Inspiration Fridays: Back to Britain

Since my parents visited England a few weeks ago, my brain has been dreaming of returning to Great Britain.  I want to see more, desire to do more, and need to learn more.  I want to learn everything about the culture, immerse myself in it.  There is this vision I have, of me wearing a tartan scarf, eating a sausage roll, and reading Shakespeare whilst sitting in the middle of  a stone circle.  Call me stereotypical, but that just sounds fantastic. 

Kind of like this, but with said food, book and scarf... and my face...

 (This creepy effect happened and I just LOVE IT.)

But anyway, check out these other, fabulous, Britain-only things that I just can't wait to get more of!  There are quite a bunch, but I've narrowed it down for the sake of brevity, and not losing readers because I've written an extensive, but contentless bit of drabble.

1.  Highland Cattle

Because, Holy Cow!  These things are awesome!  They are also 100% real.  And, in Scotland.

Animal Wallpaper

Oh my goodness.

 Scotland in May

Oh My Goodness!

Highland Cattle World

They have a world??!??

Red Bubble

OHHH My GOODNESS.

Seriously, though, have you ever seen anything more fluffy and stupidly cute in your life?  Best of all, these animals a freaking huge.  Like taller than I am (5'3") at full height.  That is so much fluff, I can't even take it.

2. Pasties, Sausage Rolls, and Meat Pies

Because what is better than meat?  Meat wrapped in pastry!  Pronounced pah-sty, as opposed to pay-sty... pasties (pay-sties) are things ladies wear on their nipples, especially whilst stripping.  I considered putting some kind of hilarious photograph of that in this post, but, I'm at work, and even though my place of employment is an acting school, there are just some things I feel like I shouldn't have on my screen.  Unlike this meaty, pastry glory...

Savory Bites

Yum.

Tastefully British

Well, yum.

The Cornish Pastry Man

Nom nom nom nom...

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So, there are Pasty STORES like this all throughout Great Britain.  It's wonderful.  Not all of them have meat, some have vegetables, cheeses, eggs- all kinds of delicious stuff.  I'm drooling a bit just thinking about it.  

3. Stone Circles 

Now these are just mind-bogglingly amazing.  Think about how crazy they are.  Obviously, there is Stonehenge, which everyone and their mom has heard of, but there are dozens upon dozens of stone circles and other old stone structures in the UK.  It's so nifty.  People care so little about these things, because they are just, well, standard, that they are in the middle of parks, and even intersections.  A road goes through Stonehenge.  It's mind boggling.  I was able to snap that photo of myself standing on an altar-like structure in the middle of one in Cardiff, and no one stopped me.  No one was even around.  I love this blatant love and simultaneous complete disregard for history.  They have so much old stuff, the insignificant historical locations don't even matter, per se.

Channels

There's the classic.  Stonehenge.  It's pretty epic.

Here's one of the ones I took in Cardiff.  Yes.  This stone circle is smack-dab in the middle of... a traffic circle.

This is the same stone circle from the top of the page, sans moi.  It's in Bute Park in Cardiff.  No fence or anything.  Just, you know, ancient stone circle, chillin' out.

Note:   I know that stone circles exist in places other than the UK, but, the ones in the UK just rock my socks.

4. Tartans

Here, we have another specifically Scottish one for the win!  Tartans!  Part of my family is the Craigs, it was my grandmother's maiden name, and it is my father's middle name.  If my parents had a son, they might have given him the middle name Craig as well.  Though I am actually more English than Scottish (and also more German and Swiss than Scottish...) I feel a strange affinity with this part of my heritage.  Not as much as my uncle Barry, who used to dress in a kilt and go to big Scottish events, but I do feel proud.

This is the Craig tartan. 

Loch Carron

Family pride is kind of awesome sometimes.

Moo

Here's some more fun from the park with the "duck pond"- the Arboretum Cows, which are, well, statues of cows!  They are awesome.  Danny apparently loved to climb on them as a kid, and I found that I like climbing on them as an adult.  It seems as if his fascination never disappeared either.  It was silly, fun, and just generally fantastic.

 

 

These three posts encompass what to me, is a perfect afternoon.  Bright sun, heat, relaxation, and just fooling around with someone you love.  Ideal.

 

 

Austin, Texas, USA

Flashback

I had not walked over the Williamsburg Bridge in about nine months.  Since I moved out of Bed-Stuy, I don't live anywhere near it.  I live fairly far south, and I barely go to northern Brooklyn at all, so there is no reason for me to walk over it.  I walk over the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges fairly often, but they are near places I hang out, and are just generally closer to where I find myself most of the time.  Yes, the Williamsburg is a cool bridge, there is no doubt about that, but I live nowhere near it.  However, when a good friend of mine wanted to meet up for lunch in Williamsburg on Friday, and I didn't have to be anywhere else until later in the afternoon, I saw an opportunity for a little trip across the East River and down memory lane.  

When I did live in Bed-Stuy, I walked over the bridge all of the time.  I was constantly meeting Danny at Grand Central Station late in the evening, and then we'd take a nice two hour walk back to our neighborhood together, to catch up on the day.  At the time, I was still in school, doing my last semester of college.  I was in a summer intensive- six weeks of Shakespeare and then five weeks of Chekhov, with four to nine hours of class a day, so I had lots to talk about.  This time, I walked the bridge by myself in broad daylight, and noticed all kinds of things I hadn't seen before.  New grafitti, the look of the train tracks below, the signs on buildings near the bridge.  Some of it probably was not there before- that is one thing I love about street art- it is always changing.  Someone adds a new word to a design, paints on a rafter that was previously clear, or even covers up a previous message or symbol with their own.  It's fluid, new. I like that.  

Oh... and here's a gratuitous hipstery self-portrait for funsies.

Look at me.  I'm obviously thinking deep thoughts about post-modern performace art, underground bands you've never heard of, and organic bok choy.

Just kidding. What was I actually thinking about?  Probably about how my camera was running out of batteries.  And how I wish that there were more public bathrooms in New York.  Deep, deep thoughts.

New York City, New York, USA