Family! :: Winchester

After Grandma and Joanna came back from Scotland (and after two essays and an exam) we took a visit to Winchester. One of my Grandma's high school classmates, Shirley Firth (Colin Firth's mom!!!), lives there, so we visited her and her husband, David. Getting there was an adventure in and of itself. We had tons of luggage; I sent a suitcase home with them, so we had three big suitcases, two little ones and a backpack. We had to change train stations in London, so we weretrying to maneuver all this luggage through the underground and Grandma wasn't feeling the best, so you can imagine. But we made it. David met us at the train station and showed us around the city. There are about 60,000 people that live in Winchester. It is such an old city; the streets are still narrow since they were built before cars and never expanded.

The first day we saw the Great Hall and King Arthur's Round Table. The Round Table is huge. We were joking that if they actually ate around it they must have had to yell in order to hear each other. "PASS THE PEAS PLEASE!" :) Behind the Great Hall is Queen Eleanor's garden, which is lovely, of course. It reminded me of the secret garden; it is kind of isolated and really quiet. I took lots of pictures of flowers - they are just too pretty to pass up.

The next day we visited the cathedral. It has one of the biggest stained glass windows in England (it's the size of a tennis court) and Jane Austen (amongst many other people) are buried there. They were celebrating the 400th birthday of the King James version of the Bible, so they were having an exhibit there for that. We had a tour of the cathedral and this absolutely adorable woman named Noreen was the one who led it. She was 80 years old and could walk faster than me.

The rest of our time in Winchester was spent talking and catching up. It was so relaxing and a nice way to end the time with my sister and grandma. Now only two more weeks and I'll be back in the States to see them!