So, we were glad we left at 4:30 a.m. this morning as it turned out after everything was said and done, we had to wait only about 30ish minutes to start loading our plane this morning. Wow….Heather and I kept thinking about how things would’ve gone if we had left just 30 minutes later than we did. Eeek. Glad me didn’t have to find out.
Our hired car was at the Vrbo a few minutes early which was fine. Our driver was a hoot, chatting our ears off almost the entire way. We were to the airport in a little less than an hour. Once there, we jumped in the American line. It looked “long”, but it grew much longer after we got in it. The counter wasn’t immediately open and it seemed to take forever for them to start checking people in. Once they did, it took over 10 minutes every time someone went up to the counter to check-in. It appeared that they were having some issues of some kind. As time went on and the line behind us grew longer, Heather and I kept talking about how stressed we would’ve been if we had arrived later than we had. Thankfully, we had plenty of time and continued to be patient. Once we got up to the counter, it took us quite a bit of time too. The agent had problems with the machine printing the tags for our luggage and seemed to type on the keyboard forever!!!!! She apologized for the wait, so I’m not sure what was all going on, but I could tell she was already feeling stressed and annoyed at things. We headed to security and that was another time sucker. Of course, my backpack was flagged and had to be hand searched by an agent. The whole process took well over 30 minutes. You could observe other passengers stressed as they had earlier flights. My backpack was flagged because I had a couple rocks in it we had found on the beach the first week. I hadn’t given it any thought that they would cause a problem. In the end, the agent just sent me on my way after seeing them, but most flagged bags had to then be re-xrayed which added even more time to the wait for people. By the time we grabbed some breakfast, walked to our gate and took a little tram part of the way, we only had about 30 minutes before boarding began. So 4:30 ended up being a good time for us to leave. If we had arrived even just 30 minutes later, I think we may have been cutting it close. Once on the plane, however, we ended up sitting for quite awhile and left at least 40+ minutes later. We headed back to St. Louis through Dallas, so this was our longest flight of the trip at 10+ hours. Heather managed to sleep quite a bit, Beckett watched videos on the iPad and I watched two movies and a season of Superstore on the inflight system. Amazingly, the flight wasn’t too bad. Thankfully, once in Dallas, we cruised through customs pretty easily and ended up having to wait only about an hour before boarding the rather short flight to St. Louis. Both Beckett and I slept most of that flight. Once in St. Louis, we retrieved our luggage rather quickly, jumped on to the parking shuttle rather quickly and were at our car before we knew it. A two hour drive and suddenly we’re back to reality! Modern air travel is so crazy. Just this morning we were in London and now we are back in our home in Columbia. Not much unpacking occurred and after we said hello to the kitties, we all got into bed. Tomorrow, we plan to continue to do nothing and just sleep and relax. We look forward to going back through pictures, watching Wimbledon on tv and rewatching Harry Potter movies. Beckett is ready to get back into basketball and there are two weekend tournaments this month planned along with a week of basketball camp. Heather and I are going to get caught up on a little yard work including planting some lavender and wildflower seeds from the Cotswolds. Otherwise, we’re going to enjoy being home, doing not much of anything other than considering how lucky we were to take this incredible trip. Cheers! Rob
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I can’t believe just like that, this is our last day! While we miss our kitties and our own beds, I think if we could transport them here, along with some AC, we’d be happy to stay a bit longer! Though Beckett is ready to get back to basketball (and his XBox) and Heather and I look forward to working in the yard and hanging out on our porch, I’m not quite ready to leave. It has definitely begun to feel quite normal waking up each morning here rather than in Columbia. While it clearly isn’t home, I definitely feel at home here. Being able to see so much of the country has definitely solidified our hopes of spending more time here in the future into our retirement. We have talked about pursuing Italian citizenship in order to be able to stay here (or anywhere in the EU) longer without having to worry about Visas and I think we are ready to start pursuing that possibility and process. Italy has the most liberal requirements for obtaining citizenship, including through your grandparents or even great-grandparents. Thankfully, both Heather and I have a great-grandparent who was born in Italy, so it’s a possibility. It’ll take years to complete the process, but we have at least 7 years left before retirement and even then, probably won’t be ready to move until we know what path Beckett will take. The other good thing is, if we get it done before he turns 18, he will receive dual citizenship as well. We like the idea of him having a choice to leave the US if he wants in the future. While I’m not ready to abandon the US yet, I have my wondering about whether it’ll be a place we want to live in for the rest of our lives.
Ok, on to our day! We hadn’t plan it, but we did break our steps record today! Our first stop today was Greenwich. We couldn’t come all this way and not see the Prime Meridian, especially with a social studies teacher in the family. Lol We jumped on the Tube and headed down to the Thames to jump on an Uber boat to take us down river to Greenwich. We missed our first boat because we didn’t understand were to stand (the boat passed us right by). We continue to live and learn the ways of London public transportation. We finally caught the second boat and enjoyed a nice 20+ minute ride along the Thames. Once we got to Greenwich, we still had a bit of walk to the observatory where the Prime Meridian is. The walk wasn’t bad until we hit the park where the observatory is. Of course, it’s located on a hill and a rather steep path was once again walked by us. I think we are all tired of steep hills and steps. We kinda joke about it now. Oh look…another set of stairs! Great!!!! We love stairs and steep hills! The view as you get to the top though is amazing and worth the hike up! After taking a view beautiful pictures, we headed into the Royal Observatory. Besides seeing the Prime Meridian, you also get to see the inside of the observatory along with some of the instruments invented or used by the scientists that worked here over the years. It was really interesting and as usual mind blowing to be in a place where so many important people once were and where important discoveries were made. One of the many cool things was seeing all the different prototypes of clocks that were invented for ships so that they could tell accurate time at sea. The walk back down and to the pier to catch the boat back was much easier. Beckett had been made aware of Hamleys, a huge toy store, on the bus tour we took our first day, and wanted to go, so once we jumped off the boat, we took the tube to near the store, We walked through Piccadilly Circus and along Regents Street and then Seville Row, before getting to Hamleys. The store was o.k. It was I think 6 or 7 floors and had TONS of toys, but otherwise wasn’t that cool. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t that exciting. We continued walking and went by Carnaby Street in Soho and happened upon a NBA store to Beckett’s good fortune. It was a pretty cool store and he was able to pick up a t-shirt that had NBA and London on it. Our next stop was the British Museum and we walked through Trafalgar Square on the way. We didn’t have to wait too long to get into the museum thankfully. It is a huge museum and we knew Beckett was probably only good for an hour there or so at this point, so we headed to sections Heather wanted to make sure she saw including Assyrian and Ancient Egypt sections. After the museum we took the tube to near Harrod’s and took a quick walk through. It was really crowded and we were pretty tired at this point, so we abandoned the idea of grabbing food in the food court there and headed back home to Camden. Right out of the tube station in Camden Town was a Wendy’s and being tired and hungry we decided we’d just grab something quick there. We walked up to the entrance and there were several people at the front door. They turned out to be workers there and they informed us that it wasn’t open yet. I didn’t quite get what they meant at first and we just spent a few moments talking with them. All of a sudden, we were being invited in for a free dinner! So long story short, they were having a soft opening today and were opening the restaurant for the first time tomorrow! The guy in charge of opening it up personally escorted us to the register and told us to order anything we wanted to on the house! We were like…seriously?!?! We were so confused. Lol. They were so nice and treated us like special guests. We grabbed our orders and then went upstairs to the seating area. The view was fantastic! Better than any Wendy’s we’d ever been to. Another man stopped by our table and talked with us for a bit. From what he was saying and asking us, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he was somehow the head of Wendy’s in the UK. It was all so strange and a pleasant random surprise. What a way to end our trip! Since we got free dinner, we decided to go back to Camden Market and get dessert. There’s a store there called Hans and Gretel and they have crazy ice cream cones. Beckett and Heather both got bubble waffle cones like we did the other night, but they sauces and candy on top. I got an ice cream cone as well, but mine came with a huge halo of candy floss (aka cotton candy) around it. It was hilariously over the top. When I walked out of the store, a cop was walking by and he stopped and was just smiling at me. I told him that it wasn’t even for my kid….it was MINE! He laughed and told me to enjoy. Everybody has been so freaking friendly here!!!! One of the ice cream flavors I got was dark chocolate coconut and it was pitch black in color. It was really good. After finishing our ice cream, we finally headed back to the Vrbo. There was packing and cleaning to do and we hoped to be in bed by 9 or 10 at the latest. Our hired car is picking us up at 4:30 a.m. tomorrow morning to take us to Heathrow. Yikes! It’s early, but the stories we’ve heard have us a little scared to arrive any later, especially this summer. It was a great last day, but we are tired, sore and now I’m really looking forward to my own bed tomorrow night! Cheers! Rob Last night we had decided to forgo an early morning rise to go see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Turned out to be a great decision. We’ve tried to be aware of our need to take it easy when we’re all feeling a little extra tired and/or sore so that we can enjoy the whole four weeks.
We also still needed to a place to buy an additional suitcase at a reasonable price for souvenirs. I had seen a store in Camden Town that on-line seemed to have luggage, so we took our extra time (and energy) this morning to walk into Camden Town to check it out. Turned out that the store had just a few and they were on sale for 50% off!!! Woo hoo! We bought the largest one they had, and checked that major to do off our list. While we were there, we HAD to get breakfast, of course, so Beckett found some Dutch pancakes and a beef sandwich. Heather got a shrimp tempura roll and I got some Korean fried chicken with chips. All really good no surprise. I love the variety of food stalls here! So fun to try new things. We also ducked into a few stores. They have a bunch of really cool stores; recto/hip clothing, etc…. Beckett found himself a t-shirt of an anime show he watches. We headed back home to drop of the suitcase and rest a bit more, as our main activity of the day wasn’t until later. This time we took the Overground, which is basically like the Tube or the Underground, but yep…over the ground, although the Tube also goes above ground sometimes and, as I learned, at one point, goes above the Overground. Got it? I never tire of the convenience of the public transportation here. Even with the strike, we’ve had very little problems waiting for trains or the tube. Often times only waiting a few minutes for the next one to arrive. We arrived in the area of town where the Bake-Off was and barely noticed the entrance. It’s literally a tiny archway under a bridge. When you walk in, it looks like a very tiny room with a few fridges at the back. You almost think you’ve encountered a dead end. But then you go to open the largest fridge door in the middle and surprise! You walk into a bar area that then leads out in to a green space with the “bake off” tent! So cool! We only had to wait a few minutes for our turn to start. All I can say is WOW!!! It truly felt like you were on the Great British Bake Off! This was definitely one of my favorite things of the trip. There were 10 or 12 stations and you could tell everyone there was ready to bake and have fun. They had a recipe card for you, all the supplies you needed along with all the ingredients pre-measured. Plus I got to use a stand mixer! I need one so badly at home! You got to go up to some shelves to pick up flavorings to use in the cake and icing. Beckett and I decided to make our cake coffee and caramel with some fudge chunks. We were doing really well, until halfway through the bake, I noticed our oven wasn’t actually on! LOL…just like the show!!! One of the challenges while we have been here has been working the appliances like the stove, oven, washer and dryer. On this particular oven after you set the temp you had to press this other button; a spot on a touch screen, to get it to go. So the whole time it read 180 degrees, but it wasn’t really on. This put us back a bit with getting our cake to cool completely at the end causing our icing to melt a bit. Otherwise, we did pretty well. Heather and Beckett made some candy jewels with crushed Jolly Ranchers and a mold in the oven. I made my first Swiss meringue buttercream; not as hard as I thought. And I rolled out and sprayed some fondant for the crown. It was really cool how we got to try several different techniques during the process. The people running things would come by check on you, take your dirty equipment away and ask you about your bake. I really felt like we were on the show. They gave us count downs throughout about how much time we had left. Everyone around us was having as much fun. When they called time, everyone brought their cakes to the front to be judge. Because of Covid the judge didn’t taste our cakes (lame) but she did cut a slice out of each cake to look at it and then asked each of us to describe our flavorings. Everyone had fun exploring their cakes. At the end we were chosen for 3rd place! Woo hoo! I think she liked our flavors. We ended up putting coffee flavoring into our icing as well. We didn’t get to really taste it until we got home later and it did taste really good; kinda like a caramel macchiato. We took a little more of a rest back at the Vrbo before heading out for dinner. I found an Italian restaurant online that was just down the street and we decided to give it a try. Turned out to be another good choice! Both Italian restaurants that we have eaten at in the UK have been fantastic! Beckett got rigatoni with an amazing bolognese sauce, Heather got carbonara and I got a pizza with salmon, capers, red onion, garlic and fresh mozzarella. All of it…deliciouso! We headed back and tried to get to bed a little earlier than normal. Tomorrow is our last day! We’re all excited to get back and see our kitties and sleep in our own beds, but I’m not ready to leave!!! :( Cheers! Rob Today is another and the last strike day. We haven’t been watching the news since we’ve been in London, so we don’t really know how it’s been going. We have no idea what is normal or what isn’t and so I’ve been adding extra time when we’ve been traveling to try account for delays or unknowns. So far, we haven’t really experienced much inconvenience other than the few train cancellations previously that we were able to work around.
We left this morning for our first stop of the day at Westminster Abbey and arrived with plenty of time; enough time to stop for a quick bite of breakfast and to sit in Parliament Square Garden and enjoy the cool morning. Even though we had tickets we still had to wait in line or queue as they say here. It looked long, but did not take very long to get in. Again, a beautiful church, with lots of history. We walked around, reading the guide book and looking for the “famous” graves and monuments within. We found all the kings and queens and of course the well-known scientists and authors. Something we found in the guide book was that there is a wooden door in the cloisters that has been carbon dated back to 1050’s. Wow. After the abbey we walked down to Downing Street and while we couldn’t see No. 10 through the gates and police with machine guns, we could see No. 12! Lol We also saw a side street blocked off with a bunch of people gathered. Turned out someone was filming a movie! You see a ton of extras all dressed in what looked like Victorian clothing with horses and carriages. It was pretty cool. We finally jumped on the Tube and headed to where our afternoon tea would be. With still some time before our reservation, we found a bench by the Thames and just chilled and enjoyed being there. Our last tea was a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed tea. Overall, it was pretty good. The savories were good, but not as good as the tea we had at Chatsworth House in the Peak District when we were staying in Baslow. One thing that was unique and quite tasty that both Heather and I enjoyed was a beet macaron. I’ve never had a savory macaron before. The tea was also good, but not as good as we’ve had before. Granted all the teas they were serving were herbal or chocolate or caramel flavored. Heather and I have definitely developed a taste for good only plain black English tea with some cream and sugar. The scones, however, were pretty darn good. They came out warm, freshly baked. We ate them all. Of course, the highlight of this tea were the sweets and they were pretty impressive overall. The display of them was pretty cool too. Heather and I finished up our candy floss (cotton candy) which was not what we expected to do. For being spun sugar it was surprising not overly sweet and had a mild bubble gum flavor too it. It was actually really good. There was a tiny caramel chocolate milkshake (good), some sort of chocolate layered torte (FABULOUS!!!), an Eton mess (yummy!), blueberry cake pop (good) and a lemon filled crème puff (refreshing!). Heather and I tried three different types of tea (caramel, hibiscus and lemon verbena) while we were there and Beckett downed four hot chocolates. Overall I wouldn’t go there again. It was fun and yummy, but we all preferred the tea we had at Chatsworth House and when we visited Dunans Castle. You definitely were paying for the theme. The other two teas I would definitely do again! We headed home as we knew we wanted to take as long of a nap as possible before heading back out for the Lion King at 7:30 p.m. When it was time, we headed back out, jumped on the Tube and headed to what is known as the Strand. There are several theaters along it. We saw the theaters for Back to the Future, Six and Pretty Woman. Beckett wants to see Six at some point now that he’s been to England and has learned about some of its history. I think it’s coming to the Fox sometime next year, so we’ll have to do some research when we get home. The Lyceum Theater was amazing on the inside. We had seats in one of the front rows of the balcony which ended up being great seats for the Lion King. Heather had seen it before, but said the sets were much more elaborate as she saw a traveling show, while this one is “permanently” planning in this theater. Beckett enjoyed it and so did we. The puppets are so imaginatively done and who doesn’t like a little singing and dancing? I think our favorite character was Zazu. We headed back home afterwards with the plan of heading straight back to the Vrbo to get to sleep as it was already after 10 p.m. However, as we exited the Tube station, Beckett noticed that the bubble waffle place by the station was actually still open. He’s overall been such a trooper on this trip. I’ve never taken an 11 year old on a four week trip to the UK, but I think he’s handled it all extremely well. It’s been a fantastic trip, but there’s definitely a level of endurance that’s been needed. Other than occasionally being a typical preteen, he’s gone everywhere, tried everything, without too much complaining and only occasionally being annoying. He’s constantly telling us thank you for taking him places and has commented that he’s been having fun. At this point, if the kid wants another ice cream or treat, I’m happy to oblige. (Plus, it’s no secret that I don’t mind either. :)) We walked down to the kiosk and both he and I ordered our bubble waffle treats. He got an Oreo and Kinder with strawberries and banana and I got a Biscoff and caramel with bananas. Oh my! Delicious! And the bubble waffle cone was the best part! We finally got home I think after 11 and got to bed as quickly as possible. We made the decision to forgo seeing the changing of the guard tomorrow morning as we were going to have to get up so early. We decided it was something we could live without seeing. Tomorrow we have our “Great British Bake-Off” and we want to be well rested. Cheers! Rob Well, I was unsure and a bit anxious about the status of our transportation again today, but once again, we are having good luck! We caught our train this morning to Windsor without incident.
Windsor the town is very cool as all villages, towns, etc… seem to be here. It was a short walk from the train station up to the castle. It continues to be odd to be in places you have seen on tv, such as Windsor from Harry and Meghan’s wedding. The flag was flying at Windsor that indicated the Queen was there. Heather mentioned she had read that she’s been spending most of her time recently at Windsor instead of Buckingham. I wonder how much longer she’s going to last? After visiting the castle and grounds, I can see why she might want to spend more time either rather than in London. We enjoyed seeing the rooms that were open and even caught the changing of guard here at the castle. We also were able to visit St. George’s Chapel where Harry and Meghan were married. Very cool. We had just enough time to grab lunch before catching our next train that would take us from Windsor to Wimbledon. We had seen a restaurant called Nandos several places before and Heather suggested we try for lunch. It ended up being very yummy! There big draw is the peri-peri seasoning and sauces that they have that you can get and add to your fries and chicken. The train to Wimbledon was right on time and we decided to walk from the station to the tennis complex. It was a short walk, but unfortunately mostly uphill and we were tired. We eventually made it there and seeing the tennis complex materialize reenergized us! Unfortunately, since the tournament starts on Monday, you couldn’t enter the courts, but we got some good looks at the outside of Centre Court and some others from the street and from the gift shop. We did go into the museum, which was pretty interesting. Right outside of the gift shop, you could also see the queue for the strawberries and cream! We are all excited to get home and watch it on tv!!!! We’ll get our own strawberries and cream to enjoy! We hailed a taxi to pick us up and take us to the underground station nearby to take us back into London. It was another long day, but after having some time to rest again on the tube, we decided to take a closer look at our immediate surroundings here in Camden Town, including Camden Market, another great place for food and shopping. Every time someone in my Facebook group asked about a good place to take teenagers, people would recommend Camden Town, so I figured it should be a pretty fun place. As we walked down the main drag there we are sorts of cool buildings that had been decorated on the facade of the building. The RayBan store had a bunch of sunglasses on the front, a Chinese restaurant had a huge dragon on its front and a trainer, I mean sneaker, store had a bunch of giant shoes on its facade. Clearly a very artistic and hip area. We found Camden Market fairly easily. Very much like Borough Market, there were a ton of food stalls with all sorts of choices!!! It was also busy with people every where. Without too much effort, Beckett found the churro place right away. He ordered a freshly made churro filled with Nutella and then covered with chocolate, caramel pieces and chopped nuts. He loves his churros! Heather settled on pizza and I found a place making Poke bowls. Beckett found a sausage place and got a sausage sandwich with onions and red cabbage. These markets don’t have easily found seating especially when it’s busy, but we were able to find and share a table with some random people in one of these dome seating structures they have throughout the market. It was all very good as usual. Not that I much room left, or Beckett needed another sweet, but I noticed a place called Chin Chin Labs right nearby and recognized it from Instagram post I saw about good ice cream places in London, so we had to try it. The cool thing here is that they make your ice cream to order using liquid nitrogen. Beckett got a warm cookie sundae with chocolate ice cream (boring!) and I got a cup of burnt butter caramel ice cream with crushed pistachios (VERY YUMMY!). We walked down to the Camden Locks to eat our treats and then headed home with very full and happy bellies. Tomorrow we head to Westminster Abbey in the morning and our last afternoon tea. We have a planned afternoon nap before heading off to see the Lion King at Lyceum too. Will be another busy day, but we only have a few left. Trying to soak all we can in! :) Cheers! Rob Today is the day!!!! Harry Potter Studios!!!
It’s also a strike day, which means we weren’t exactly sure how today was going to go. For some of the other trains we had reserved, we received emails that our train had been cancelled. However, for today, we never received word that our train today had been cancelled, so I assumed our train we had reserved to Watford Junction, near the studios, was still running. The news had said that 20 percent of trains would still run on strike days.. I really didn’t know if there was a rhyme or reason to which ones. I had, as a backup, reserved seats on a bus/coach, to take us to the studios as well, but the reviews for it weren’t glowing. This morning, I decided that we would take the chance and assume we were good to go with the train. Thankfully, it was running and all was good. There train ride was about an hour. Once we arrived, you boarded a bus to take you directly to the studios. We arrived a bit early for our 11 am entry time, so we grab a few refreshments and relaxed. All I can say is that the place is AMAZING!!!! I took more pictures today than any other day we’ve been in the UK. I almost cried near the beginning when they first let you in through the “front doors of the castle”. The big wooden doors with the giant statues standing guard on either side. EEEEEKKKK! There was so much to look at from costumes, including the different wigs, to props, to actual sets from different parts of the movie. It just went on and on and on….and we loved it all!!!! They had docents placed throughout and one of them near the beginning with some of costumes and wigs gave us some great insight into some of the symbolism and foreshadowing that was represented by hair and clothing choices. We can’t wait to rewatch all the movies this summer once we are home! Narcissa’s hair (black yet blonde at the tips) for example purposefully symbolizing her connection to not only the Black family tree, but her marriage into the Malloy family. Professor Lockhardt’s snake skin boots (I never had noticed!) which are considered less fancy than the rest of his clothes, foreshadowing his sliminess (snake in the grass). The big takeaway from me was the immensity of the number of people and work that went into turning these books into movies. There were whole areas devoted to sketches, paintings, white card models, etc… that artists had created before the movie production even started. It’s quite overwhelming to think of the work involved. I definitely will appreciate the movies even more now. Halfway through the “tour”, they have a cafe where we took a break for lunch. After lunch, before reentering the displays, they had some larger sets on the “backlot” outside to look at. This included a larger model of the Burrow (I LOVE THE BURROW!), 4 Privet Drive, the bridge and a model of the Ford Anglia. It was all simply amazing! We, of course, dropped a pretty penny in the gift shop at the end. Beckett and I both got new hoodies and I picked up a set of socks for work. Not only were we all inspired to rewatch the movies once we get home, but I’m going to start rereading the books as well. I’m not sure how many times I’ve read them, but in this day and age, I think I could use some inspiration from reading them again. We easily got the bus back to the train station and rode home. I gotta say, the transportation today was without incident and I really love the public transportation here. It was a great day today! Tomorrow we have to get an early start and leave the Vrbo by 7:30 am to catch another train; this time to Windsor. Even though tomorrow isn’t a strike day, our original trains for tomorrow were cancelled. I rebooked tickets on a different train operator (another confusing thing here; there are multiple train operators!) an I think we’re good to go. We’ll see! Cheers! Rob Today was our first full day in London and what a full day it was! We used four different modes of transportation around the city not to mention our own feet!
We started out the day taking a cab ride from our Vrbo directly to the Tower of London. We had tickets for 10 and arrived a little early, so had some time to take in the views from the Thames and hit the gift shop first. Once inside we took a little time to wander around, but I knew we wanted to grab a tour early on from one of the Beefeaters, or Yeoman, so we were able to take the second tour of the morning. Our Yeoman guide was great! He was fantastic storyteller and definitely entertaining. After the tour, he recommended we jump in line to see the Crown Jewels, which was a great recommendation as the line just kept getting longer and longer the entire time we were there. Once we were out of the Crown Jewels, we had been there for awhile and while not hot, it was definitely on the warm side. Thankfully, there seems to be ice cream available everywhere here in the UK including in Tower of London. Beckett and I got in a rather short line and grabbed ice cream and waters for us all. After enjoying a treat and a rest on a bench, we headed to the original part of the complex, the White Tower. As I remembered, it was mostly armor and weapons, which Beckett thought was cool, but there’s only so much you can look at in my opinion. The chapel inside is also pretty cool, mainly because it is so old; actually the oldest part being built in 1077. It’s crazy to be in spaces like this and imagine everyone that’s been there before. We visited a few more parts of the Tower and then headed out. We had tickets at 3 for the Tower Bridge, so we had enough time to walk across the Thames and f ind Borough Market for lunch. I don’t remember visiting any of the markets when I was here, so I am excited to visit as many as we can, because, well, I like food! Burough Market did not disappoint! Wow! It was busy, crowded, confusing, but smelled soooo good! It was a maze of food vendors that I could explore for weeks. We finally had to settle on something, so Beckett got Mac n’ cheese, Heather found chicken teriyaki and I got beef rendang. It was all great as expected. There really isn’t places to sit and eat per say, but luckily we found a few metal stools in a corner we could use. As we started walking back to the Tower Bridge, we also picked up another ice cream cone that was made with sheep’s milk and an eclair. I wish we had time to go back to try more! I’m hoping we work it in to visit Camden Market and Leadenhall Market as well at some point. So we had tickets to walk up into the Tower Bridge and walk across the upper walkways that include glass floors. The stairs up to the top were grueling, especially as we are on week #4. We are all definitely slowing down, so we took several little breaks hiking up. Once up they had a lot of information about the bridge including all the other designs that were proposed which was really cool. Then came the glass walkways! Soooo cool and what a view! They had tiny windows that were opened as well, so a lovely cool breeze came through that felt fantastic. We took pictures, enjoyed the “risk” of walking and standing on the glass and took in the views. The walk down was much more enjoyable and we stopped shortly in the old steam engine rooms that once powered the bridge. Speaking of which, we did get to see the bridge go up and down twice while we were in the area. The first time was when we first got to the area in the morning before we went into the Tower of London. We found out later, that the ship we was pass under is a visiting Japanese warship! Not sure why they are here, but we could see from a distance that there were sailors standing outside on the decks and eventually we could hear a band from the ship playing. One of guides at the bridge said the tallest part of the ship was only 2 feet away from the bridges walkways where we were. It would’ve been really cool to be on the glass walkways and look down on that! I hadn’t booked us any of the traditional hop on, hop off bus tours as I had been told that due to the strikes, etc… that they may be slower than normal, spending a lot of the time just sitting in traffic. However, at this point, we were tired, sore, hot, but not quite ready to call it a day. I jumped on my phone and found an “evening” tour bus that we could sit on for a couple hours and we decided to go for it. To get to the where the bus tour was going to eventually leave, we grabbed our second form of transportation for the day, an Uber boat down the Thames. We had to go from the Tower Bridge area to Westminster and I had installed the app for it previously knowing we might want to try it at some point. We weren’t really sure what we were doing, but we ended up on the right boat and made it to the right place. We picked up some meal deals at a grocery near by and walked to were the bus tour would start. It ended up being pretty good; it gave you a good idea of how large London is and we saw some things were probably won’t have time for. Plus, we got to just sit and relax for a bit. After the bus tour we headed home on the tube, our last and final transportation mode. It was a long first day, but we had a good time. We’re excited for tomorrow because we head to Harry Potter Studios! Woo hoo! It’s another strike day, but our train tickets weren’t cancelled, so I’m relieved but still a bit concerned at the same time. While most trains are cancelled for tomorrow, some are still running; limited service. I’m thinking positive and hoping it all works out. Cheers! Rob So today we had some unknowns or uncertainties that caused some anxiety, but it all turned out ok!
The first order of business was to drive to Oxford. The drive was largely uneventful except for a back-up we encountered along the way. Initially I thought it was a traffic jam or accident or ??? Turned out there was a tiny, tiny bridge entering this little village where they literally charge you 5 pence to cross. There were literally two old men at the bridge collecting the toll. What!? Seriously!? Thankfully I had 10 p on me and I paid the toll and we crossed the bridge and zoomed off. The traffic was backed up for over 5 minutes for a 5 p toll! Once we enter Oxford, we needed to find the place where we were going to store our luggage for the day before heading into London. So, this was fun. First, I found out from our eventually taxi driver into London, that I drove down a restricted street in Oxford. It was restricted to electric vehicles only between the hours of 7 am and 7 pm. Well, it was after 7 and we didn’t have an EV. He said since I was in a rental, they probably would “look the other way” and not fine me. Here’s to crossing my fingers the rental company doesn’t send me a bill over the next few weeks. Ooops. The second thing, the luggage storage place was the scary basement of a newsstand. I was expecting something a little more….formal I guess, as I had reserved the service by using an app. We didn’t really have much of a choice if we wanted to store our luggage for a few hours while we took a walking tour of Oxford, so we threw caution to the wind, I took all our luggage down a narrow staircase into a basement filled with newsstand inventory and left. We made sure we had our passports with us just in case. Ha, ha. Of course, it was all fine and there when we went back, but it was rather odd. We then went to drop off the rental car. I can’t say enough about our rental car experience. I rented through Thrifty and it was amazing. The people were extremely friendly and extremely efficient. It took less than 15-20 minutes when we first picked it up in York and then less than 10 minutes in Oxford to turn it in. I’ve never rented a car so easy in the States. We had a taxi waiting at the rental car place to drive us back into the main area of Oxford for our walking tour. Thankfully we had a bit of time before the tour and there was a Wendy’s right near the meeting point, so we ducked into Wendy’s to use the bathrooms and get a quick bite to eat as our breakfast was pretty measly before we left this morning. Our walking tour was lead by an alumni of Oxford who had just graduated the year before. His name was Patrick and he was pretty entertaining and filled with great stories and knowledge. We got to see a few different colleges, including the Bodleian Library where some scenes were filmed in the Harry Potter movies, one of them being the scene where McGonagall is teaching the students how to dance before the Yule Ball. It was a great tour and he gave us some insights into the colleges history and how the college system works there. After the tour, we had just enough time to go back to Wedny’s, grab some lunch and duck into the college bookstore for a few souvenirs. Since our train from Oxford to London had been cancelled due to the strike, I had two backup plans. We could have taken a coach/bus from Oxford, but we would’ve had to switch busses at Heathrow. Of course, this would take several hours and involve us lugging all the luggage. Our other option was to hire a driver to drive us all the way. Luckily London isn’t too far away from Oxford, so while expensive, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility. So, we went with the private driver. It was totally worth the splurge! We walked back to the newsstand, retrieved our luggage from the basement and waited for our driver to arrive. Next anxious moment was just hoping we had indicated the right place to pick us up at. Thankfully, you could follow the driver on an app and when I saw he was close, I walked down the street and intercepted him. Our driver, Hamid, was awesome! He pulled the car down the restricted road to where Heather and Beckett were still standing with all our luggage, had bottles of water ready for us and talked our ears off all the way to London. Lol He was a very interesting fellow; married with four kids. Once we told him we were both teachers, it was education talk most of the way. It actually made the ride go by a lot quicker. Once we got into London, we found out why people say not to drive in London. Scary! He even said it caused him stress and anxiety. He took us practically to the front door of our Vrbo here in Camden Town and we were successfully in London! Overall, the day was fantastic! While it was filled with more anxiety than any other day so far, we made it without much issue. We have been so lucky during this trip. We are very thankful that everything has really gone our way throughout. Let’s keep that streak going! Tomorrow morning we are heading to the Tower of London, London Bridge, Borough Market and who knows where else. Cheers! Rob After spending time yesterday walking about, today we decided to jump in the car and make a circuit around the Cotswolds two visit some more villages. This involved more exciting driving on roads not nearly wide enough for two lanes of traffic. It was fun as usual. Thankfully, the roads were pretty empty and we only had to pull off to the side a few times to pass opposing traffic. I can’t imagine the roads on a really busy summer day.
Our first stop was to some lavender fields in Snowshill. The farm was lovely with not only lavender but several areas of wildflowers and a little woodland area. The weather was gorgeous, so we had a great time just wandering around and admiring all the plants and taking pictures. They had a small section on how they harvest the lavender and turn it into the essential oil that they use for all the products. There was also a small gift shop where we picked up a few lavender goodies along with lavender ice cream. The ice cream was surprisingly good and we all liked it. We moved on to the village of Snowshill which features in Bridgette Jones Diary. What a cute little village! We parked the car and walked around for a bit, taking pictures and trying to figure out scenes from the movie. Along the way we met some Canadians who were walking through and had a nice visit. As we would end up saying all day, “I can’t believe people live here!” It almost doesn’t seem real. We moved on to Stow-on-the-Wold, which is a larger market town. We amazingly found a parking space in the market square and started to walk around. We stopped in a cafe for lunch and bought some chocolate from a chocolate shop. I had seen a picture of a really cool door surrounded by two trees on-line and it turned out to be a door on the Anglican Church here. We went on to the church to find the door and it was just as magical as it looked in the picture. It reminded me off something you would’ve seen in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. We jumped in the car and headed on to Burford. they had a really long Main Street to check out and a really cool church. We spent some time in the church and discovered some really interesting things including the mechanism from the original village clock, the tomb of some much despised local residents and a mysterious stone used in the building with what they believe is prehistoric. Every place we go in the UK seems to have amazing history and stories. Lastly, we headed to Bibury. It’s the location of Arlington Row, which is another highly photographed area of the Cotswolds. I almost accidentally drove down it, which would’ve been bad, as it’s a private street and there were a bunch of tourists just like us there to visit and take pictures. Our navigation system has occasionally failed us on the trip. Not often, but occasionally. And just like all the other villages, there was a great stream/brook/small river flowing through it that had trout, ducks and other water fowl. We took off and returned to Bourton-on-the-Water. We wanted to spend our last night out on the village green along the river, so we walked into town, got takeaway at the local fish ‘n chip shop and laid out a blanket to eat dinner. It was pretty idyllic. I wish we had places like this where we lived. You had the gently moving water with ducks, a great green space along it, with plenty of trees and shade, plenty of people sitting, playing and eating, and yet it was peaceful and while not totally silent, there was a quiet, peacefulness to it all. There were even these three young boys/brothers playing in the water and while they were splashing and occasionally louder, with their British accents, it was lovely. Lol Tomorrow we head to Oxford to turn in the car and head to London. I’m a little nervous about all our transportation for the remainder of the trip due to the strike. We’ve read and watched a lot about it, but we’re still confused on what really is going to happen. On each strike day, there will still be some small percentage of things running, so it’s not a complete shut-down. Our trains from Oxford to London for tomorrow were already preemptively cancelled, so we hired a car to drive us into London tomorrow. Not cheap, but on this first day with all our luggage, we wanted it easy. Otherwise, we were going to have two take two busses. Not real exciting with all the luggage. Lots of unknowns, but we are excited to head into the big city! Plus we have Harry Potter Studios, The Lion King and a British Bake-Off to do over the next week! Wish us luck! Cheers! Rob One of the popular activities that I had read about in the Cotswolds is simply walking. In fact, that seems to be a popular activity throughout England…walking/hiking. We have observed people walking and hiking throughout the trip. After seeing how beautiful it is simply everywhere we go, it’s easy to see why it’s a popular activity. I had downloaded an app before we came that mapped out several walks throughout the Cotswolds that we could take. There was also a small pamphlet here in our rental that describe several walks you could take from here in Burton-on-the-Water. We got ready and headed off on a circular walk through the countryside that would take us to Lower Slaughter, where there is an old mill (and ice cream!) and then return here to Burton-ion-the-Water. It was a great walk through fields, woods and farm fields. The whole idea of public foot paths here is really cool. There were several gates we had to go through; I image separating properties. We even walked through a huge wheat field at one point. Clearly it was a farmer’s property, however, there is a law here that the public have access to these foot paths, some that are hundred’s years old. About 2/3 of the way, we came upon Lower Slaughter, a village on the River Eye, which is more of a brook. There is also a village called Upper Slaughter, which is clearly up the stream. The word slaughter derives from slough which means wet land. To Beckett’s delight they sell ice cream at the old mill here. We stopped, got cones, and sat and enjoyed. It was really good ice cream! It’s organic and they make it there. One of the flavors was clotted cream with elderberry….so good! We continued on with the last third of the walk back to Burton-on-the-Water. We had spied a sandwich shop yesterday that looked good, so we headed there to pick up lunch. B got ham and cheese, while Heather and I braved some more unique ones. Heather got pork, stuffing and apple and I got Brie, bacon and pepper relish. OMG…best sandwiches ever! Price was similar to what we’d spend at Jimmy Johns or Subway and they tasted way better! :) We headed back to our cottage for an afternoon rest. The mileage of the hike was around 3-4 miles, so we were ready to take it easy for a bit. We’re a little tired of the traditional pub/inn food, so we tried to find something different again for dinner. We found a place in town that severed just burgers and sides. The originator went to school in the US playing soccer and when he came back he missed good burgers and started this restaurant. It needed up being another great meal! Burgers were fantastic, great fries and fantastic service. The walk in the fresh air and sun today had worn us out and we are actually going to bed at a reasonable time tonight of 10. Tomorrow we’re going to use the car and go visit several other small villages around the Cotswolds, We’re also visiting the lavender fields. Cheers! Rob
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