventies spoke and that was way cool. He gave a really good talk and I felt like it answered a lot of questions that I've been trying to find answers to. Sunday school was a riot. I love how enthusiastic the English are, and they gave us lots of treats. British chocolate is the greatest! I now understand why James brought home an entire suitcase full of chocolate. In Relief Society we talked about homes and temples and it kind of made me miss home, but I will be home soon enough and we are still having a blast being in England. I really do think I want to come back someday and be a nanny or something. I think that would be the coolest job because the kids here are so adorable and it would just be fun to actually live with the locals. After church we cooked a frozen pizza for dinner and did more blogging. That's about it!

Day 24-July 25

This morning we slept in till 9:30 and I made an egg sandwich for breakfast, in our lovely microwave. A bunch of people went to go buy tickets to Billy Elliot and we didn’t go with them for some reason. I think we were just confused and delirious because we were still half asleep. It took us a while to all get up and get ready but eventually we made it outside and we started the day off by going to Nodding Hill and did some shopping on Portabello Road.
It was so cool! I loved it! We actually ended buying a lot of stuff for way cheap and I have no idea how I’m going to fit it all in my suitcase but I’m way pumped about all of it. There were a bunch of sweet clothing stores that were selling everything for 5 pounds and I got a couple shirts and a sweet pair of shoes, and then I found a sweet London hoodie that I’m pretty stoked about. It reminds me of camping, and I cannot wait to wear it in the mountains. Haha. It’s super warm.

All of the buildings down the entire street are super colorful. We spent a couple of hours there and had pb&j for lunch. Then we went to the Globe Theater to try and get tickets for a show tonight but they are sold out until August 3rd. I’m actually not planning on going but Ashley and Amanda wanted to and I was with them. I think it would be cool and it’s not super expensive, but I just wasn’t really feeling it. Standing up in one place for 3 hours does not appeal to me right now and I am not Shakespeare’s number one fan.
Near the Globe Theater is Millenium Bridge. This is the bridge that gets destroyed by the death eaters in the new harry potter movie.
After going to get tickets, Amanda and I parted with Ashley and headed over to the Tower of London. It used to be a castle, and a military fortress, and a bunch of other things. I actually wasn’t that impressed with it. It was kinda cool but I guess I was expecting a lot more, and I didn’t feel like it was worth the amount of money I paid for it. It was like $25! It probably would have been cooler if we had a tour guide or something and knew what we were seeing but we didn’t really have time for that, unfortunately. We saw the crowned jewels, Henry VIII’s armor and a bunch of other armor, and the Bloody Tower where they used to keep prisoners.
Entrance to the tower of London
These guards are all over at the tower of London. They give tours during the day but only until 3:00 and we got there too late.

When we left, we ran into Kylee and Megan and ended up staying with them for the rest of the night. We went to the Billy Elliot theater to see if they still had any tickets by some chance (this was an hour and a half before the show started) and they did! We got an obstructed view off to the side of the balcony and you couldn’t see the one side of the stage but it wasn’t too bad. Before the show started we tried to go out to eat but the restaurant we tried was really slow. It took forever for them to even acknowledge us and then before they even had us seated we only had 30 min before we were supposed to be in the theater so we gave up on that idea. We went to the grocery store instead and just got pastas and sandwiches. They were pretty decent.
Billy Elliot was way good! It’s about a little boy who comes from a mining town that’s on strike and he’s supposed to become a boxer but he ends up learning ballet and is way talented, so everyone in the community pitches in to send him to ballet school. It was kind of hard for me to understand half of what they were saying (partly because of their accents, and I think partially because I just couldn’t hear them well), so I was kinda confused on the part of the story line. The music in it wasn’t to die for either but the dancing was incredible! I’ve never seen anyone so young be able to dance so well. Manda and I sat next to a girl from Oregon who is studying abroad in Paris and she was pretty cool. After the show we just came home, caught up on our blogs, and went to bed. It was nice. I’m super glad we ended up making it to the show because it would have been hard to squeeze in after today.

Day 23-July 24

Today was our first free day in London. This morning we tried to sleep in but we were woken up to go get tickets for Wicked tonight. We lucked out and got enough! There were like eight of us. We came home I waited for Amanda to upload her patterns on her blog really fast and, then we went running in Hyde Park. It was really nice but my legs were pretty tired. I felt like I was going on a walk through memory lane because everything in the park today reminded me of something. The trees there reminded me of Bear Lake and family campouts there every year and when we ran around the pond there were a ton of pigeons and ducks that were flying around in front of us, just like state xc. We even passed a huge lawn full of lounge chairs that looked exactly like a Barbie chair I used to have. Haha. It seriously matched it to a t, same fabric and everything. It was kind of funny. That usually doesn’t happen to me, but maybe my mind is just getting more imaginative or something. Haha. I guess that’s a good thing because I could use some more creativity in my head. When we got back we had lunch (I had fruit and salad and made a nice little chicken and cheese quesadilla in the oven). We were pretty slow getting ready and such but it was way nice to just have a chill day. Amanda and I went to the Imperial War Museum and it was pretty cool. On the way over there we stopped at Hummingbird Bakery which has the most delicious cupcakes ever! I am tempted to bring some home with me.
I had a carrot cake one and it was SO good! We've decided that we should only eat one treat a day from now on and it was definitely a great treat-of-the day.
Manda and I standing outside of the Imperial War Museum
Right inside there were a ton of planes and tanks and other artillery. I thought the ceiling in there was way cool too. We went to the Holocaust exhibition first and it was so sad. I’d been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and that one is incredible but this one was cool too just because it focused on different things. It focused a lot more on Poland and stuff as well as the groups of people that were targeted other than the Jews (disabled, homosexuals, gypsies, etc). Then we went to an exhibition about the children that were sent away during the bombings in London. When we got home Ashley had made us hamburgers for dinner and we took a quick 15 min power nap before heading over to Wicked as a group. We were supposed to meet Kylee at the tube station but we had come out on opposite sides of the street so it took awhile to find each other. It all worked out though!
getting pumped up in the theater before the show.
Wicked was so amazing!!! It was my second time seeing it and I think I liked the cast a little better when I saw it in L.A. but it was still SO good and I loved it! It was nice to review the whole story line again too because I found that I’d forgotten a lot.
In the best mood ever after the show.
As soon as we got home I went right to bed. It ended up being a pretty great day…relaxing and not super busy, but we did get a few things done which was fabulous.

Day 22-July23

I LOVED today! It was fantastic! We went to Cambridge and spent almost the whole day there. It was the coolest place and I absolutely loved our tour guide. Her name was Sally and she was the cutest little old lady and was just so enthusiastic and full of energy. She had the funniest stories and she was always just so happy and excited all of the time that I didn't even notice I was tired (until we went into the museum and that was still cool but I had a hard time keeping my eyes open).
This was one of the funny things she told us about. One time some of the students got a car up on a roof of one of the buildings on campus with ropes and pulleys and it took a week for people to figure out how to get it back down. Cambridge has a lot of way fun traditions and stuff. I liked it a lot. It was probably the best tour I've ever had! Before the tour we went shopping around at a nearby mall and farmers market, but we didn’t find anything. Our tour began with King’s College Chapel which was super gorgeous.
It hasn’t been altered at all since Henry VIII finished it off which I thought was pretty cool. It had gorgeous stained glass windows and fan vaulting inside which I loved. A lot of the campus is in gothic style, with pointed windows and flying buttresses. It’s was kinda weird to be on a college campus that’s older than our country. We went a couple of other places around campus and then they took us to a little pub for lunch.
This pub has been around forever and Shakespeare and a bunch of other famous people used to eat and hang out there so that was cool. Shakespeare even performed plays here back in the day.
The ceiling inside the pub is signed by a bunch of famous and non-famous people in wax and lipstic. Because it's historic, it is now under a protection law and can never be torn down.
Waiting for our food in the pub
We decided to try fish and chips and I was expecting it to be gross but I actually really liked it. After lunch we went to H&M and I bought some shirts. I’m so sick of my clothes! Then we headed over to the Fritzwilliam museum. It was pretty cool—they had lots of porcelain, an Egyptian section, and a bunch of paintings and stuff up there. I probably wouldn’t have been as interested if our tour guide wasn’t there telling us about all of it. I did have a hard time staying awake but we weren’t in there for very long so that was good. My favorite part was that there was a Swiss Army/pocket knife from the time of the Romans. Cool eh? After the museum we went punting on the river. Punting is kind of like a gondola ride, which was great because I didn’t do a gondola ride in Venice. They have flat-bottom boats and someone stands on the back and pushes the boat along with a pole. It was way fun and really pretty. It was pouring rain walking there from the museum but it cleared up and got sunny just before we got on the boat so that was nice. I totally fell down the stairs because they were wet! Haha. I caught myself so it didn’t hurt at all, but we laughed for like five minutes and then I was scared to walk down them after that. My ankle still hurts from falling down the stairs at the forum, so I don’t really know what’s up with that. Maybe I’ll have to have that checked when I get home cuz it’s been almost a month.
This was the dock where we boarded our punting boat. Punting was just so great! We saw a bunch of sites form the Harry Potter movie and our punter (the guy who was maneuvering the boat), was way cute and he goes to Oxford. I just love listening to people’s accents here. It makes me love EVERYONE! Haha. Afterwards we bought some marvelous chocolates at a little store and caught the train back to London.
At the train station we found platform 9 ¾ (for all those Harry Potter fans) and took pictures. For the rest of the night we mostly finished up our patterns and I went on a short little jog with Ashley.