2010 Trip to Europe (England)

Ok, so I am not going to write about every day in Europe...If you want to see lots of pictures, log onto facebook :) It is so much easier to deal with fb than to blog...for me anyways. We went the last week of Sept and returned mid October...since my kids have a 2 week fall break, they only missed 3 days of school...worked out fabulous!

A few bits and pieces...I spent 3 weeks there with the girls and David could only spend 2, because of work. We went to England for the first week and then down the France to stay with Doug and Nicole. Highly recommend England...especially the time of year we went. It was a little rainy but not too cold and there were hardly any tourists!! So we could totally take our time seeing all the sights, with no lines.

We learned a ton about English history before we went (didn't want to repeat the same mistake what we made when we went to France last time...not understanding what we were looking at!!) And more while we were there. American history makes a lot more sense when understood in the context of English history, I might add.

Everything in England costs money...even the churches...so it gets pretty expensive really quick.

BTW we spent a night in NY on the way out and back...will always try do this in the future, as it seriously helps with jet lag and grouchy-ness.

In England we saw (not in order):

Buckingham Palace (just the outside...the park/gardens are beautiful)

Windsor Castle (could not take photos inside...saw the changing of the guard, actually is pseudo-cool, it kind of felt hokey...although lots of britian seems hokey!)

Stratford upon Avon (super quaint town...but the sights weren't worth the $)

Tower of London (crown jewels were pretty cool and standing in the site of where lots of people were beheaded was pretty crazy)

Tower Bridge (this is the one you probably think of when you hear "london bridge"...london bridge is plain and ugly, this one is the tall beautiful one)

St. Pauls Cathedral (went to evensong and heard the boys choir! The best way to see it and then it is free :)...again was not allowed to take any photos...I don't get it, it is not that way in France, just England....go figure!!

Westminster Abbey..my favorite! We went at the end of our time in London, perfect, so after we understood the history we could appreciate it. The history there is insane...been there since 960 AD...ALL the kings and queens have been crowned there, and many of them are buried there, along with a hoard of other famous peeps, such as Chaucer, Darwin, Dickens, Handel...in fact Messiah was first performed there...the whole thing made me overwhelmed and emotional!! But go when there are no crowds, otherwise it would be difficult to enjoy.

Oxford...a personal pilgrimage of sorts. I wanted to see the pub where C.S. Lewis hung out. Which we did...the food looked typical yucky english, so we didn't eat there, but went to the very seats that he and Tolkien and the others hung out for years and wrote many of their books. Super cool for me. We also saw where Latimer and Ridley were burned at the stake, and on a lighter note...Christ's Church (college) the great hall where Harry Potter was filmed. Oxford was beautiful, but it felt too touristy for a college town...next time I go to England I want to see Cambridge which is supposed to have less of a tourist feel.

We also, of course, saw Big Ben, Parliament, rode a double decker bus, and took our pictures in red phone booths...which, by the way, can be functional...We also ate lots of fish and chips (note: old cool looking pubs serve yucky slimy fish and mushy peas...where as new, not as cool looking pubs, serve yummy fish and chips and fresh vegetables :) And we rode the Tube (the underground) everywhere....everything is very spread out!!

Another note, take trains when traveling outside London, buses may be cheaper, but they are a slow nightmare!

Christ's Church College...the hall that was used in Harry Potter

Above...Windsor Castle

One of the girls favorite things in England was the British voice on the Tube reminding you to "mind the gap" here is Abigail's rendition of it!!

Once while we were waiting for the Tube there was an announcment over the loudspeaker at the station telling everyone that the train was delayed due to "a man under the train"...what the heck??!!...they would never be that blunt in the US... We were all pretty aghast and then Abigail says..."well, I guess he didn't Mind the Gap" that was actually pretty funny...

Oh...and Hannah wanted me to post one with her too :)