Highclere Castle

Highclere Castle is beautiful. 

If you are a fan of Downton Abbey, I am sure it is on your bucket list should you ever find yourself in England. 

So of course when I was there we had to visit it. 

Highclere Castle was designed by Sir Charles Barry in 1842. He also designed the Houses of Parliament in London and you can see the similar styles. 

You have to get tickets from their website and they offer limited tours throughout the year. Sometimes they do special parties and events and other times it is just a time that you are allowed to come tour. You can tour just the house and gardens, just the gardens, or also add on the Egyptian Exhibit. 

When you tour the house you get to see the Library which was absolutely beautiful. It was a dream come true to walk through that library. 

You also tour the Music Room, the Drawing Room, The Saloon, The Dining Room and you walk around looking into the bedrooms as well. 

The gardens are extensive and you could spend hours on them alone. 

In the Egyptian Exhibition you get to learn a lot about the 5th Earl of Carnarvon and his discoveries. He, along with his partner Howard Carter, discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. It was extremely interesting to see this exhibit. 

You can eat in the house as well and they have a little gift shop around back. 

I was a little disappointed in the gift shop as their collection of Downton Abbey themed items was very small. But they still had a lot of beautiful items and I was able to get some Highclere specific things. 

It was a wonderful experience and I highly recommend a visit to Highclere!

To read more about our visit go here.

Canterbury Cathedral

This is a great video on the history of Canterbury Cathedral....

To read about my visit to this Cathedral go here.

Jane Austen's Home

"...each of them was busy in arranging their particular concerns and endeavoring, by placing them around them their books and other possessions, to form themselves a home."

Jane Austen lived in this home in Chawton, England with her mother and her sister Cassandra from 1809 until 1817. 

It was in this home that she wrote Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion as well as another novel that she never finished because of her illness. 

She revised Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey here as they had yet to be published. 

She left her home in Chawton to go to Winchester before her death. 

Cassandra and her mother lived here for the rest of their lives. 

When Cassandra died in 1845, the cottage was split into three dwellings for the labourers that worked there and remained this way until 1947 when it was put up for sale. 

Mr. T.E. Carpenter bought the house and turned it into a museum dedicated to Jane Austen. 

To read about our visit to Jane Austen's home go here. 

Update on the giveaway

If you read my other blog you will know that I just announced we are buying a house. 

So we are moving some time in the next two weeks and my time has been crazy!

So I haven't had time to go back through the comment and pick a winner for the birthday giveaway. 

I have decided to extend the giveaway. 

It will now be through the end of June and I will announce the winner on July 1st instead. 

That will give any of you that want to enter a little more time to comment and I will be able to really focus on it by then!