31 Spots on the Final Nottingham Tour

One of my final days in Nottingham, I made sure to just walk around with my camera to take pictures of all my favorites.  I, of course, wanted to share them with my Us in the UK family.  Many of our visitors will remember some of these pictures, as they are places we walked by or visited on our "Sarah's Daily Life" tour.

1. Albert Hall
   
2. Nottingham Playhouse
   
3. Nottingham Castle
   
4. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem
   
   
   
5. Shopping Streets
   
6. Capital One Ice Arena
   
7. Ugly Bread Bakery
   
8. Wired Cafe
   
9. Train Station
10. Tesco Metro
    
11. Pitcher & Piano
    
12. Nottingham Theatre & Cornerhouse
    
13.  Miscellaneous Parks
    
14. Clubs, Restaurants, and Pubs
    
15. Brown's Bar and Brasserie
    
16. Beautiful Streets
    
17. Annie's Burger Shack
    
18. The Park (Gated Neighborhood)
    
    
19. Our Flat
    
    
20.  The Gym
    
21. Old Market Square
    
22. Wollaton Hall and Deer Park
23. Another Street Filled with Restaurants, Shops, and Pubs
24. Favorite Indian Restaurants (Jeff and I disagree on which is the best)
    
25. Favorite Quick Eat...BarBurrito
    
26. Bus Stop to Derby
    
27. Library
28. Best Late Night Food
    
29. Poundland (Yes, similar to Dollar Tree)
30. The Canal
    
31. Trent River
    

Walking With Scholars

After our time in Bath, we headed to a town in between Bath and Oxford, Swindon, to stay for the night.  We ended up having a little extra time, so we went to see the new Hunger Games movie.  We laughed, as we remembered we saw the last movie in England during our time looking for houses last November. We joked as we now need to come back to England to see Part II.  We woke up on Sunday morning to drive a little less than an hour to Oxford.  We walked around the city for a bit enjoying all of the beautiful buildings.

Our weekend of famous authors continued as Oxford was known to house C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe) and J.R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings). These authors, along with a few others met at the pub, The Eagle and Child (The name of the pub is based on a famous myth).  They used to meet here to discuss literature and writing. Oxford was also known to house Alice Liddell, who inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

 

Up next was a tour of one of Oxford's most famous libraries, Bodleian Library, which many of you will recognize as one of the places Harry Potter was filmed. The Divinity School was the first part of the library tour.  Our tour guide spent literally 30 minutes talking about the ceiling.  Each little piece the architect created had a story behind it.  Although it was beautiful, I think our tour guide might have spent a little too much time telling us about these details. For the Harry Potter fans, this room was used as the hospital in the first two movies.  In real history it was used as a school house that approximately 40 students attended lecture all taught in Latin.

Next on the tour was Duke Humfrey's Library, and no picture were allowed here.  Although, I would click on my link, as it is very impressive.  In Harry Potter, it was used as the Hogwart's Library.  The books were so incredibly old, and some were chained to parts of the desks as they were not allowed to leave the library.

We headed to Radcliffe Camera next, as it was another library in a separate building.  No pictures inside as well.  It was a more modern library, and the inside would be something you would see in a library in the states. Although the outside was pretty impressive, as it was a stand alone cylinder building. Students still use this library and other parts of the Bodleian Library.

Radcliffe Camera

 Not our best selfie, and I hesitated to even put it on the blog.  But hey, you have to have proof that we actually visit these places, right? Behind us is the Tower of the Five Orders, which is special because the detail is on the inside for those people of the university, rather than showing it off to the townspeople (boring old building on the other side facing the city).

We walked around the city, snapping photographs of other beautiful buildings and sights.  

 

The Bridge of Sighs on the left and a beautiful college building within the city. 

I'll end my post with HAPPY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR as this will be my last post of 2014, as we have travels in our future. Have no fear, 2015 will bring many new adventures, countries, and excitement! Until then.

On to our 2015 adventures...

Different Decade. Different Century.

Jeff and I enjoyed a "lazy" weekend. After our trip to Rome and our lovely visitor [That post to come soon], we were pretty tired and still recovering from the trip. We grabbed some Domino's, watched some Dexter, and hung around our flat. On Saturday we went to our local library to sign up for library cards. They looked as us pretty funny when we brought mail to prove our address. If only we could have read their minds...I'm sure they thought we were crazy. We also have a higher appreciation for our amazing libraries back in the States. We were in awe thinking about the Indianapolis Central Library, not only because it is beautiful, but how many book options available. We weren't overly impressed with the facility and book selection. Of the 9 books I was looking for, I only found 1. I guess one is better than none! Jeff said the facility reminded him of his hometown library...when he was a kid. If that gives you any idea of what we're talking about. Decade: 90's.

Yesterday was an odd day. We looked out our window to see massive lines of people outside of the Nottingham Playhouse. We immediately thought we were missing out on an event we needed to be a part of. Little did we know, it was "Em Con" aka "Gen Con". It was insane how many people were standing in line, definitely hundreds. Most of which were in some sort of costume. Not sure if you can truly tell in the picture below, but I tried! The cars from transformers were outside the playhouse, and we were able to see them later on once everyone was gone.

  

Later in the day, we ventured out to Hardwick Hall which was only about 20-30 minutes away. This was a great afternoon trip to see a beautiful mansion built in the late 1500's. We were able to listen to an extremely boring speech from this lady. We were hoping to learn about the features and uses of the house, instead we were given a long lecture on who lived in the house. Names were brought up that we "should know" according to the speaker. Twenty-five minutes later we were able to explore the house and gardens. I really enjoyed this visit because the rooms were still set up as if someone lived there. All ~9 bedrooms still had the beds with the canopies above them. Each room was decorated extremely well, ritzy, and posh (Here's your newest English vocabulary word...use it!) The dining room was my favorite. I just can't imagine having dinner parties like this, or at all.

  

And you just can't forget the sheep...they are everywhere! We pulled over as we were driving out of the estate and this sheep was super close to the road. Within the field there were hundreds of sheep, including the babies! So cute.

Watch out world...Jeff has started Tweeting about our adventures!