English vacation (Day 5): Sissinghurst and Scotney

I'm writing this post on Sunday, even though it's for Friday. I'm behind on my blogging because so much happens in a day that I don't have enough time to blog about it all that same day. I was going to download my pictures on Daisha's computer, but I didn't, so each time I blog, I have to hook my camera up and the whole process of sifting and uploading takes forever, so my evenings are usually consumed by blogging. I spent a bunch of time blogging and made my posts huge with tons of pictures because just in case something happened to my camera or memory card or something, I didn't want our vacation pictures lost. Thank goodness for blogs so I can record our memories day by day! I stayed up until 3 am the other morning finishing posts, and I'm glad I did because today (Sunday), my precious camera (my SLR you see around my neck in pictures) was stolen out of our stroller. So, I've lost every single one of my vacation pictures that I took on that camera, and all I have left are the pictures Daisha took and the ones we took on our little backup camera. I never did upload anything for Friday, Saturday or Sunday, so I don't have any pictures for those posts, other than what Daisha had. She took some pictures on her camera on Friday for half the day, so that's what you'll see on this post. Saturday and Sunday will be bare. Thankfully, I brought my little backup point and shoot camera, so we'll at least be able to take pictures with that for the rest of our vacation. So, back to Friday...

We started off the day by trying Edward's favorite cereal: Shreddies. They remind me of Wheat Chex, sort of.


After Tabitha got out of preschool, we took off to tour more stately homes. We started off at Sissinghurst Castle gardens, which was my favorite so far for landscape. Sissinghurst is where a woman named Vita lived. She was born at Knole, the massive home with all the deer everywhere (oh, I forgot to mention that with all the deer came a ton of deer poop everywhere that was almost impossible to dodge while walking across the grass), and then she ended up living at Sissinghurst until she died. She was happily married, but she also had a lover on the side. A female lover. Hmmmm. Scandal even in those days. (Notice in these pictures I have my camera around my neck...such a constant companion only to be taken from me 2 days later.)

The building behind us is called an Oast house. They used to make beer in them, but now they turn them into houses. They're all over here and are used in architecture today...even at the mall.


Sissinghurst had the most incredible gardens I could have ever imagined, and even though the flower season is almost completely over, I could just imagine how it would look in the spring and summer. I could visit those gardens everyday and not get sick of it.


We wandered the gardens helping the kids look for items on their anti-boredom checklist (birdhouse, statue, bench, etc).


Vita (the woman I mentioned earlier) was an author and used to write up in her tower at Sissinghurst. We climbed the tower to overlook the property, but I had to take a break on the way up since I'm so out of shape right now. The kids practically just ran up the spiral stairs. It was so high, and once at the top, I was scared one of the kids would plunge over the side, and Hyatt did try to climb up the edge by himself, but in the end, we did walk away with all the kids in one piece.


We ate lunch in their little restaurant where we tried their soup (much to Hyrum's disgust) and scones and some Englishy treats. Their restaurant was originally the barn, but it's fixed up and looks so pretty.

Next we went to Scotney and toured through the home. The owner only died 2 years ago, and it's now being taken care of by the National Trust so they're slowly repairing and restoring it. Even though it looks like a large mansion from ages ago, the interior decorating was much more modern than anything we've seen yet (and by modern, I mean the 20th century, but not today's trends). It had a massive property with rocky cliffs, millions of rhododendrons, ponds, lawns, and there was also a castle ruin down by the pond. I'm sad I don't have my pictures of it (stinking thieves). It was beautiful! Here's a picture I found off the web looking at the castle ruin from the main home.

Here are some steps in the landscape that we walked up.


Each one of these castles and homes would make a gorgeous backdrop for a wedding, and some people actually do get married at places like Leed's Castle.

For dinner that night, I chose what to eat, so we had pot pies. We used to have pot pies on date night when I was a kid and my parents would go out. I wanted a trip down memory lane and I wanted to try the English version. It's the same as the American version: cheap, unhealthy, mostly pastry and gravy, but oh so wonderful!!! Nothing like date food to take you back. I also tried flapjacks. No, they're not pancakes. They're almost like a cross between a granola bar and a candy or something. They're hard to describe, but they're really good!!!