Field Trip!

As we were walking from one activity to another in Stoke-on-Trent (another city stop in our makeshift adventure in England), Britt mentioned something that I felt to be quite fitting that day.  See, in preparing for this adventure of ours, the condition of our selecting locations to visit were based solely on if what we found on the city's web page was "cool" or not.  Stoke-on-Trent, in internet form, looked mighty cool. 

Once we arrived (and drove in circles looking for the information center) we gathered a number of brochures about the city, since we didn't do any planning beforehand, and settled on two things to see. The first was a monkey sanctuary, as odd as that may be.  But then again, during an improvised vacation, why not see them?  It was a bitter-sweet visit once we found out the monkeys in the park were Barbary Macaques which are found in the mountains of Morocco. "OH!", I cried to myself "another reminder of our failed trip."   They were cute creatures who roamed free so, had we been allowed, we could have reached out and touched them, they were so close.

An hour or two later we made our way over to site number two: the Gladstone Pottery Museum. Pottery is what put Stoke-on-Trent on the map.  In the industrial era the city was full of bottle neck ovens... and a whole lot of smoke.  Today, Gladstone boasts the last remaining ovens of it's kind at their factory turned museum.  

It was there that Britt stated, "man, first a monkey sanctuary and now a pottery factory... it's like a school field trip - except better, because we're adults."  Yes, there was no better way to describe it, we were on a field trip!