Friday evening we went to the pub down on the corner called Green’s. It is owned by our landlord. We went about 7pm and we were one of the only ones in the restaurant. They seem to eat later than we do here. I ordered chicken breast wrapped in ham on wilted greens with cream sauce and John ordered the salmon with new potatoes. We both loved our meal. This was our first meal at a British Pub and it was great. When we left, the restaurant was starting to get busy. When we got home, we planned our adventure for the weekend….another castle, but not ruins…a real one that is still occupied.
We went to Arundel Castle in West Sussex. It was only about an hour from the house and we really enjoyed it. The original castle was built in 1067. There have been additions for many years thereafter. Arundel Castle is one of the longest inhabited country houses in England. It has been owned by the Howard family (The Duke of Norfolk) for over 850 years. There was so much history and the castle was filled with things from years past, but since the family still lives there, we saw current items like current family photo’s, books, and various things from today. It was kind of odd to see the mixture of old and new. We went up to the keep and saw the entrance to the dungeon. The view was magnificent and you could see entire town of Arundel. Once again John had to maneuver some steep, shallow, and winding stairs with Paul to get up to and down from the keep. Needless to say Paul had a great time.
We ate lunch at the Castle restaurant. That was an experience for me. I went to order while John got Paul situated in his highchair. The menu was very limited. I was going to have the soup of the day, but come to find out it was orange chicken…that didn’t sound too appealing. I didn’t want a meat pie because I didn’t want to get something like steak and kidney (that’s popular here). That left two things on the menu I didn’t know what they were. One item I didn’t have a clue the other choice was jacket potatoes with filling. I wasn’t sure what jacket potatoes were, but that sounded like the safer choice. I asked the lady what they were and she said potatoes with cheese, tuna, beans or some other filling I wasn’t sure of. I said I have never had jacket potatoes and she seemed amazed. I said I would just have cheese and she said you don’t want to try the beans. So I said I would have little beans. Well it ended up being a baked potato with cheese and pork n beans. I just laughed when I was walking to the table. I never had it with pork n beans. It actually wasn’t bad. To be in a country with somewhat the same language, we do have communication problems often.
After lunch we toured the rest of the house part of the castle. The main bedrooms were closed for the day, but we did get to see some impressive rooms. The castle had its own private chapel that was amazing. We weren’t allowed to take pictures or video inside the castle, so I don’t have anything to post. If you are real interested…Google Arundel Castle in the UK and there is lots of info online. We also got to go into the very large and grand library. This was one of my favorite rooms. It had two floors of books behind glass bookcases. There were countless collections of books…we were able to find the Shakespeare collections. I really enjoyed touring the living accommodations of the castle. There was a group of German ladies that were having a fit over Paul. They were talking to him in German and he was hamming it up.
After the tour of the castle we found a shade tree with a bench outside and let Paul take a nap before we finished up with the grounds. The weather for the day was nice, not too hot or cold. As we were sitting there letting Paul take his nap, we had a great view of the castle. I couldn’t help thinking as I was looking that it was so massive that it didn’t even seem real. This is the first castle that we have seen that isn’t all or mostly ruins. It is hard to imagine building such a massive structure back then. We decided to let Paul take the remainder of his nap while we walked to the gardens to the back of the estate.
These gardens where called “The Collector Earl’s Garden”. They were opened in May of 2008 by the Prince of Wales. It was a re-creation of what Thomas Howard’s garden at the Arundel House in London might have looked like. There were some very unusual flowers in this garden. This garden was absolutely beautiful. The grand centerpiece of the garden was the Oberon’s Palace. This contains a shell lined interior with a stalagmite fountain and gilded coronet ‘dancing’ on a jet of water.
After touring the castle, we walked around the town. There were some cute shops and pubs. We stopped at the tourist information office to pick up some information for future weekends. While in there we noticed that Paul….was missing guess????....yes a sock. John was going to go back and look for it and the lady at the desk heard us and said there was one lying on the sidewalk outside. Thankfully John didn’t have to go far to find it…so we got out of that town without leaving a sock (barely). While walking around we saw a line at a café for their ice-cream. We decided to wait in line to try it. There were two ladies in front of us that enjoyed playing with Paul while we waited. The ice-cream was great and we let Paul try some and he loved it to (imagine that). While we ate our ice-cream we let Paul play in the grass by the river.
We decided that we would venture to one more city before we went home. We drove to a coastal city called Brighton. It has beaches, a nice pier, and a very extravagant palace. It was too late to see the Palace, but we did park and go to the pier. We were able to see the ocean today….no fog. There were lots of people at the beach and they were even swimming, but we put our jackets on. The beach here was kind of a gravel type beach…no sand. Kind of strange coming from where we do, but they seem to enjoy it. The pier had a lot to do on it. At the end it had big carnival rides and games. On the walk down we passed little shops, food places, and games. It was a fun stroll, but when we got to the end, it was too noisy for Paul and he started crying. We headed back to the beginning. We stopped at a little place that cooked lo mien noodles and fried rice. We saw many people eating it and we tried it. It was either that or fish and chips. We had fish and chips last weekend. The noodles and rice were delicious. We ate every bit of them while Paul had his dinner. After dinner we walked back to the car to find a grocery store and head home. It was a nice day.
Sunday we slept in a little and had a quick breakfast and headed for a town called Chawton. This is the location of Jane Austen’s house. We took a tour of this house. She was one of England’s famous female writer’s, but before she moved into this house, she didn’t have anything published. She lived in Hampshire until she was 25 years old with her parent’s. Her father retired and moved the family to Bath. We saw the house in Bath he lived at. This is the place where she received her only proposal of marriage. She didn’t marry. When her father passed away Jane, her sister and mother moved into the house in Chawton. Her brother owned the cottage and let them live there rent free. She lived here until her illness when she moved into the house we saw in Winchester to be closer to her doctor. She died 6 weeks later. She was in her 40’s. While she lived in Chawton, all of her works were published by two different publishers. We enjoyed the visit at this house and learned a lot about her life. I remember Amanda and Michelle reading Pride and Prejudice and if I remember correctly they really enjoyed. Before I knew we were coming over, I had just watched Emma with Lory and Ashley.
After seeing the house, we fed Paul in the park and let him play in the swings for a bit and then headed home for a nap. We were invited to a 4th of July BBQ later in the afternoon. We headed for the BBQ and it is quite tricky to find houses here. We found the street the party was on, we walked around the location and even asked someone grilling in their garden where the house was we were looking for, and they didn’t know. We ended up getting back in the car and looking further into the neighborhood. While trying to find it I saw a girl in John’s shop driving by and he asked her where it was. We ended having to park about 4 blocks away and when we finally reached the house, we realized we were on the street behind the house we were looking for the first time. Oh, well at least we made it there.
I got to meet a lot of nice people John works with. I even met a man who had just got here a few days ago for a 3 year assignment. His wife will be joining him this weekend, he was from St. Louis. It was a very chilly day for a picnic. It kept looking like rain, but thankfully we never got any. The lady who had the BBQ, hired a company to do the grilling and serving of the food. A little bit different than our BBQ’s. The men were dressed in black dress pants, white shirts, black vests and ties to grill. We even had real plates and silverware. I was a little surprised, but they prepared the typical American foods and it was good. Hamburgers, chicken, sausages, coleslaw, potato salad and corn on the cob were on the menu. Other than is being very cold and the lack of fireworks…it was our usual 4th of July just with different people in a different country.
Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and are thankful for what it means to be in the USA!!
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