“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit.” -Aristotle

Hello all!

My name is Sidney Pezley and this is a guest post! I’m a friend of Beka’s from high school, which feels like a million years ago, we even had our grad parties together which is pretty cute. Last fall, I messaged Beka to ask about potentially visiting her and Josh in England at some point during the spring, she was enthusiastic and as soon as I had a “yes, it’s cool if you visit” from her I bought tickets. To say I was excited to visit Beka IN England would be quite an understatement.

In the days and weeks leading up to the trip, Beka was a rock star at planning our time, looking into transportation schedules, checking tickets and mapping out when to see what based on travel and a million things I had never considered. By the time I landed in London (after an overnight 9 hour flight with not one but TWO screaming toddlers!! Yay!!) I had detailed instructions on how to navigate London’s train system to make it from Heathrow to St. Albans where Beka and Josh live, the two of them greeted me enthusiastically at the train station and what a JOY it was to see them.

My first full day in the UK had a tour of the Harry Potter studio on the agenda! Beka had reached out asking if I was interested in touring the studio to which I (obviously) said yes but not really knowing what to expect. It was amazing. The building is where a large portion of the movies were filmed, lots of the sets had been recreated for people to tour and so many of the costumes were there for people to see. In addition to the tangible things we also watched videos of how a lot of the props were used in combination with CGI for filming fantastical scenes, how some of the creatures were designed and so much of the artwork and blueprints for set design. Wow wow wow. Both Beka and I were astounded at the amount of work and detail put into creating movies we can watch in 2 hours. The tour wrapped up with a huge model of the Hogwarts grounds which was absolutely incredible. For anyone even a bit familiar with Harry Potter- I recommend checking it out, so so so impressive.

Day two was spent hanging out in St. Albans which is adorable and I loved it. There’s a market on Wednesday’s that we wandered through with vendors selling all kinds of things- food, essential oils, landscape prints, pastries- you can guess which we sampled. For lunch we stopped at one of the pubs and then headed down to the cathedral. Beka had mentioned we’d be checking it out and I thought ‘sounds neat, I like churches’. But wow, this is a CATHEDRAL. We randomly ended up on a tour with a guide who knew bizarrely hilarious pieces of information about the cathedral and laughed at her own jokes which is endearing. Not only is the building massive but also a strange mash-up of architectural styles and the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain. It’s immense and well worth a tour. That evening, Beka and I went into London for dinner at a restaurant with skylights and plants (lots of plants, my kind of place!). Our utensils were just a fork and cleaver (true story) and we had the most amazing steak I’ve ever had. After dinner we headed out to see the play Aladdin. If you get the chance to see it live, I recommend it- the set is stunning and the Genie is worth every cent.

Day three! A big day! We started the day off on the train into London- it’s worth noting that I adore public transportation, trains in particular. We took trains everywhere and it was the best. Anyways. Took the train in to walk around St. Paul’s cathedral which is massive and amazing. We had some time before our tour of Shakespeare’s Globe so we ducked into the Tate Modern, one of four parts of an art museum network in GB. Turns out Beka and I are under-appreciators of modern art so we spent most of our time in the gift shop admiring coffee mugs. Next up was touring the Globe and wow. It was SO cool and our tour guide knew (or very believably made-up) everything. Given the Globe’s lack of a roof we were so grateful for the 70 degree blue sky weather and enjoyed sitting inside the Globe theatre learning about its history and shows it still hosts to this day. Very cool. We had a quick lunch after the Globe and then the Tower of London. I (naively, innocently, dumbly?) thought the Tower would be a literal tower with the Crown Jewels on the inside and boy is that not at all the case! The Tower is actually a massive former residence for the royal family, guards still live there and the compound is huge. Beka and I ended up on a tour of the grounds which are given by Yeomen Warders who live on-site and are former members of the armed forces. Our YW (Yeomen Warder, abbreviation I just made up) knew an astounding amount of British history including random facts about members of the royal family. The Tower has a pretty gruesome history with lots of death and beheading which the YW rather gleefully explained. Once the tour was finished we got to see the Crown Jewels as well as various other coronation and baptismal artifacts STILL used by the royal family. It was unreal. Absolutely unreal. After we’d had our minds boggled by the Crown Jewels and their precious stones, we spent some time admiring the London Bridge and headed out. BUT! The day was not yet over! We stopped at the British Library to see some ancient and treasured artifacts housed there including TWO of the four existing copies of the Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible, original copies of music by some of my absolute favorite composers (Beethoven, anyone?), and in general things that are so old they should not exist anymore but somehow do. After the Library we took the train (so many trains!) back to St. Albans and had ice cream which was really the cherry on top of the best day.

Day four was a chill day hanging out in St. Albans. The weather was unbelievably beautiful for my entire trip- 70s and sunshine! I’d mostly packed clothes anticipating rain and gloom, I wasn’t disappointed by the sunshine but it was definitely a constant surprise! We spent the day playing cards in the park, had lunch on the patio at the best ranked pub in St. Albans, enjoyed some milkshakes for dessert, and lots of walking and sunshine. Beka and I decided to see the movie Aladdin so we could compare and contrast the Disney version to the play. Will Smith was good but believe me, it’s better live.

Day five! The biggest day! Time flies when you’re having fun! We started with a tour of the Royal Observatory which was precluded by a climb up a MASSIVE hill but had an incredible view of the London skyline. The Observatory is probably the nerdiest of all the requests I made for things to visit but 100% WORTH IT, WOW. The observatory is where former Royal Astronomers lived, where they researched methods of keeping time, mapping stars, and where the prime meridian concept was developed. The prime meridian we currently use runs through the Observatory and it sounds like a weird thing to visit but it is so cool. The observatory now is a museum featuring former astronomers who lived onsite and has an incredible collection of clocks developed as people made constant discoveries as to how best to track time for both land use and use on ships. After we learned everything there is to know about time, we wandered through Greenwich market and had a delicious lunch there, dessert and coffee included. Our afternoon was full of sight seeing- we visited Buckingham Palace (I’m embarrassed to admit I was unimpressed??), then over to Westminster Abbey, Parliament (VERY impressed), and what you can see of Big Ben through the renovations. After waiting in line we went up into the London Eye which offered incredible views of the city, absolutely worth it. After the Eye we wrapped up our day by visiting Trafalgar Square and then eating some really fantastic pizza.

My flight was early the next morning so Beka and Josh helped me navigate the trains (seriously, so many trains!!) to get to the hotel I’d be staying at near the airport. I successfully navigated both the trains and buses I needed to take, made it to the hotel, slept beautifully and then made it to the airport on time for my flight in the morning. Flights were full of more screaming babies- including one who had been on my flight to London which was funny until he started crying. Despite the babies I made it home safely and was glad to be back in my bed.

What a trip. It was so amazing to visit London and St. Albans, the places we visited were incredible, the weather was amazing, the food was everything I wanted it to be, and we took trains everywhere which is my dream. But more than that, seeing and spending time with Beka and Josh was such a blessing. It was so fun to see and explore the place they’ve been calling home for a while now, to hear about what their life in the UK looks like and to see some of the places I’ve heard about. It was so good, I’d go back in a heartbeat and I’d visit them regardless of where they live, without a moment’s hesitation.

-Sidney

We are so glad that Sidney came to visit and had such a wonderful time. I’m truly thankful for her friendship over the years and how we can still reconnect like no time has gone by. It was truly perfect weather while she was here and we enjoyed seeing so many sights with her! We are looking forward to seeing my parents soon, who are arriving in just a few days for their stay, which of course will include birding 😉 – Bekah & Joshua

 

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