Chatsworth House

Yesterday (Sunday) was the day Tanya and I had signed up to go to Chatsworth House in the Peak District. We were supposed to be on campus at the meeting point at 10:30, which meant we had to leave our flat by no later than10:10. As some of you have probably expected, we left late, as a result of my being more unable than usual to control my hair. I was worried that we'd miss the bus, but as we turned onto the final road along the way, we saw it waiting for us, which was a HUGE relief. I happily said, "oh, just wait, it'll start pulling away now and we'll have to run after it." Ha. ha. And then it did. And we ran, with me almost falling on my face after tripping on the uneven cobbles. So we had missed the bus, even though we were only about four minutes late. Punctuality is key, apparently. 

I called the number on my ticket for the Give it a Go office, but it's Sunday, and NO ONE in this country works on the weekend, and especially not Sundays. They close the student's union on the weekends. It's annoying. I didn't really know what to do, and I felt really bad that we had missed the bus, seeing as it was sort of (okay, completely) my fault. Tanya then all of a sudden announced, "I am leaving the city today. I will not stay in the city. We will go." Which got my attention, because she's normally pretty quiet and not too opinionated. We decided we needed to figure out how to take a bus to Chatsworth, because if we could just get there, we could find our group and get a ride back. So we went over to the library to find a computer. After jumping through a number of uninteresting administrative hoops to get access to a computer (you have to log in with your MUSE ID, which is something I had never been given or even told about.) we figured out how to take a bus to Chatsworth. The bus ride was listed as being an hour long, and the nearest pick-up point was a good 40 minutes' walk away. But we were determined. So we gathered our stuff an set out for the bus stop, and as a bonus, we actually managed to find it with enough time to spare to get coffee. 

When the bus came we climbed on, paid our fare, and....went upstairs!! Because it was a double-decker bus!! I was really excited about it, which Tanya was weirded out by. It was like riding on the top deck of a ship, so we got thrown around a lot. But it was so fun! The route to Chatsworth goes through the Peak District, which was beautiful, and a couple of little villages. 

After a little more than 40 minutes we arrived at Chatsworth successfully, much to my surprise. I explained our situation to the guy at the gate, and he was really nice and let us in without paying (as we had already paid Give it a Go). We toured through the house and then out into the gardens, where we ran into the Give it a Go leader. We informed him who we were, and made sure that the bus wouldn't leave without us again. I was a bit annoyed with him, as the bus is supposed to wait 10 minutes before leaving and he's supposed to have a list of participants. I tried to be nice, but I think some of the annoyance came through, especially since he was so "oh, well hmm, nice to see you!"

The house was absolutely amazing, but at the same time sad to see what disrepair parts of it had fallen into. The family doesn't really have any choice but to open the house to tourists, but the huge number of people walking through cause quite a bit of wear. I was glad to be able to see it though, especially the things I recognized from Austen movies. Even more incredible was the ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artifacts they had just kind of arranged in the hallways, like it was no big deal. 

I tried to take lots of pictures, but my camera died about halfway through, even though I had new batteries in it. I think I need to get special camera batteries, but I have no idea where to get something like that here. Or if it would even help. I think my camera's at least 4 years old, so maybe it's broken. Great timing. :/ Anyway, Tanya said she'd email me some of her photos, so I'll have those eventually. 

Today I'm just sticking around my room resting, as yesterday was very eventful. I don't have any class until tomorrow (Tuesday). 

I'm posting pictures separately, as trying to put them in this post will mess up my formatting big time.