Day 16 - Sissinghurst, Knole

LAST DAY OF CLASS!!

Don't get me wrong - it's been fun, but I am so worn out from being constantly on the go and cold and wet. Not to mention how I never want to see another restaurant ever...I want to cook so badly it's not even funny. I talked to my mom tonight and she said she'd cook me a bunch of stuff when I got back so YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!

At any rate, we had a nice long coach bus ride this morning that I used to catch up on the last of my journaling. It was a super fancy coach too - brand new with Star Trek-y looking seats and color scheme. Yes, I am easily amused. Anyway, after a nice cozy two hour ride, we arrived at Sissinghurst, which is the estate/garden of the late Vita Sackville-West - Viriginia Woolf's not-so-secret lover and author/poet. This was the first English garden we'd seen with substantial flowers (flowers used to be uncool). and it had a low maze-looking hedge running around which was awesome. Also a moat. And a tower with a library in it. And other awesome little rooms. And another library in the house. And the weather wasn't all that bad!

Aftter Sissinghurst, we went to Knole. No idea what it was until we got there. Apparently it was a house in a royal hunting preserve for one of the kings. Well, first it was a place for the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the  Henry VIII made them give it to him. So the place is built like a castle, but not in the sense of a fortification. By the time it was built, all the battlements and crenallations and murder holes were just for show. The outside was much more impressive than the inside. It looked huge, but you could enter very few rooms and they were basically just filled with old furniture. It was cool, just not a lot to see. And it was crazy busy and the rooms were tiny, which didn't help. Still, interesting, and the sticky toffee cake from the tearoom that Cara and I split made it a rather positive end to the class.

So we came back to the hotel afterwards and I did the final writing assignment so I could turn un my sketchbook, and now I am officially completely done with the class. Hooray!

Looking forward to tomorrow's free day of epicness!!!