Peak District

Last weekend we decided to get out of town and see what England in autumn had to offer (pics). We travelled up to the Peak District National Park, about 2 hours north of us between Nottingham and Manchester. National Parks here are funny, and very little of the land is actually owned by the government: they’ve found it much easier to just declare private land “National Park” and not have to go through the messy financial details of actually buying the land properly.

We went up by train early Saturday, and got a bus in Derby that stops at all the little towns throughout the park – that was a beautiful drive, seeing the rolling green and gold hills and the charming (albeit touristy) villages. We stayed in Bakewell, “the capital of the Peak District” because it was pretty central and had a number of hiking trails within walking distance of the towne centre. Bakewell is famous for Bakewell pudding, which was apparently invented there hundreds of years ago by the local tavern keeper. Lauren was intent on trying this even after we saw the recipe which called for 12 eggs and the yolks of 4 more, baked onto a crust covered in strawberry jam. Let’s just say this is one cultural experience you can skip when you visit!

Despite serious failures in local cuisine, Bakewell is a quaint traditional English town—er, towne—filled with stone structures and brick streets, and has some amazing countryside around it. After checking into our B&B, we spent Saturday afternoon hiking along an old rail line turned trail to the Monsal Viaduct, large, striking stone arch viaduct in a picturesque valley. We were amazed by the public “trails” that you had to take to get to the viaduct. Often, the trail would leave the old train line to take you through fields of sheep or cattle, with reminders at the gate to close it behind you and not let some poor farmer’s livelihood escape. One field had a sign that said, “Danger. Bull running with cattle.” It was a bit different than hiking in the US!

On Sunday we hiked to the awesomely huge estate of the Duke of Derbyshire, used as Mr. Darcy’s house in the recent Pride and Prejudice movie. This leads to some name confusion, as tourists call it Pemberley after the movie and locals (and the Duke who still lives there) call it Chatsworth. Apparently you can see a dress worn by Keira Knightley if you pay the £6 to go in, which being a total rip-off, we didn’t. The gardens were really cool though, with amazing fountains and statues. The landscaper in Victorian times (everything here happened in Victorian times) was a real go-getter, and he built a giant boulder garden, made a lake 400ft above the house laying piping for all of the fountains, and build an enormous glass green-house heated by coal supplied by underground tunnels.

The whole weekend was exhausting, hiking (or walking, as it’s called here) around 20 miles, and only getting the briefest peek at the beauty of this “park.” Thankfully our B&B was charming and cozy, run by a couple who bought it about a year ago. Between the full English breakfast Sunday and fish and chips in a pub Saturday night, it was a proper English weekend. It was nice to get away from the city and see some of the country, now that we are heading in to 3 months of near-total darkness and rain (hooray!). At least we’ll have our photographs for the winter to remind us that the sun does come out in England, and it is pretty nice when it does.

A rare artifact of historical life in the Peak District. See other pictures from our Bakewell aventure here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We wanted to wish y'all a happy Thanksgiving! We've decided to forego the turkey dinner in the spirit of "if you can't do Thanksgiving right, don't do it at all." Our oven just has one tiny rack, and Thanksgiving dinners for both of us mean special dishes that only our Moms can make. To honor the spirit of Thanksgiving though, here are some things we are grateful for:

• Our fantastic friends, who even though we're not there physically, make us feel like we are home in spirit by emailing and calling and keeping us in their lives - being away from you makes us realize how very special you all are, and we can literally say there's no one like you in the world
• Our families, moms dads brothers sisters and extended - we are so blessed to be loved and supported and shaped by the strongest, deepest, funniest people we know
• the mild weather in England, where we still only need light jackets on most days
• the relationships we are beginning to form here

AND we are most grateful this year for the improved health of (Nick's) Grandmom and (Lauren's) Mom. Grandmom has been doing really well since the summer, and we are so excited about this long stretch of healthiness. Mom finished her last round of regular chemo a few weeks ago. Her CAT scan came back clear, and hopefully her blood work will as well (we'll hear soon). Plus, her ankle is on the mend and she is off her crutches! We thank God for bringing her to this point in her recovery, and pray for her continued healing.

A Teary-Eyed Tribute

Here’s a shot of one of our favorite streets to date. The ironic potential of a city alley literally called ‘Needless Alley’ could power a small town. Unfortunately this post is actually a tribute in loving memory of this wonderful sign. We usually get a good chuckle every time we walk down the main shopping street in Birmingham from seeing the good ol’ Needless Alley sign. Sadly, yesterday all that was left was an empty rusted frame and an unlabeled, seemingly needless alley. Apparently someone wanted to keep all of that ironic comedy to themselves, and stole the sign during one of the 18 hours of darkness here. It almost seems hard to blame them, and in a way, aren’t cities with nicely painted iron signs with witty and clever names asking for them to be stolen?

The answer, is NO.

Go Bucks!

The Ohio State Buckeyes held onto their number 1 berth yesterday, holding off University of Michigan in one of the most exciting regular-season college football games - well, ever! It was "the most-hyped game in the 103-year history of the most-hallowed rivalry". Just one more game between OSU and the national championship! For me, this makes 2006 the greatest football year ever.

And we missed the whole season. What are we doing here??? :-)

Roman Holiday

Well it only took us 3 weeks, but we have finally labelled and posted our pictures from our long weekend in Rome for Lauren's birthday. It turns out, there is actually a whole lot to see in Rome and we ended up with quite a few pictures. You can use the link at the end of this post to view them.

We had great weather for the trip, and apparently October is like the perfect time to go to Rome; it was not too crowded and it wasn't too hot, which was good because we did an enormous amount of walking which would not have been fun in the heat of summer. Rome has a metro system, which is great, but it only has 2 lines, a NS and an EW line. This meant that often it would be just as far to walk to a metro station as it would to just hike to our next destination. As a result, we probably walked 15-20 miles in the three days we were in the city, but they were scenic miles, with plenty of gelato and pizza breaks.

Rome is a great walking city, and we enjoyed walking along the river or getting lost in a dense maze of narrow streets trying to find the well-hidden Pantheon. None of the streets in the city-centre ever felt unsafe, and we found lots of cool little restaurants and monuments wandering off the beaten track. Our hostel was incredibly convenient, located on a main street just a few blocks away from St. Peter’s Basilica. Other than being the only people in the 38-bed hostel who wanted to sleep at night, we would generally recommend the place…more as a place to keep your stuff than sleep. We probably would have been better off on some park benches.

Other than a lack of sleep, the trip was fantastic, jolly good, a real hoot, etc. The food was amazing: we didn’t even understand how Italian food that looked pretty much like what we are use to in the States tasted like we were discovering lasagne, or pizza, or pasta for the first time. Perhaps the freshness of the ingredients has something to do with it, but we couldn’t find bad food in Rome. We would stop at some street stand for pizza, and, sure enough, it would be the best pizza we’d ever tasted. Any benefit we got from all our walking was certainly offset by the massive amounts of delicious food we ate. If Rome was a desert with a few Italian restaurants, we would still recommend going.

All in all, Lauren voted this her best big city (since no city can replace Pittsburgh) for the food, history, and beauty of the Italian capital. What are your favourite cities? We had a great trip, and we are very fortunate to have opportunities like this…not a bad 25th birthday!

Pictures, as promised.

I Heart Our Library

How do I love the Birmingham library, let me count the ways (I'm not joking).....

For starters, the library was our first and best friend in Birmingham. It's just a short walk from the train station, has great hours, and free internet! It is the reason we found our flat and it was a lifeline to home at a time we had none. The movie section is fanastic - there is an entire section of Classics as well as one on Literature. We're currently working our way through the Sherlock Holmes collection.

Then I discovered the music section. It is huge, filled with cds from all walks of life. I've never seen so many international/world cd's, including separate sections for each country. It has all of those Hear music cd's that Starbucks carries and I'm always curious about but never willing to pay money for, musical and movie soundtracks, even a country music section (and NO ONE in this country listens to c&w). You can check out 8 cd's at a time for two weeks. In the past two weeks I've gotten:
-The Hurricane soundtrack
- Damien Rice "O"
- Damien Rice "B-Sides"
- The definitive Don Williams
- The definitive John Lennon
- David Gray "Life in Slow Motion"
- Sergio Mendes "Timeless"
- The best of Patsy Cline
- John Legend "Get Lifted"
- Green Day "American Idiot"
- Bing Crosby "Winter Wonderland" (the best Christmas song-singer ever)
- Radiohead "The Bends"
- Radiohead "Hail to the Thief"
- Oasis "Familiar to Millions"
- The Rough Guide to Irish Music

It is like walking into a music store that stocks everything and being allowed to take whatever you want. As a result, we're trying to expand our musical taste: who is your favorite artist? Your favorite cd? What else should we be sure to check out?