Day 4: Nottingham National Justice Museum & Robin Hood

This day started differently because I had a Full English breakfast. Ham, bacon, beans, eggs, and hashbrowns. It was lovely except for the beans; I do not understand how anyone can eat beans so early in the morning. We got on our very first train ride and went to Nottingham. Our first stop was the National Museum. We learned about the old prison and how women were treated much better them men and were even given tasks to do every day like laundry. Men and women were separated in different parts of the prison and the women were given one room to be shared among ten women. A rock-hard wooden bed, a chair, and a bucket for them to do their business in. We went further down to the lower levels and saw A Place to be Forgotten. It is not 100% if this place was used to store rubbish or to punish prisoners by throwing them in there and left to die of starvation. The dungeon is known as an oubliette which means ‘to forget’ in French. We saw the many “torture” devices that were used to punish people who committed crimes back then. Such as the Cat-o-Nine-Tails whip that would leave marks after flogging someone that looked like cat scratches. The Scold’s Bridle was used mostly for punishing women, to keep them from talking so much or about such nonsense. We made our way to eat some lunch, mine wasn’t very good. Afterward, we were taken to the old courtrooms. There we had a trial; I was a jury, so my part was easy. I had to determine based on the evidence if the culprit murdered his girlfriend and shoved her in a treasure box. I gave a not-guilty verdict because there wasn’t enough evidence. We made our way to the lobby where Robin Hood was waiting for us. He took us on a tour of the city, to show us the myth of Robin Hood. I learned that Robin Hood was more a story told, a symbol to others that you don’t always have to follow what you were given but to expand into what you believe to be right and your correct path despite others. To fight the power. He showed us the restaurant that used to be a church but reopened as a bar. Pitcher & Piano was a lovely place with old decorations of statin glass from the time when it was a church. We also went to a cave system underneath another bar where they used to store the back in the day the wine, which was a creepy and chilly place. He ended our tour at the statue of a man that looked like the legend of Robin Hood, near Nottingham Castle. Unfortunately, Nottingham Castle was closed for a month and would not open during our stay in England so we could only view it from afar. When we made our way back to our hotel in Derby something unfortunate happened, one of the professors took a tumble and got injured. She ended up being alright and came out with minor injuries but a lot of people were shaken up and were even crying. A praying circle was formed, and we prayed for her well-being. After getting back to our hotel some of us went out to eat and my group decided on an African cuisine place. The appetizer I got was amazing, it was wings with BBQ sauce, however, my main dish was too spicy for my taste.