Thursday, October 07, 2010

"Elementary my dear Watson... elementary"

We planned a day trip to go visit Gillette Castle, and despite the rainy weather, we had a great time! Actually the dreary weather was quite appropriate while visiting this 'creepy' castle. It's not the type of building you'd think of when you think 'castle'...it was built to look a little run down and rough along the edges. It's not a romantic place either, it's kinda eerie, yet the rain just made it more fitting.

This castle was built by William Gillette, the stage actor or portrayed Sherlock Holmes. He lived here back in the early 1900's with his 15-20 cats and as you can tell, he was quite an eccentric gentleman!

Here are Zachary (in brown jacket) and Hannah (in purple jacket), standing beside the castle sign with some of the other kids in our homeschool group.



Very cool gate near the entrance. The stone work was absolutely amazing, both inside and out!


View of the castle from the ground...sorry about the rainy white spots...the rain was kind of misty so it got my lens wet.


The back section of the castle where the greenhouse is.

Camera
NIKON D90
Focal Length
28mm
Aperture
f/11
Exposure
1/125s
ISO
1250


Inside the front door...pretty impressive 'foyer' huh?


Very cool glass window....I imagine on a bright sunny day this looks even more beautiful!!


This is where you end up after walking into the castle from the foyer...


The 'living room'...


The beautiful fireplace...


Our family posing beside the main stairway...


Gillette's library


Gillette's office...where there were multiple doors (of multiple sizes). The place was FILLED with so many unique things. I've been here before and every time I go, I see new things...it's more like a 'fun house' than a castle. ha ha


The kiddos in the greenhouse...complete with pond where Gillette used to keep two 'pet' frogs...


Upstairs hallway. Even the light fixtures were pretty cool! The halls were narrow and quite dangerous, so I guess it's good that Gillette had no children. Can you imagine your kids running in the halls here? They get knocked out cold by the stones protruding from the walls!


One of the three (yes, only three) bedrooms...complete with full bath though, which in those days was quite rare!

Camera
NIKON D90
Focal Length
18mm
Aperture
f/5.6
Exposure
1/30s
ISO
1250


Another bedroom. (All the dressers were built in and had very unique features...strange handles, cubbies etc.)

Camera
NIKON D90
Focal Length
18mm
Aperture
f/5.6
Exposure
1/30s
ISO
1250


Some of the items Gillette used while on stage....carpet bag, binoculars, his violin and a pair of very weird looking 'girly' slippers. ha ha

Camera
NIKON D90
Focal Length
32mm
Aperture
f/4.2
Exposure
1/10s
ISO
1250


Yup, that's me heading down the back stairway from the 3rd floor.

Camera
NIKON D90
Focal Length
21mm
Aperture
f/3.8
Exposure
1/13s
ISO
1250


View of the back stairs from the bottom floor


Back outside, it was still raining, but I managed to capture some decent photos. My husband took this one of me holding our very cool umbrella. Gotta love the colors!!


Hopefully we will get back up there someday just to walk around the gardens. The whole area is a 21 acre state park, so it's worth another trip.

Today it's back to school and our daily activities as usual....figure skating for Hannah, violin lessons for Zachary and cleaning up the house for me. It was such a nice break from all that yesterday, even if it did rain.

Til next time...

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