Frankie Says Relax

*sigh* My body is finally rebelling against the pace we've kept for the last week. I just realized that today is the first day in seven that we haven't done ANYTHING!!! I woke up this morning with a little bit of a cold--the first one I've had since before I got pregnant with Adriana! So I guess now that I'm sick, it's time to go home :-) I think it's getting to Adri too. She refuses to drink more than one bottle a day (in the morning), but eats solid food like a mad woman the rest of the day. She went through more food just today than she normally goes trough in TWO!!!! I hope she does okay on the plane Monday. I keep checking my flight reservations, and so far there's no on in the seat next to me so Adri can havae her own seat (kind of) on the long flight back to the states. The flight from Minneapolis to Denver is pretty much a sardine can, but that's only an hour and a half flight.

Okay, so on to the "diary" of the last week. Obviously I've taken more pictures than I'll post here (otherwise it's going to take me forever and I'll just give up). All my photos (not yet with explinations) can be found at our Flickr site.

Saturday - Monday: Westcliff to Leeds; Leeds to Edinburgh
Monday - Wednesday: Edinburgh to Stratford-upon-Avon; Stratford-upon-Avon to Westcliff
Thursday: London
Friday: Coach tour of Leeds Castle, White Cliffs of Dover, Canterbury, Grenwich, and a cruise down the River Thames.

We were pretty excited to actually be able to go to Leeds and Edinburgh, because as you may have read earlier, Adri and Kim had both been sick in the days before. Everyone was feeling better Saturday morning, so we went ahead with our plans. We drove about 3 hours north of Westcliff to the town of Leeds where Kim's frind Mark and his family live. They were kind enough to let us stay over night with them. When we got there, Adri, of course commanded the attention of everyone in the room. She's gotten a bit cheeky as of late. Anyway, that evening we took everyone out for bowling and Chineese to thank them for letting us disrupt their lives for 14 hours. It was a lot of fun, but we were glad to get back on the road to our destination. Four or five hours later, we found Edinburgh. Finding our hotel was a totally different story. I think we probably drove around for a good half hour before calling the place for directions. Adri was exhausted and Kim and I were both pretty testy. So we parked the car, walked everything two blocks down and then lugged everything up the stairs to our room. It was a very nice little suite with a kitchen AND a washing machine!!! As you can see from the picture, Adri was facinated with the front-loading washer.

Monday morning we got up and headed down into town to do our sight seeing. First stop was Edinburgh Castle. Let me tell you--walking up to that castle is NOT for the faint of leg. Of course if we had gone up the RIGHT way, it would have been a lot easier.

And just a little known fact--did you know that King James I, the patron of the King James Bible (1611 AV) was born in Edinburgh Castle, nd that his mother was Mary Queen of Scots??

I'll p ublish this much, but I'll have to finish the rest tomorrow. My body is now on automatic shutdown, and if I don't get it into bed, I'll be sleeping on the keyboard tonight.

posted by Brandi at 1:35 PM