greener with the scenery.

alright alright, its time to play catch up. lets start with my week long trip up to the north of England. warning: this is a long one.

Day One: Our first day was spent in York... home of the peppermint patty. okay maybe not. but regardless it was beautiful. we first visited the bronte home to see where charlotte, emily and anne wrote some masterpieces. among the literary treasures we happened upon some of the costuming for the upcoming wuthering heights film. hello, chuck bass will be wearing those clothes. yummy. then we went over to York Minster, which is a gothic cathedral for the church of england.

We also saw the place where the master in explosives himself guy fawkes was born. i'll always remember the fifth of november. and we saw this little road called shambles. shambles is a street with buildings dating back to the fourteenth century. the buildings overhang the street and it truly looks like it would have back then.

Day Two: After waking up in our hostel we headed back onto our coach and drove to the most beautiful place called Fountains Abbey. This was a gorgeous landscape with an old gothic cathedral ruin right in the middle. 

Day Three: And so begins the Lake District. Truth: this is the place Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett dreams of traveling to before she goes with her aunt and uncle. I don't blame her one bit. This place was gorgeous. We spent a lot of time driving through the country side with our lovely coach driver tony. truth be told, when the ride finally ended we all were about to throw up or urinate on tony. nevertheless, when our bladders were empty and the car sickness had gone away we were still glad to be in this beautiful place. even if we'd seen enough sheep and stone walls to last us a lifetime.

We also went to Beatrix Potter's house on this day. After taking a ferry across the lake and a bus up a big hill we made it. Thanks to Jaelyn and Papa Evans and their Mary Poppins bag full of treats we didn't starve. However, we may have froze to death. Special bonus: we got to see Peter Rabbit himself at Beatrix Potter's home. what a cutie. 

Day Four: The second to last day of our trip was a day full of church tours. We started off in Preston where our guide showed us various sites important to the first missionaries in Britain. We saw where they first taught the gospel and where the first baptisms took place. And we stepped around a very inebriated woman on the street. Then we headed to Chorley where we walked around the Preston Temple and the MTC and may or may not have accidentally broken in to the church next-door.

That night we learned just what the British movie ratings mean when we attempted watching our first movie in England. Lets just say 15A isn't "basically America's PG-13". We learned that the hard way. Thank you nude Dorian Gray. 

Day Five: None of us had a problem waking up in Liverpool and not just because it was our last day of traveling. We began the morning at Albert Docks. As we stood along the docks we talked about the nine million people that had immigrated to America from that very place. Among the nine million were very many latter day saints, and some of my relatives. As we remembered these brave people we sung "Come, Come Ye Saints." It was pretty special. 

Then we went to pay tribute to Liverpool's four favorite men... the Beatles. We went to the Beatles museum where we were told their story and saw many relics from their history. 

The last stop on our tour of the north was Chatsworth. Many of you may recognize this as Mr. Darcy's Pemberly in the most recent version of Pride and Prejudice, or as Georgina Cavendish's manor in The Dutchess (both are Keira Knightly films) This place is basically a huge gorgeous manor and gardens on some 30,000 acres. 

After Chatsworth, it was time to head home. We suffered through another looooong ride on the coach and were so pleased to be back at the TLC, BLC, PC...whatever you choose to call it...it is home. 

and it feels good to be back.