Day Tickets London

Having the kids back in school is a great excuse to take the train down to London for a day out on my own. I wanted to stop by and check the progress of the art installation at Tower of London: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red. Mid-August when I was there with my parents there were few poppies after the fall of poppies from the window.

I had a few other places to check off my London list. I visited the British Library to see their original copies of manuscripts from Bronte, Austen, Dickens, Da Vinci and others. I enjoyed seeing the Da Vinci's, since the pages were full of sketches. I would have thought I'd be most interested in seeing the manuscripts from all the authors I enjoy. The thing is, the handwriting is so different from today that I couldn't read any of it. If I could, it would have been interesting, with the cross-outs and additions. Sadly, I enjoyed the Beatles lyrics more, as I could read them. They were the original lyrics scratched out on items like birthday cards. They also had copies of illustrated bibles, that were beautiful to see.

Besides the British Library, there were several markets in London I hadn't seen yet. I didn't have time for all of them, so decided on Leadenhall Market - a beautiful Victorian market that was also a film location for Harry Potter - and Spitalfields - specializing in antiques.

The most exciting part of my day turned out to be going to see a show. I feel a little too self-indulgent paying full price to go see a show on my own, for no particular reason, so I'd decided to check out the half-price ticket booth to see what they were offering. People line up early to get the best tickets there. By the time I arrived, close to 11, there weren't a lot of great discounts or shows I was particularly interested in. I'd noticed that one of the theaters I had passed on my way to the ticket booth had a sign up saying "Day Tickets Available." It turns out that shows will sell same-day tickets to their box offices for ten to twenty pounds. Sometimes you can get lucky and get a great seat at a great price. Most of the time though, there's a reason these tickets are left: they're obstructed view seats where you will be missing out on some of the show. In busy times people will line up by 7:30 in the morning for the popular shows. On a Thursday in September though, some theaters still had tickets at 11 when I was walking around.

I bought a ticket to the show "Shakespeare in Love." The ticket agent warned me the tickets were front row and that the stage was high. The price was so low, I decided to risk it. When I walked in the theatre, I was quite concerned. Sitting in my chair, looking straight forward, I was looking directly at the wooden edge of the stage. I was worried I wouldn't see a thing. Once the show started I found that if the actors were in the front half of the stage or on the upper levels of the set, my seats were fabulous. The back half of the stage I could barely see at all, and one scene where the actors were lying on the stage I couldn't see either. Luckily, a vast majority of the show was where I could see. Anyway, the show was soooo good - the lead actor Tom Bateman is going to be a star of the West End I think - that I'm very pleased with my day ticket discovery and might try to go again before I leave England.

The North

The last part of our vacation we stayed in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is right on the border between Northumberland and Scotland. 

Just to the south of Berwick is Holy Island. You can drive onto the island at low tide. There's signs everywhere to check the tide tables, because at high tide the road disappears. It's a lovely place, and quiet despite the tourists, partly due to a no outsider cars on the island rule (there's a parking lot for tourists right as you enter the island).

There's a rather small castle on the island that was converted into a vacation home in the early 1900s that I mentioned in an earlier post. It's the most cosy castle we've seen, full of smallish rooms decorated in an arts and craft style. But it's the seaside location surrounded by beaches and grazing sheep that really makes it special. Holy Island also has abbey ruins you can visit and a few shops and restaurants.

One day we took an hour train ride up to Edinburgh for the day. At the time, my girls claimed it was their favorite European city. They loved the Scottish accent, the bagpipe players, and the kilts - both the ones people wore for show and the ones men wore for everyday wear.

Have I mentioned lately that we're Harry Potter fans? JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter books in cafes around Edinburgh. We visited one, the Elephant House. 

The kids were pretty good about walking around Edinburgh, except that it's a steep walk from the train station to the main part of town. Luckily, Anya's got her dad wrapped around her finger.

Edinburgh Castle

There's a beautiful park below Edinburgh Castle called Castle Street Gardens where we had a nice picnic, did some walking and tried out the zip line in the children's park (well, Anya did anyway). 

We spent some time window shopping and getting a little culture, courtesy of Sir Walter Scott. 

As we were only in Edinburgh for little more than half a day, I'm sure we missed out on many must-see sights and things to do. We enjoyed our wanderings around the streets of Edinburgh, even with our limited time.

Our last day of vacation we decided we couldn't resist driving up to stand on the border between England and Scotland and also seeing a little bit more of the Scotland coast we'd admired from the train the day before.

We drove to the town of Eyemouth, which is just a few miles over the border. It's not on any must-see sites of Scotland list, but look how pretty! If this randomly picked spot, chosen for convenience is a representative sample, I can see how devoting time to a Scotland trip would be worth your while.

And that concluded our northern tour. It's a beautiful slice of the UK. I'm still feeling a little bit dreamy about having had the opportunity to visit.

Castles, Castles and More Castles

The next part of our trip we went into Northumberland, a castle lovers' dream. Our first stop was Warkworth Castle. It looks over the river Coquet and the village of Warkworth, with the North Sea in view in the distance. My favorite part was all the blooming daffodils surrounding the castle.

We made Warkworth a quick stop, to leave plenty of time for Alnwick Castle. It's home of Harry "Hotspur," famous medieval knight in the times of Henry IV, but to be honest, we were more drawn by its association with Harry Potter. It was used in the first two Harry Potter movies. In honor of its movie ties, they have Harry Potter tours and a Harry Potter magic show, which we thought was very well cast and a lot of fun. The castle itself is still in use by the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. I'm in love with their library, but unfortunately no cameras are allowed inside.

If you like your castles in ruins overlooking the sea, then Dunstanburgh is the castle for you. There's a beautiful walk approaching the ruins leading through fields, a golf course, and a path overlooking the sea.

We didn't go inside Bamburgh Castle, but instead enjoyed a beautiful walk approaching it along the beach and through the coastal dunes. It's a beautiful beach all by itself. Add the medieval castle in the background and it makes a breathtaking walk. 

Whew. You may have got tired of looking at all these pictures of all these castles, but we sure enjoyed every minute of visiting them.

Lacock

We're finally coming to the end of my vacation posts. I'd feel bad about posting so many, except my life in January is really not all that exciting. Going over my vacation in excruciating detail is still more exciting than hearing about my new vacuum or how I organized my receipt drawer. 

One sunny (!) day, we got our kids to come along with us on a visit to Lacock. Doesn't Anya look excited to be along? 

Lacock is a type of outing that Mike and I love, that generally our kids have no interest in: cute, old town, beautiful scenery, historic buildings to visit. Except that Lacock has a movie tie-in that made it fun for the kids - some of the Harry Potter movies were filmed here. I didn't even tell them that Lacock was also used as Meryton in Pride and Prejudice. They're a little disdainful of my P&P obsession, so no need to turn them off.

I seem to have a rather large proportion of our outings planned around movie or book locations. I justify it by: one, it sometimes gets the kids interested in places they'd normally not be interested in, and two, movie location scouts generally pick places that are beautiful, well-preserved and representative of a certain era.  They're great places to visit that we might not have known about without the movie tie-in.

We saw the house used for Slughorn's temporary residence, but didn't take a picture. This is just another random, cute street.

Lacock is a compact little village. It's very easy to walk through the whole thing, even for people who might avoid walking in general.

I'm pretty sure this is where the scenes were shot of people arriving to the Meryton assembly. If only the people of Lacock would ban all cars, then we could get the full effect. 

I took this over-exposed picture of this house just because I thought it was cute. We later learned that it was used as Harry Potter's family home in the first two movies. 

Lacock has an abbey that is beautiful on its own and also was used for some of the school scenes in the first two Harry Potter movies.

Here's Mike! He doesn't get shown much as he's a better photographer than I am. 

Can't you picture a group of Hogwarts' students passing by at any moment?

This room was used as a classroom in the films. 

This cloisters was used for some of the school outdoor/courtyard scenes.

The grounds of Lacock Abbey are beautiful. What I saw of them anyway. By that time we were ready to eat.

One nice thing about visiting English Heritage or National Trust sites is that you can always count on them having a tea room for a nice snack. 

Although the kids joined us this day, you might have noticed they weren't involved with a number of our outings. They got new books and electronics for Christmas, so they enjoyed entertaining themselves at our rental for most of the time. Happily, our rental came with access to a swimming pool, so when we'd get back they had fun playing around in the pool. Mike and I got to do what we wanted and enjoyed not dragging unhappy children on outings, so we managed a vacation where everyone was happy!