Permission to come aboard sir? Permission granted

I was a part of 3 day trips this past weekend (because I'm including Friday as the weekend for the record).  The one on Friday was kind of last minute if you could believe it, but I'm so glad I went.
Friday, a couple friends convinced me to come with them to Canterbury, a town kind of to the South East.....I think...of London.  It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky honestly.  There's this story, The Canterbury Tales that I now see is obviously based around this town (go figure), as well as this amazing cathedral where Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170.  Becket was actually murdered (on accident apparently) in 1170 by four of the kings' knights.  The knights implied that the king had wanted someone to "rid him of this priest..." so they did.  Becket and the King at the time were actually quite close and the King spent a loonnnggg time repenting for it:

Funny story, this is actually the main gate to a private school...history is all over the place here

Outside of the Norman "castle"

The inside of the castle..all the floors were made of wood, long gone of course

Yeah, we were there long enough for me to buy my one cafe yo, it's pretty successful hehe

Canterbury Cathedral

I was trying to look academically into the courtyard...ehhh, could have been better on my part

into the cathedral....this shot is looking up right above the entrance to he Quior (where the dignitaries sit..not where the choir sings apparently though...go figure)

Thomas Becket died here; what I thought was interesting was when this plaque was put up, Pope John Paul II and the current Arch Bishop of Canterbury knelt here together in prayer...shows no one religion is better than the other I suppose (that's what the docent told us at least)

One of the plentiful awesome stain glass windows

bell from the HMS Canterbury, a C- Class light Frigate from WW-I

It's blurry b/c we weren't allowed to use flash okay...jeez

This is a look at the Quior

see the below picture for context.....

British I am

We ate dinner at this pub / restaurant established in the 1500's, almost 100 years older than Londons' Ye Olde Cheshyre Cheese (est. in 1620...about).  The food was great and the atmosphere made me feel all medieval like and such:

The Old Weavers House...see the AD 1500, place is old man

wider shot of the place, note that there is a canal to the right of the building (why it's leaning a little I suppose)

A view of said canal after dinner

I half expected to see Daniel Craig (James Bond) on this bus

On Saturday, UConn in London as a group went to Oxford for the day.  Now of course we all know UConn had a huge game that night against Arizona, so we made sure we watched the clocks so we could get back in time.  But now to Oxford; it was an overcast day with a couple moments of brief sunshine.  We ate lunch in a field by a canal, a field apparently bustling with activity when the weather is good, but today it was quite empty except for some people walking their dogs and a couple temperamental geese.  We got to go into a couple of college's within Oxford to take a brief look around.  One of the college's, Balliol College, was home to a German officer during WWII who was involved in Operation Valkyrie, the last major attempt to kill Hitler before the allies finally captured Berlin.  The esteemed Boris Johnson (Mayor of London) also graduated from this particular college of Oxford.  We didn't make it (when I say "we" I meant our 5 person group) to the college they filmed Harry Potter at.  My friends though took enough pictures for me to feel like I'm actually there anyway.  Here are some pictures that I got from there:

There were soooo many of these canal boats

Konstantin and Carolin..our Student Life Coordinators / R.A.'s eating lunch in that field

Oxford University Press...all those books that cost half your life savings for a class not in your major...made right here!!

no real importance to this building, I just liked this turret thingy

Trinity College of Oxford

The garden (that's me)

Outside of Trinity's dining hall

keep off the grass

Inside of that dining hall from before

Organ at the rear

chapel of Trinity college

list of Oxford students killed in action in WWII

The organ of Trinity's chapel

I'm just chillin in the garden...Boris Johnson could have sat on this bench man!!!!

dining hall of Balliol

another view

organ of Balliol

This is like an "epic" research library reserved only for the fellows (grad students)

The highlight of my weekend though, something I've been waiting to do since we came back from spring break, was going back to Portsmouth.  This time we went during the day, so we say everything in the harbor.  Portsmouth not only has this awesome historic dockyard, but an active Royal Navy yard where ships have been re-fitted (and used to be built too) for Her Majesties Royal Navy since the 1600's.  A friend, Sarah Frocheski (and one of the people from my spring break group that wanted to come back ) decided to join me (which was awesome b/c she's mad chill and I needed someone to take pictures of me in front of all this awesome stuff).  We went on the HMS Victory, the HMS Warrior, went on a Harbor tour, went into the Mary Rose museum (the ship is under further restoration right now which was too bad), and went through the Royal Navy museum.  The HMS Victory was Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar...where he was killed in action.  The ship is massive and so impressive even to this day.  It is the oldest active duty warship in the world as well.  This means that all the guns on her work....they're tested ocassionally but as I'm told they all fire just fine and she's got a fully trained crew to use them.  The HMS Warrior was the first British Iron-sided warship laid down in 1861.  It was the flagship of the red fleet, which is why the standard on her stern is still red (Portsmouth harbor is home to the White Fleet I believe...in today's terms the Atlantic Squadron).  The Warrior was a beautiful ship, I think I enjoyed that one more than The Victory, but they were both awesome.  The Harbor tour was great too, a boat took us around the active naval base of Portsmouth, showing us a collection of the ships being used by the Royal Navy today. 

What's depressing about it though is that there was still more to see in Portsmouth history-wise.  A D-Day museum and Royal Marines Museum escaped us b/c we ran out of daylight (and they all closed early b/c we're in the "off season").  We also climbed the Spinnaker Tower, a kind of touristy destination to be honest, but cool nonetheless.  I think comedically speaking, my day was made when on our way back on the train as we pulled into Portsmouth & Seaside rail station the voice announced something to the effect of: "...please alight here for hovercraft services to the Isle of Wright.."  I almost did, trust me, I almost got off the train to do that.  Anyway, here are some ofthe gazzilion pictures I took, the rest are up on Picassa:

for size comparsion

The quarter deck of Warrior was an armory

Spinnaker Tower

HMS Warrior

You can see the "Red Ensign" off the stern and the Spinnaker tower in the background...it's such an artsy foto lol

these stairs are to collect people that pull alongside the vessel

name plate along the stern as opposed to the side on American ships

a closer view of the standard....I had to go back and look at it again

standing on the absolute stern of the ship

like I said...an armory

Hey guys...I'm gonna need a little help here

swords

shot for the muzzle-loading cannon

view down a breach  loading cannon.  The big thing here is the spirals you see, those make the shot more accurate coming out of the barrel

powder room located below the water line so it wouldn't explode if the ship took a direct hit

in the wheel house when they move the levers to "all ahead full" from "all stop" it just moves this dial here, it doesn't actually do it for you...there are still guys who are standing here looking at the dial like "oh crap, we're gonna need more coal Jerry, we've gotta move now..."

I don't know if I'd be comfortable sharing a room with this gun....(bed in the background)

"why is the rum always gone"

looking back across the Warrior

uhh, yeah can I get 2 cheese pizzas,  uhh yeah address okay...the wheel house of the HMS Royal Oak?  No there's really no number, it's a battleship anchored in...okay never mind then

This is your captain speaking, we're about ready to depart...the forecast for Cloud City today is cloudy with a chance of clouds.  Please keep you seat belts fastened throughout the flight

"can you see yourself running into battle with this helmet on?  Nope, nothing more than posing for this picture"

This ship was right next to the Warrior

HMS Glouster

Harbor Master's House

HMS Ark Royal...recently decommissioned aircraft carrier

HMS Largs Bay

transport ship...I forgot the name

Hey look what we found!!! It's the ferry that took us from Caen to Portsmouth...hey what's hanging?!?!

Another view of the Spinnaker

HMS Victory

even with some of the guns removed to the dry dock around it, the boat is still inimidation

George Regina

Security guard watching the game...never seen it in person until then, but I felt soo much more secure after seeing this

replica ships bell, the real Victory bell is in the museum where you couldn't take pictures or touch it

ships wheel on the upper (poop) deck...there were 3 more sets going down in case one was damaged

They thought laying leather blankets between these gunpowder kegs would prevent the ship form exploding...it's a good thing they never had to test that theory

cannon balls in the hold

painting of Nelson's death, they yelled at me for trying to use flash

Nelson's body was placed in a cask of rum to preserve it on their return to England where he was buried at St. Paul's Cathedral

top of Spinnkaer Tower

there was a glass floor.....that's how far up we are

HMS Warrior in the foreground and Victory in the top right

Still outstanding though for me is a trip to Hever Castle.  Everywhere I went this past weekend there were brochures for it.  It'd require a taxi from the rail station to get there (a 5 minute ride so not too much) but it looks interesting and I'm always up for castles, especially one with this kind of history.  If possible, perhaps a tour of Parliament if I can reserve one.  What is booked and coming up though is a trip to Rome.  A group of five of us are going for the weekend to check it out.  A lot of people went of spring break and loved it, so we're gonna go and see what it's all about.  check back Monday night for pictures of that escapade. 

In spirit of the 15 hours I spent in Portsmouth, I leave you with a quote I found from John Paul Jones a while back.  Jones was an American Naval captain during the American Revolution:


"If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve master"
~John Paul Jones in a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette


To me, and of course it's up to interpretation, you've got to have a level of fear in your life, fear of becoming complacent or a physical fear of another, but being too comfortable will weaken your ability to react and such.  Having faith though in your ability to overcome difficult situations, to be the better and more mature person will provide one with complete mastery of their emotions and enable them to live with fear, but to control it.


Stay Tuned...