Two Wonderful Saturdays, Courtesy of Jane Austen

The past two Saturdays, I have taken day trips outside of London with the ND London Program. Last week was Stonehenge and Bath, and this week was Winchester and Chawton, home of the famous British author (and my fav!) Jane Austen. Both times it was so nice to get out of the city for a little while and get away from the fast pace of London. There is always so much to do here, but that means that everything (including us) is moving at a lightning quick pace. It's great to step away from it for awhile, slow down, and see some green grass. Because city living has definitely made me miss green grass!

The trip to Stonehenge and Bath was a requirement for my Archaeology and Ethics class. To be honest, Stonehenge didn't exactly knock my socks off. But it was so cold there that it was probably better that I kept my socks on. The blustery wind reminded me a little too much of South Bend...
Stonehenge is definitely an amazing structure, right in the midst of the beautiful English countryside. But I think I was a little frazzled because I was there with my class. I was trying to take pictures, take notes, listen to my professor, and still enjoy the site with my friends. But it was definitely beautiful, as I'm sure you can see from this photo.
After Stonehenge we went to Bath, which was such a cute little city! Many of Jane Austen's novels are set in Bath and she even lived there herself for a few years. We (and by we I mean the girls) felt like we were in a Jane Austen movie or novel. They've actually filmed a lot of Jane Austen movies there and the Georgian architecture is absolutely beautiful. It was still a city, but at a much slower pace than London. There was more green space and quaint houses on cobblestoned streets.
After wandering around Bath for about an hour, we went to the Roman Baths, which were so cool! It is this ancient Roman Temple and Bath House and it is just amazing that it was still standing and in such good condition. Obviously they have done a lot of excavation and preservation, but it was yet another instance where history came to life (yes, I am a dork). We saw the ruins of the temple where they prayed to Minerva and lots of other artifacts that archaeologists had discovered--pots, religious statues, etc. The hot springs underneath the city still heat the baths and we could see the steam coming off the water into the cold winter air. And we walked around the baths on the same stones that the ancient Romans themselves walked on!
And after seeing all these wonderful sites, I got to fill out a six-page worksheet about everything I learned and how it relates to ethical archaeology. Long story short, Stonehenge is not an ethical site because it uses goofy music and stereotypes to randomly hypothesize about the origins of the site (probably a main part of the reason it didn't knock my socks off...) and the Baths are an ethical site because accurate historical facts, not opinion, are the main priority there. Hopefully that expanded into six pages translates into an A in archaeology.

This past Saturday we went to the beautiful Winchester Cathedral and saw Jane Austen's house!! The literature lover in me was in heaven! The cathedral was beautiful and housed Jane Austen's grave, where a new bouquet of flowers is placed every day. The architecture ranged from medieval to Georgian to Renaissance (I think--there was so much information on the tour, haha). There were beautiful stained glass windows, but since this is England, there was no sunlight to shine through them. But I'm sure that it looks amazing with the sunlight streaming through. There was also a lot of empty space on the walls and various other empty spots where Catholic art and statues had been before Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church to form the Church of England. After the break, Henry ordered the destruction of all Catholic art and idols and it was very apparent in the cathedral. I had learned about this in my Portrayal of Royalty class, so it was really cool to see it in person. There were these little stone platforms by some of the tombs in the cathedral that were clearly meant to hold a statues, but just stood empty. You can kind of tell from this photo:

After the cathdral, we went to Chawton, a quaint village in the English countryside. We saw both Jane Austen's house and Chawton House, the house her brother lived in and where she often visited. I sat at the same dining room table that Jane Austen did on the tour of Chawton House, but her actual house was the highlight of the day. We saw her bedroom, the desk where she actually wrote all her fabulous novels, and even costumes from the movie "Becoming Jane" (Steph Spera, if you are reading this blog, we should totally see the end of that movie sometime...without it falling off the projector). Her house was basically heaven for a literature geek, full of notes and letters in Jane's own handwriting and illustrations from orinigal copies of Pride and Prejudice. Definitely the highlight of the semester so far!!

Although the focus of this post is on Saturdays, I'm going to digress a bit and also mention that we went to see the Prime Meridian on Friday afternoon. It's really just a sign and a line on the ground, but pretty cool nonetheless and a great opportunity for goofy pictures (which were not taken on my camera or they would be posted here). The National Maritime Museum was basically the male version of the Jane Austen House. They loved it and couldn't get enough of it, while the girls were just a little bit bored, much like the guys were the next day when we spent quality time with Jane.
We also went to the National Observatory, which I loved. There were all sorts of facts and kid-friendly games about astronomy, which reminded me of the good old days of Spring 2008 when I took astronomy with Michele, Tim, Chris, and Chels. I can't believe it was already two years ago!! I must say, I did remember more than I thought I would from the class with the esteemed Professr TRegs. And the parts that I didn't remember I will blame on the fact that it was nearly two years ago...and not that we spent more time passing notes than actually taking notes.
But back to London, or, rather, Greenwich. The view from the absolutely gigantic hill that the observatory and prime meridian are on was beautiful!! It was a beautiful panoramic view of the city, since Greenwich is just on the outskirts of London. And it was a rare sunny day, which made it even more breathtaking. Gotta love London.