It's a Rick Pick!

This week as we have been set loose in various places with no schedule and no agenda we have begun to rely on Rick Steve's guidebooks to Great Britain. Hence the title of this post because each of Rick's 3 diamond (not stars!) recommendations have been dubbed a "Rick Pick". Here is us posing with Rick. Moving on.

After leaving Edinburgh we went to the lovely town of York. The only thing really to see in York is the York Minster. It is a giant cathedral built on a Norman Cathedral, built on a building used to baptize a Norman king, built on a Roman building. So lots of stuff going on there.

It had some of the coolest stain glass windows and carvings and statues.

The giant window they are famous for was not even there. They are repairing it piece by piece and apparently it's going to take 15 years to do it! So now they have a giant photograph where it was. Actually the photograph alone was impressive. They had to get HP to make a special printer in order to print this thing!

After we toured the Minster we got to hike up the York Minster Tower. It took about 10 minutes to get up the tiny spiral staircase. But the view was totally worth it!

The next day we headed out to the town of Cambridge. First we stopped at the American Military Cemetery. I have never been to a military cemetery before that I can remember. The experience was humbling and a bit overwhelming. Seeing the graves of a fraction of men and women who died for our country in one place makes their sacrifice more real to me. Reading numbers out of a textbook is one thing but seeing graves is another.

There was also a little chapel there that had a cool mosaic as well as a giant map showing the different squadrons (? I don't know my military terminology) from America that were stationed around the world. Fun fact: The architects for this cemetery were also the architects for Furman! Such a weird connection...

Then we finally hit Cambridge. Its a cool city. There are about a zillion colleges and pretty buildings there. We were all so tired that it was kinda hard to take in everything in under 24 hours.

Coolest thing we found in Cambridge was this random alley with a sign that said FU (for Furman University of course!). So we absolutely had to take a picture!

That night we had dinner at the Eagle's Pub. This was so cool because it is a place where the RAF (British air force) and American Air Force hung out during WWII. There are patches and stickers of all the squadrons around the room and they wrote on the walls and the ceilings. Also this is the place where Watson and Crick would hang out and they even announced their discovery of DNA from this pub.

We visited King's College the next morning and guess who's camera died. That's right, mine. Here's my one picture of the outside.

Then we drove to LONDON! Woo hoo! Downside: we had to say goodbye to our lovely bus driver Seamus. It was heartbreaking. He said goodbye to us and started crying. Ahhhh I hate goodbyes!

So yesterday we spent the day exploring London a little bit. We took a night walk as a group to get oriented and here is my first picture from London...I thought that was kinda a milestone, right?

Today I did nothing really. Slept til noon. Got out of bed at 1. Left the hotel room at 2. Then I just explored the city. I found my way to the main shopping area of town (I think I have a natural sense of finding my way to places where I can blow my money). Picture this--two H&Ms within 4 blocks of each other. Yesssssss!!!!!!!