Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy Independence Day!


The sun has sunk below the horizon and the day here in England is coming to a close.  I spent the first 4th of July outside of my home and it was different.  Mom is here so it was nice to spend the day with her and Mark.

We started the day with a nice breakfast, or rather, a nice brunch since it was past 10 when we finally ate.  And then we headed into town.  Mark had a meeting at 2 so Mom & I wondered about for a bit on our own. 

Hull Trinity Church

Pretty Windows!

We eventually made our way to the Trinity Church that was built about 700 years ago.  It's a bit old and really cool.  Of course I just happen to like really old churches.  This is where pretty much anyone who is anyone was baptized here.  Mark & I were originally thinking about attending this church and while it would be really cool, the Lord steered us in a different direction.

Baptismal

But my favorite part of these old churches is innards, such as the windows.  Trinity Church also has a beautiful baptismal made out of hull marble, which is crushed shell.  If you look closely (which this picture doesn't do) you can actually see tiny pieces of different shells.  Many, many famous people were baptized in this thing, including Wilberforce, who was the main man behind the abolition movement here in England.  GB did away with slavery long before we did.  There's even a movie about it called Amazing Grace.  I've not seen it because I've been told it's fairly sad but also uplifting.

Mark describing how he'd get to the pillars from the floor

After Mark's meeting he met up with us at the church and instantly started thinking about how he could move about the building a la Assasins Creed.  I'm telling him, no darling.  I think he's played that game too much.  :)  Much like all churches of this era, there was the nave (where we are in this picture) and several more different areas.  Take, for example, the picture directly above us.  One thing interesting about the church is that the nave had no pews originally and so the unwashed masses had to stand for the entire service.  However, during the 19th century they put in pews.

Pew Lxxvii

Each one had it's own unique number and each was decorated with hand carved hand rests.

Pew hand rest

Pew hand rest

a married couple

Another thing I love about these old churches is that they have tombs inside of them!  How cool is that?  Yes, we're just going to have a random tomb here, inside the church.  The Beverley Minster is filled with tombs like this.  It also happens to be the object of our journey on Thursday!  There are also gravestones on the floor and when I mean on the floor I actually mean, the gravestones are the floor, least the names of the dead are inscribed on the floor.  Some of them are so old that they are worn down by the passage of millions of feet.

tombstone inside the church.  

tombstone outside

And once we were done at the church (and no, this isn't the sum total of pictures, just a few) we meandered about a bit more and found the Hull Grammar School.  If all the who's who of Hull went to Trinity Church then they went to Hull Grammar School.  It's now the hands on history museum.

Why did Victorian children work?

What was it like to live on a Victoria street?

so yeah, it's really, really old.  See, there's Wilberforce again.  There was a huge section of what life was like for children during the Victorian era (not so great compared to modern times).  This section really makes a person glad to have things like running water.  One thing you don't get a sense of, unless you live in one of these buildings (which I currently am, unfortunately) is how poorly built these things are.  These buildings are hovels and each room has to have a fireplace (now boarded up).  Behind each house is an alley that leads to the outhouse.  These alleys allowed people to come in each morning and dispose of the waste. Urine would be used for tanning and poo was probably turned into fertalizer.  There's a tannery not far from here and when they're open for business you can smell it!


Once we were done with the museum we headed back into town center to find someone who could answer the question: why won't the O2 sim card work on mom's verizon iPhone4s.  Apparently it's not been properly unlocked so Mom needs to email verizon and have someone unlock it for her... or have Apple do it.  Either way it's frustrating.


And then it we went to the tourist information centre (or TIC as Mark kept calling it.  He kept saying tick and I had no idea what he was saying.  Then he told me he was saying TIC not tick.  I accused him of speaking British at me.)  where mom bought some postcards.  So check your mailboxes in a week or so and if you sent mom your addy then you should have a postcard coming your way.


After that it was time to go home and start some supper for the 4th.  We had some british beef (meh, it ain't exactly USDA choice), mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.  And for dessert I whipped up some whipped cream (they have it here but it tastes funny-no sugar nor vanilla added) and we had ice cream inferior cheesecake (I'm not sure what kind of cream cheese they used and if there was any sour cream added).


All in all, it was a good day.  We ended it trying to watch 1776 but it wouldn't let us so we watched Up instead.  After that it was bed time.


And thursday shall be an entirely new day and full of new adventures!