Disneyland England

Our lovely B&B Room

I woke up to a pleasant surprise: I actually woke up at a decent time!  I woke up a little past seven o'clock so I was able to get up, shower, get ready and still be downstairs for my very first English breakfast: sausage, bacon (it's actually just ham here), an egg, toast, hot chocolate, hash browns, and beans.  Baked beans, like you'd eat at a barbecue.  A little different but I was hungry.

We got in the coach and went to Disneyland Warwick Castle.  I had been excited about it based on their website but I was disappointed.  Very disappointed.  Dover Castle was everything I expected a castle to be.  This just felt gimmicky and like it was made just for tourists.  It upset me that they took a beautiful old castle and ruined it by making into some sort of amusement park.  We couldn't even do the cool things because they cost extra.  And there was no jousting.  The thing that took the longest was all about the affairs some lady had with any guy who showed up.

Playing poker with a couple of wax statues.  I had a good hand.

This wax statue creeped me out a little

 The weirdest part was not seeing the wax statues but just that real people in costumes would wander through and I'd panic a little thinking the statues were moving.  It was just weird.

At least the Great Hall was cool

The best part of the castle.  Also the oldest part that was built by a warrior princess!

 The best part about this was the grounds had been designed by my hero, Lancelot Capability Brown!  I've mentioned him before.  It's always fun to see him pop up again!

It was cold.  See how my nose is red?  It was the coldest day here so far.

The peacock house was pretty cool

 

Wanna know how cold it was?

This is ice.  The fountain was frozen!

Let's raid the castle!

 A few of us took a quick tour that talked about the history of a castle and how we'd attack it if we wanted to.  I already knew all of it (the problem with studying something for ten years or so means that in informational tours such as these don't have a lot of new information.  Still, it's cool to see it firsthand).  I was also able to tell the tour guide what happened in 1066 when none of the British people knew.  Hooray for my history classes here!  For those of you who don't know, that's when William the Conqueror came and conquered England.  He ran around building a lot of castles and this is one of them.

Murder holes for the defenders to pour hot oil, hot water, and, as our tour guide put it "hot wee" on the attackers.

 Afterwards we went into the dungeon.  There wasn't anything scary down there, but imagining the many many people who had been put in there and died creeped me out.  I can't imagine being in such a small area with so many other people until you die.  I've known about these things for a long time, of course, but it's different to see the tiny holes where they put especially troublesome prisoners or other gross things you'd probably rather not read about.

A wax horse

 Another exhibit showed a little bit more of the Medieval castle history that I like best.  It had more armor and things like that.  Still, it felt fake.  Really fake.  I feel like they could have done a much better job with this.

Thank goodness for indoor plumbing, right? 

After that we went and checked out the gift shop.  I found a coat of arms for Stevens but they spelled it with a v.  It turns out the original Latin spelling is with a ph so we really do it spell it right!  It also explained the meaning and history of the name.  The crest was pretty neat so I probably would have bought it except for the v.  Silly V's.

Our last stop was the Great Hall which included a few side rooms with some fun displays.  How would you like to eat dinner here?

 It also had a room dedicated to our good friend Henry VIII who seems to show up everywhere we go. He had all of his wives with them which I thought was a little strange, seeing as most were banished or had lost their heads by the time the later ones came around.  I figured I might as well join 'em, though.

 My friend Emma and I couldn't help swooning over his, uh, magnificence.  Yeeeaaauuuuccch.

 Two hours had passed and it was time to head over to Oxford.  We ate lunch and then met for our tour of the town/school.  The most notable part of the tour was when I graduated from Oxford!  Our tour guide used to be the master of education or something like that so he demonstrated to us what it was like to graduate.  Since I was standing closest, he grabbed my arm and my hand (apparently they do that), spoke a bunch of Latin, presented me to a few other people in the group, and then told them which Latin to say to declare me graduated.  Apparently I'm a model student to graduate the first day I set food in Oxford!

Everything's in Latin.  Can you tell which school this is?  

 One of my favorite places was the dining hall.  They based the Great Hall set after one of them but you have to pay to go in there and they didn't actually film so we skipped it.  I'd also like to mention that it was cold.  Very cold.  We were all huddled together as much as possible.

Look like Harry Potter to anyone?

 It should.  Because do you see where those people are standing?  That's where the scene from the 45h movie where Draco is turned into a ferret happens!  :D  Of course, that part of Hogwarts is also modeled after this area.  It should look familiar to my family who have played the Order of the Phoenix computer game as well.

Tom Felton stood right there!

 After our tour we went to a store to stock up on Oxford hoodies and T-shirts.  I'd rather have a London hoodie than an Oxford one so I just got a T-shirt.  It was five pounds as opposed to twenty pounds.  Then we went to Starbucks to buy hot chocolate to try to warm ourselves up!

The last stop was a museum while waiting for the bus.  We weren't planning on going in but it was too cold to do anything else.  Finally the bus arrived and we headed for home.  And notice that I said home.  It feels like home now.  As I went to bed I was cheerfully thinking about how nice it was to be back in my own bed and then realized that actually, it wasn't my bed.  But it's nice to be comfortable enough here that home to me is 27 Palace Court at least for now!