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Wow! It is going to be difficult to consolidate everything that I was able to do in the past few days into this blog, but I will try it and the pictures will help. Our entire group started the journey with a bus ride on Friday morning to Penshurst Place in the countryside outside of London. This was a very old English home, dating back to medeival times, built originally as a hunting lodge for a nobleman. It was used by a King of England or two (including hosting a party for Henry VIII), before it was given by King Henry's son to a friend and father figure of his. This guy (who I am ashamed to say I can't even think of his name right now) was extremely wealthy and he transformed the home into a mansion, with all sorts of extravagent specialties inside. We got to see the old medeival hall, which is basically the same as it was back in the olden days (it has been used to entertain kings from back then all the up to the current queen as well as wedding receptions and things... incredible/incredibly expensive haha). We also got to see some of the home and the completely original paintings, tapestries (I gained a new appreciation for these), marble and stone chests, armor, weapons, and furniture, etc. We did not however, go into the modern portion of the mansion, but that is only because the family descendants still own and live in the place!!! More impressive than all of the inside stuff were the gardens outside though. The pictures that I am uploading will help describe them, but they won't do them real justice. It was really cool to explore because it was almost set up like a maze, and I continued to just stumble upon a meadow or a grove or a flower garden that was more beautiful or more awesome than the last one. Anyway, after Penshurst Place, we travelled on up to Cantebury. After a little exploring in the town and staying in a neat little, cottage-style hotel we went on a Saturday morning tour of Cantebury Cathedral. Once again, breathtakingly beautiful. There has been a church on that site for 1400 years and many of the things that I saw were around 800 years old. The story of the church in England is a topsy-turvy one, but it was really cool to see a place of worship that goes back that far. We also saw the site of Thomas Beckett's murder here and learned a little about the pilgramages that Cantebury Tales is based off of. After Cantebury, we went to Dover. We didn't have long to explore, but while there we got to go through and on top of Dover Castle, which sits on top of the white "Cliffs of Dover" overlooking the English Channel and the city of Dover. From the top of the castle, you could even see across the channel (this is the narrowest distance between England and the Continent) all the way over to France!! There was also a lot of WWII history here which interested me. Dover was bombed heavily, the Brits built tunnels under the castle and in the chalk of the cliffs (which I toured), the "Miracle of Dunkirk" when over 300,000 troops were rescued from France as the Nazi's surrounded them was launched here, and the decoy D-Day attack was going to come from Dover and go to Calais instead of Normandy (which the Germans totally bought...suckers). So, all of that was really cool and I wanted to see more, but alas, it was time to go to the British Open. From the castle, some friends and I hiked down the mountain basically into the city of Dover and found the train station. We finally made it Blackpool (which is on the complete opposite coast of England) at about ten that night. Blackpool was not my favorite place in the world, but I won't go into that, and it was kind of redeemed when we were lucky enough to meet the nicest people of all time (the owners of the bed and breakfast we stayed in). To make a long story a little shorter, we took a cab the next morning out to the golf course: Royal Lytham & St. Annes. I was like a kid in a playground. I got to follow Tom Watson and John Daly for a long time, I almost got hit by K.J. Choi's drive and I stood right next to him as he talked over his next shot and hit it (he's awesome), and I saw Rickie Fowler lip out an eagle from around 200 yards out. I also watched Jim Furyk, Miguel Angel Jiminez, Zach Johnson, Bubba Watson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, Matt Kuchar, Adam Scott, Graham MacDowell, Tiger Woods and countless others warm up on the driving range and play on the course. It was a lot like Penshurst because of the way I was able to just wander along and see something really cool, like one of my favorite atheletes. Needless to say, it was a jam-packed and really entertaining weekend.
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Nussie Wonderful...Thank you. Love you!