When we got up this morning, we went down for a “Full English Breakfast” which is options of the following: scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, black pudding, tomatoes, hash browns, and [baked] beans on toast.
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| Full English Breakfast - from Wikipedia |
There was also cereal, yogurt, toast, juice and hot drinks. I had heard about beans on toast from English films, so I decided to try it. I’m not a fan of baked beans in general and I didn’t realize that the beans for this dish would be prepared like that. So it tasted just like baked beans and toast. Now I can say I’ve tried it; but I have a feeling I won’t try it again. A Full English Breakfast is commonly included in the price of typical English hotels.
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| The George - taken by Mom |
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| Taken by Mom |
Before heading towards Salisbury, Mom wanted to drive by Stonehenge to take pictures. I’m not sure why this was so important to her because our family has already seen it on a previous trip to England. So we pulled into the car park long enough for her to pop out and we turned the car around. We had to find a small spot on the side of the road to wait while she took her pictures.
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| Stonehenge - taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
Then it was on to Salisbury. This being a Sunday, it made visiting cathedrals a little tricky. Salisbury has a huge, 12th century cathedral with the tallest spire in England. We arrived in the city close to service time.
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| Salisbury street - taken by Mom |
We found a car park where you paid one Sunday price to park for the whole day. As I stood in line to pay, a lady came up to me and offered me her ticket as she was leaving! How kind! Then we started the relatively short walk to the cathedral.
Once we went through a large gate over the road, the cathedral was in sight.
The size was impressive.
There were a lot of tourists walking that way as well as some parishioners. The outside of the cathedral had a lot of carvings and architecture that were very detailed and beautiful.
Some of the carvings were of bishops for that cathedral. There were also sculptures over the lawns that were fairly contemporary. They were featuring the work of a contemporary artist whose work reflected what she felt was the work of angels.
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| taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
When we entered the cathedral, the service was already in progress. We were asked to wait in the back until it was over so we sat on the side at the back and also walked around the back area during the service.
As the service was ending, we watched the recessional which included a number of clergymen from Sudan. They were having a special service for them.
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| The recessional |
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| Sudanese priest - taken by Mom |
Then we were allowed to walk around the cathedral.
This is a beautiful building with its architecture, altar, and stained glass windows. We enjoyed looking the whole building over.
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| taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
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| The puplit - taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
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| VIP seats |
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| Altar - taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
There was also a courtyard surrounded by the cathedral and other buildings. It, too, was very beautiful.
This cathedral boasts one of the original copies of the Magna Carter which they have in a separate building. We went in to see it; however the display was not available as they were using that room to serve coffee to the parishioners and the clergy.
Next we went to the gift shop and looked at the books and other items for sale. We were starting to get hungry at that point, so we went to look at the menu in the adjoining café.
It looked good, so we went through the service line to get our food. I got a spinach risotto with goat cheese.
Mom and Grandma shared a turkey carvery dinner.
Then we walked back to our car and drove on to Winchester. We wanted to see the cathedral there, too. This is the burial place of Jane Austen so I had planned to so it so I could see her final resting place. Once we got to Winchester, we navigated to the cathedral, eventually going down very narrow streets. However, once we were there, there was no place to park. So we had to try to find parking nearby. We tried to follow signs and eventually found a place that turned out to be free on Sunday! We knew we had driven a little ways away from the cathedral by that point, so Grandma opted to stay in the car. Mom used her nose to find the way back to the cathedral, but we still didn’t know which way to go. I saw a man on a bicycle approaching where we were waiting to cross the street. Mom spoke to him and asked directions. He told her how to get there and it sounded like we weren’t that far away after all. We headed in the direction he directed us, taking a couple of turns.
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| Winchester street - taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
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| taken by Mom |
Then we came out on a street where we couldn’t remember which way he said to go. I saw one of those signs that are a post with little arrows pointing out of it in different directions, pointing to different points of interest.
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| Bottom right shows sign directing you to points of interest - taken by Mom |
I was frustrated to find that none of these points of interest were the cathedral. As I stood there staring at the sign, the same man on the bicycle came by and stopped to ask me if we had found the cathedral yet. I had to laugh! When I told him no, he again pointed us in the right direction. Once we arrived there, we saw a lot of people sitting out on the grass in the church yard, enjoying the sun.
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| Winchester Cathedral church yard with tombstones - taken by Mom |
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| Approaching the cathedral |
Soon, the church bells started to ring, calling the parishioners to service. It was about 3pm right then, so it seemed on odd time for a service. I looked at the sign posting the service times and sure enough, Evensong was about to start. We went in, and once again, we were restricted from the parts of the cathedral where the service was going on. I was beginning to worry that we wouldn't have access to Jane Austen’s burial sight. I had missed the welcome pamphlets when we came in, so there was no way to know where to find her grave. We just kept walking around and looking at the architecture.
As we were walking back towards the door at the back where we had come in, I suddenly looked down on the floor and saw it!
Beside the grave in the floor, there is a plaque on the wall dedicated to her.
I was pleased we were able to see this meaningful sight.
As we walked back to the car, we took some time to appreciate the exterior of the cathedral. This one is much simpler and bare in comparison to Salisbury. We found our way back easily and then headed towards Alton which is the small village where Jane Austen lived towards the end of her life and where she completed her last novels for publication. Today it is a museum called The Jane Austen House. We had some trouble finding it, so by the time we pulled up there, the house was closed for the day so we were only able to peek at the outside.
We decided to come back the next day and got back on the road towards Brighten. We were staying in that area for the night. As we neared our hotel, we came across Thomas A Beckett Pub which looked very nice on the outside.
We decided it was a nice place to stop for dinner. We got there just as the kitchen was about to close so we had to hurry and chose what we wanted from the menu. The restaurant portion was very nicely decorated and had lots of windows letting in light.
Grandma ordered a chicken and asparagus pot pie,
Mom ordered a chickpea burger,
and I ordered a goat cheese tart with an onion chutney.
The food was delicious and we really enjoyed the atmosphere. After eating two pub dinners, we were pleased to see that the English pub is not like the stereotypical bar in America with drunkards, cigarette smoke, loud music, brawls, and the like. It was cozy and the drinking was not out of control.
Then we headed on to our hotel, the Grand Victorian. We found it fairly easily but had a more difficult time finding where to park. The architecture was very Victorian!
Once we found the people working at the front desk, they were very helpful and let us park just inside the gate to the hotel instead of in the car park and took all our heavy bags up to the room for us. We settled into our room which was a very odd shape due to the architecture of the building. This gave the room character and we quite liked it! No sooner did we settle in than we discovered the toilet was not working at all, so we had to be moved to two other rooms. That suited Grandma better anyway as she could have her own room.
Once again we took advantage of free wifi and then it was to bed!
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