A Weekend Close to Home

So back to catching up, and less whining about the weather (although today is our fifth day in a row to see at least an hour of sun... it’s terribly exciting). 

The weekend of October 17th/18th I had two papers I was working on, so we decided we would have a quieter weekend. Rebekah also had a trip coming up as well, so it made sense for everyone. 

I arrived at Rebekah’s apartment a little earlier on Friday afternoon and immediately began work on my paper so that by the time she arrived home I was ready for a good break and some dinner. After a night of goofing off mixed with a lot of studying, we started a little later on Saturday morning at Basildon Park, the house they used during the filming of Pride & Prejudice. No, not the proper version, the one with Keira Knightley. It’s still good, just not our favorite. :-) 

Unfortunately at this particular property the majority of the house had scaffolding across the front (and back) so they could begin a cleaning project. It did not seem terribly logical to either of us to block both the front and the back of the house. That’s when you would think they would choose just one half of the house to clean at a time. So you would think. 

However, the inside of the house was really lovely, and there was this gorgeous grand piano in the Hall, that I ended up giving an impromptu concert on, it was really fun for me, since I don’t have regular access to a piano. Crazy pianist, yes? 

After Basildon Park we tried to go to a couple of other places, but one was really expensive (they wanted to charge us 12 GBP without parking...) and the other we wandered until we finally gave up. Looks like the GPS wins another battle. 

On Sunday we drove into a section of London known as London so we could see Marble Hill House and Chiswick House, which were both Georgian Palladian style structures. I now know more about why this architectural style was in fashion than I think I ever cared to know. However, both houses were very interesting, and it was a nice light day that enabled us to arrive in Reading early enough that I managed to catch a bus back to Oxford so that I was home before it was ever dark! 

Photos of this particular weekend can be viewed here.