Great Friends, Great Sights, Great Nights

Our week was another great one in England. Jeff and I were reflecting, as it was a busy week.  I spent a few days hanging out with some close friends, catching up.  Jeff played squash a few times, and we also had a night out with some work friends at a great pizza place.

Friday came quickly, and our friends from Cambridge (& the states) came to Nottingham.  We ate a great Chinese restaurant and went bowling for the evening.  The bowling alley was great and reminded me of the bowling alley in my hometown. We played a few games of cosmic bowling.  It was a great place to people watch as well.

We spent Saturday, driving about 45 minutes through Grantham to get to the little village of Belton, where the Belton House is located.  All four of us, have National Trust memberships (Thanks, Lori) so we were able to get into the site for free.  We had not used ours in a while due to our traveling outside of the UK, so we were glad to get back into traveling locally again.  This house was beautiful, and definitely one of our favorite visits of the manors, houses, mansions, halls...you get the idea. 

The front of the house

The back of the house

When we first arrived we were lucky enough to catch the basement tour that shared all about the experiences of the service people of the house...all 100 of them for 2 people. Insane, right? The tour was 50 minutes long, and totally worth it.  We went into various rooms learning about the services they provided, lives they lived, and how glorious it was to be a lady/man of service during those times. They really had some great perks as all the necessities of living we covered by the owners, so all the wages they earned was just "pocket change"...some of which were paid to what is equivalent to $32,000 in those days.  That is a LOT of extra money. We were really impressed with the tour and our knowledge, as this is what we expected to learn when we visited the Highclere Castle.

 Great listeners during our tour... 

The bell system was impressive.  The bell would ring once, and the service crew would have to figure out which bell by the pendulum system. Pretty cool!

After the basement we explored the upstairs, which was impressive.  We also walked around the gardens, and still didn't make it around the entire grounds.  1,700 acres would have taken us a while... I think it was a spot we could have spent more time at, but we were starving and Jeff and I had plans later in the evening.

 The library was my favorite room. Apparently each book has been read at least once. 

Loved this staircase

 Loving having our friends here to travel with

The gardens

We grabbed some food, and parted ways.  Jeff and I came home just to leave again within the hour.  Enough time to make some pasta salad and head out... We headed to a BBQ at friends' house.  We enjoyed our "American" bbq, and hanging out with friends. And apparently I need to do a better job at taking pictures of our friends and events like this. You are probably starting to think we are lying about times with friends...

We ended our weekend getting caught up on everything as our next adventure is quickly approaching again.  Jeff went into work to catch up on a few things, and I caught up on some laundry...boo!

Onto the next adventure...