I felt a little adventurous this morning, so I opted for the (in)famous British breakfast. This one is a milder form (no blood sausage or blood pudding, thankfully), but Natasha still found it unappealing. It's just baked beans and some other relatively normal breakfast foods! Tons of protein!
Today was our D.H. Lawrence day. For those that don't know, he's a post World War I writer who emphasized nature and emotion in the midst of a dirty and calculating Industrial Revolution. He is one of Natasha's favorite authors. We took a bus out to Eastwood, the town of his childhood, where they keep several commemerative sites in his honor.
We saw a museum set up in the house where he was born, which was stocked with several items from the period. The guide gave us some idea of what life was like for a family back then - dirty, cramped, cold, and rough. We thought we had been roughing it by not having our own bathroom - this would be a whole new idea of roughing it. Think of four kids sharing half a bed, the other half rented out to a vagabond. It escapes my imagination.
They also had a heritage museum that was dedicated mostly to the way of life during the Industrial Revolution. Eastwood used to be a coal miner's town, which greatly influenced everything about life there. We found out about the wages, injury rates (1 in 5 was put out of work for several weeks due to an injury some time in their career) and more.
We had tea & coffee at the White Peacock (named for one of DHL's novels).
After this, we took the bus back to Nottingham, but not before stopping at the IKEA store on the way. Technically there is an IKEA close to Seattle, but we've never bothered to visit. After a quick browse, we hit up their Swedish cafe, and tried some Swedish cakes (two were great, the other had a green frosting that tasted like death). I also tried some lingonberry soda. Not bad!
The University of Nottingham is home to archives of DHL's work, so Natasha wanted to see if we could get access to some of it. We went down to the university library and tried to get in. Turns out the stuff is spread out over multiple campuses, and we didn't have time to get to them before they closed. Still, it was interesting to check out a British university.
We knew now that the whole town of Nottingham shuts down early, so we made it to a Chinese restaurant, ate dinner, and then went back to the hotel to call it a night.
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