Monday, June 30, 2014

Priories and Pubs

It's just me writing today because Stefanie had a very normal day of class while I went on a field trip to two churches and a pub to explore the effects of the Reformation on the English landscape. (That's one thing you certainly can't do in America: go on a field trip for your Tudor History course.) 

Getting mail from your family is always
a good way to start out the day!
We gathered at 10:00 am to drive in a van to Boxgrove Priory. The church was a monastery before the Reformation, when Henry VIII dissolved all the monasteries. It's still beautifully decorated on the inside, in addition to having an impressive graveyard. This church survived much of the looting and destruction that other churches witnessed during this period due to the influence of a wealthy local family, the De La Warrs (that's the family that founded Delaware and had a hand in the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia). 



The grave of the first American soldier killed in
World War II; he volunteered to fight for the British. 



The ruins of part of the priory
The priory was built on a Roman site; they re-used
Roman roof tiles in the wall, which you can see here 

After exploring the grounds a bit, we headed off to a thatched roof pub called the Gribble Inn for lunch. The pub brews several beers on site and bakes its bread fresh every morning. Professor Hutchinson bought us all a beer; I had the Gribble Ale which was quite good! It was a nice enough day that we could sit outside, which was lovely. 
My ham, tomato, mustard sandwich was incredible. 
All the beers that the pub brews
We got back into the van and drove to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of Warminghurst, which is no longer in use but shows how a church would have looked "in Jane Austen's time," as Professor Hutchinson said. It was a stark contrast to Boxgrove Priory, as it had very little ornamentation. 
These doors are from the house of William Penn,
founder of Pennsylvania. 
During Edward VI's reign, even the crucifix probably
wouldn't have been allowed. 

This bronze monument depicts the Shelley family. 
One of the Shelley sons was found harboring a
Catholic priest; he was drawn and quartered and
someone was sent to remove him from the
monument because there was a law stating that a
monument couldn't depict a traitor. 
Across the hills, we could almost see a Roman
sacred site on the top of the far mountain.
After the fairly short drive back to the university, I asked Professor Hutchinson if he would answer a few questions about the paper due Wednesday. He not only agreed but also said we could grab a coffee while we discussed it! I feel a lot better about the paper now (he even recommended some new sources for me), but I still have a lot of work to do. Therefore, Stefanie will be in charge of the blog tomorrow while I frantically write about Lady Margaret Beaufort, King Henry VII's mother. 

More Wimbledon Pictures!

I have finally had time to go through all of the pictures I took at Wimbledon! While we posted several before which we took with our phones, I thought I would add a couple I snapped with my camera. These are mostly of the actual tennis. My photography skills are not stellar (I really wish my dad had been there with his professional camera skills and because he would have loved it), but there are a couple I think turned out okay. Enjoy! - Stefanie




B. Bencic



Victoria Duval would put her towel on her head
every time she sat down which was entertaining.

Victoria Duval



It was an exciting second set!

Bryan Brothers


They always show the people sitting in front of this screen
watching the Centre Court match when I watch Wimbledon on TV
so it was really cool to be one of the people sitting there.


Sunday, June 29, 2014

Indian Food and Tears

After an eventful Friday at Wimbledon, we laid low and relaxed this weekend (and tried to catch up on sleep). Saturday, we went grocery shopping and did some laundry before ordering Indian food from a food delivery website.
We actually used real plates. #grownups #fancy
Nicole's
Stefanie's
Today, we decided to go into Brighton to find a macaron store that Nicole had read about and see The Fault in Our Stars. The cafe was adorable and the food was so yummy; we're definitely going back there.
#heaven 


Chocolate, Black Forest, Rose, Lemon-Lime
Stefanie's delicious tomato, mozzarella, pesto croissant
The movie was incredible, even if we were surrounded by hordes of British pre-teen girls who were freaking out basically the entire movie. Nicole was pretty proud that she only cried once.
#emotionallytraumatized #iblameyoujohngreen
On our way back to the bus stop, we paused to take a picture of St. Paul's Church, which is magnificent. The fact that it's in the middle of a very modern-looking shopping center makes it seem even more beautiful. 




Friday, June 27, 2014

Wimbledon Vlog

Stefanie and I thought it might be fun to do some vlogging and we decided that Wimbledon was the perfect time to vlog because we could take you along for the adventure. Let us know what you think!


The 128th Lawn Tennis Championships (or Wimbledon 2014)

We woke up bright and early this morning (and by that we mean 4:30 am, so we were waking up before some of our US readers went to bed last night). We took a series of three trains and a cab to get to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. We arrived at 8:30 to take our place in the massive queue.

We had plenty of time to take selfies
So many (this is a tiny portion of the people there)
Stefanie's Queue card, which holds your place in line
There were surprisingly few vendors (mostly, just two newspaper companies walking around). We both bought a package from the Daily Telegraph, which included a cute tennis tote bag, newspaper, foldable lawn blanket, and a choice of sunglasses or a Fair Trade chocolate bar (Nicole got chocolate, Stefanie got sunglasses #typical). 

We finally got into the real queue at 10:15 (everything before that was the queue for the queue). While we were in that queue, it was sprinkling which made us very nervous that we might get rained out. There were little vendors along the real queue (including Lavazza and Evian). They were giving out free coffee packets, mini Evian water bottles, and rain ponchos. As university students, we're always happy to find free things!
The set-up was so cute! 
Clever advertising for their Twitter 


Apparently, the amount of tennis balls used weigh the same
as a hippo! Hence this interesting piece of art work...
Once we got through security, we moved fairly quickly. We had purchased tickets (grounds tickets were 20 pounds) and were at Court 18 by 11:00. We got to watch a women's singles match, with the American Victoria Duval. Unfortunately, she lost, but we think some of her relatives were sitting next to us, which was awesome!
We got to see them take the tarp off the court and
put the net together

We were so happy to finally be done waiting!

The building with Centre Court
By the time the match ended, we were starving! We went down to the food court and picked up some lunch which we took to eat at a picnic table in a cute garden. While we were finishing up, a guy asked us if he could interview us about the food for a study. We said yes and answered a lot of questions about Wimbledon's dining options (so glad that he was recording that conversation so he can hear how awkward we were all over again).

Then, we set out for the doubles courts. We watched most of an exciting women's doubles match, while trying to catch glimpses of the Bryan brothers through the hordes of people. Every so often, we could see Tsonga through the opening to the stairs to Court 3 (a forbidden area since we're not cool rich enough to have seating tickets).

You can kind of see Tsonga serving through the crowd of
people watching Tsonga serving
We explored the Wimbledon Shop a bit before trying some of Wimbledon's famous strawberries and cream. They were so delicious! (We were so glad we decided to each get one.)


We watched a few minutes more of tennis, before asking a lady to take our picture. She asked how it looked and when we said, "Perfect!" she replied, "You're perfect!" #welovethebrits

We decided to grab some dinner at a Pret near the train station because we knew nothing would be open on campus by the time we got back. Stefanie got another yummy salad and I got a delicious prosciutto and tomato baguette.
Om nom
 Then it was time to take the three trains home, which once again went a lot smoother than we expected even if we did experience a bit of confusion. We're absolutely exhausted, but it was definitely worth it!