Gloucester!

So, yesterday we took an amazing trip to Gloucester, home of Beatrix Potter's tailor and this beautiful old 11th century cathedral. Unfortunately, there happened to be a modern-art exhibition being presented at the time, actually set up right there throughout the cathedral, which was very depressing. It's difficult to wander among miracles of art in stone, glass, and precious metals, such as those pictured above, with gigantic monstrosities of tin foil and plastic and paper-mache set up in the aisles and poking out from the corners and even sitting complacently upon the consecrated altars of a once-sacred house of God, grinning out at you, knowing that they have every "right" to be there, in the name of equality, ecumenism, and political correctness.

Nevertheless, the building was beautiful, and these are only three of the dozens of photos I shot there, cataloging man's extraordinary abilitiy to create great and wonderful things when he puts his mind to it! Our professor gave us a wonderfully detailed explanation of all the different parts of the cathedral, and what styles came from what ages, and how such-and-such an arch was from the Norman times, and this other from the Romanesque period, etc. I won't recount it all to you now, as it would take a history bookful of time and more than my memory to bring it all alive for you :) However, I will say, thank God for heating and kneelers, as it would have taken an awful lot of gumption to stick it out for long on those slick-as-ice stone floors in the middle of February ;)