Finally Home!!

Actually, we got home late Monday night. This is just the first time I've had a chance to write anything about it! The trip home was a bit crazier than the trip over, but I'll get to that a little bit later. Right now I have to finish telling you about the rest of our trip.

Just a few more pictures from our trip to Edinburgh, Scotland:


Adri and I at Edinburgh Castle


A view from over the wall of the castle



This was kinda comical—this guy was dressed up as William Wallace (Braveheart) and was standing outside the castle taking pictures with tourists for a donation to the national Leukemia fund. He kept telling everyone he wasn't Mel Gibson, but close up, he kinda looked like him!


I took a number of pictures of the Scottish countryside, but this was by far my favorite. Everywhere you looked, there were all large herds of sheep—EVERYWHERE!!!

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We left Edinburgh on Wednesday and headed south to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. One thing that struck me was how long Brits tend to think driving takes. From Westcliff where Kim lives to Edinburgh is only about 7 1/2 or 8 hours away—nothing more than a day's drive for most of us. The British seem to think that's a trip better split into two days! I was talking to a lady on our way back home who was born in the UK but now lives in Montana and she said it was a shock to her the first time her husband wanted to drive 14 hours somewhere in one day!!

Stratford-upon-Avon was a fun place to visit. They have these "Hop-On Hop-Off" double decker tour busses that drive around the city and stop every 20 minutes at different attractions. You buy one ticket for 24 hours and can ride the busses to any of 12 different sites. So we got on at the beginning of the tour, rode it to Shakespeare's house, then to his granddaughter's house and the Teddy Bear Museum and then to his wife, Ann Hathaway's house. We would have gone to the church where he was buried, but armed police had the street blocked off.


The proverbial red double decker bus


Adri and Kim on the backside of Shakespeare's home/birthplace


Ann Hathaway's house

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Thursday we took the train/tube and spent the day in London and tried to take in as many sites as we could.


Our tour guide, George. He was a very sweet man, but Adri did NOT like his hat!


Adri and I at the Tower of London


Adri and I with Big Ben, the Houses of parliament and the London Eye in the background. We were standing on the sidewalk in front of Westminster Abbey.


Adri and I in front of Buckingham Palace. We had a really neat experience here. While we were just standing in front of the palace taking in the scenery, out of nowhere comes this black carriage pulled by two horses and driven by two men in camel hair coats and black top hats! We have no earthly idea who it was in the carriage, but it certainly was fun to guess!

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Our last sight seeing day was Friday when we took the Tube back into London to Victoria Station and took a coach tour to Leeds Castle, Dover, Canterbury and then ended the day in Greenwich with a river cruise down the Thames. This was probably one of the most relaxing trips we took—mostly because someone else was doing the driving!! There ended up only being 11 people total on this tour, so Kim and I took over the row of five seats in the back of the bus so that we would have plenty of room for Adri to stretch out and play or sleep.


We drove past the Metropolitan Tabernacle—the church started in London by Charles Haddon Spurgeon in the 1800's. This area of London was an area heavily bombed by the Germans in WWII, so the front facade and the foundation was the only part of the church that survived. Every other part of the church looks much more modern.



Leeds Castle was a castle created by one of the early Kings of England for his Queen, and there after became knows as the Queen's Castle. All of Henry VIII's wives stayed there at some point. We also learned how to remember how each marriage ended: Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. And trust me—the Brits still love their soap operas!



The White Cliffs of Dover. During WWII, Winston Churchill wanted to spend the remainder of the war in Dover so he could look the Germans in the eye, so to speak. Obviously he wasn't allowed to due to security, but he often went there for short periods anyway.


Kim and Adri and I at the White Cliffs overlooking the English Channel. When you're there, if you look really, REALLY closely, you can see the coast of France as a faint line across the horizon.


This is Canterbury Cathedral—an area made famous both by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as well as by the long line of Archbishops who traditionally have crowned the monarchs of England.

Among the more famous people buried at Canterbury Cathedral are:










Edward, the Black Prince of Wales (who had the not-so-honorable distinction of dying of dysentery—at least that's what our guide said. I've read other accounts that said he died of plague) and King Henry IV and his second wife, Joanna of Navarre.
















Also of interest is the burial place of Stephen Langton. He is credited with adding chapter divisions to the Bible.

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That's about it for all that we saw. There will eventually be descriptions on all the photos on our flickr site. The trip home was a bit more harried than the trip over. We left on an airport shuttle at 6am Monday and got to Gatwick around 9:30. After somehow managing to get our luggage AND the stroller into the airport by myself, they then proceeded to tell me that my luggage was too heavy and I would need to repack it. Ummm...hello, McFly! Do I LOOK like I have extra luggage in my back pocket?!?!?!?!? I BURST into tears—something I've found rather helpful in getting help. They brought someone over to push my luggage cart over to the baggage shop where I spent a rediculous amount of money on two little bags so as to even out the weight of my luggage. Then when I went to check in, the woman told me that I'd have to pay $125 for the one extra bag!!!!!! At this point, I really didn't care. I wanted to go home and the luggage was coming with me any way possible. When I went around to pay the fee, the woman (who had earlier seen me trying to get the stroller and the luggage cart to cooporate and go the same way) winked at me and told me that I was allowed to check a bag for the baby, and gave me my boarding pass! I wasn't very happy with security, however. I wasn't allowed any liquids whatsoever, so Adri's benedryl ended up in my checked baggage. Subsequently she was awake 7 out of 9 hours of the flight home. Praise the Lord, though, thanks to the nice lady from Montana who switched seats with us so I could have an empty seat for Adri and to the airlines for having an hours worth of Baby Einstein videos on the "On-Demand" list, she was still a wonderful little traveler. The biggest thing that made me mad was that they made me taste her food AND her formula even though it was factory sealed!!!!!! Again, all I wanted to do was get home, so I said a little prayer for God to protect the milk and did what I could to keep any contamination to a minimum.


All in all, we had a good time with Kim and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the country. But I'm VERY glad to be home....

posted by Brandi at 8:52 PM