I was happy that I managed to take pictures inside too. So many places say "No Photography" inside. Well, actually this place did say "no photography" and I was perfectly content to abide by that, but I walked in and see three people taking pictures. So I said what the hell and whipped my camera out. It's not as impressive as St. George's Chapel or St. Paul's Cathedral, but it's still beautiful. The stained glass on every possible wall was amazing.
The Cathedral also houses one of the four remaining original copies (that sounds like an oxymoron to me...) of the Magna Carta. It's also the copy that in the best shape of the four. Apparently it was mislabelled for a hundred years or so, thereby escaping being manhandled by tons of people. I tried to read it, but it's totally illegible to me. I couldn't even make out half of the letters. It's still very cool though - so ancient looking. Note: continue reading after the photos if you're interested in how we're getting by out here.
So I thuoght I'd share with everyone our... strategies if you will. Such as food - we can't afford to go to restaurants for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So we go to the grocery store and will get a bag of apples, or oranges, or strawberries, etc. Most of the supermarkets here also sell premade sandwiches that are of a good quality and usually cost less than 2.00 GBP. We tend to get 2 liter bottles of water to drink, which are between 0.35 and 0.65 GBP. When we get bored of sandwiches we'll go find a pasty shop and have one of those for around 2.50 GBP. We find we like pasties... Yum! So we try to keep food as cheap as we can.
Places to stay for the night are hard to find for less than 50.00 GBP. We've managed to find a few specials, but mostly it's about 50.00. This is the most costly part for us. In the evening we'll search around for hours trying to find a deal on a hotel or bed and breakfast at our next stop. I hate that part!
Trains are another expensive part. Not much we can do to lessen the expenses there. We just learned that we can uy our tickets a day ahead of time for a possible savings, so maybe that will help a bit. We're managing to average around 90.00, or $135.00 USD. Some days (like the past three) we stay nicely velow average, and others (like Windsor Castle) are painful. But we're managing to do all right! Tracking all our spending and cutting back on food if we need to, or not visiting a certain site because it costs too much. Sad, I know! But necessary sometimes. So just thought I'd share a bit about how we're doing this travelling thing.
PS: Oh, last night some guy got arrested at a restaurant or bar that's below our hotel room. How crazy is that?? We started hearing a lot of shouting and cursing at about 11:30. Then some girl started screaming at the top of her lungs. I couldn't sleep through that so I went to the window. There was a police car out there already. After a while they finally loaded some guy into the back of the car and took him away. Must have been some drunken fighting going on. Oh this English craziness.
I'm glad you went ahead and took the photos inside the catherdal, It is beautiful!
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