Okay, this is going to be a super long post with lots of pictures so I'm apologizing now but it was super hard to narrow down 800 pictures to share our trip. We went with Eric's best friend, Kade and his wife Jessica. The plane ride was about eight hours from Atlanta and everything went very smooth without any delays. We have so many funny stories and so much we did I don't quite know where to start. We spent the first two days in London. There is so much to see in London we didn't even begin to see everything. We bought tickets for the tour bus and it takes you around the main tourist parts of the city and you can get on and off all day.
This is a picture of the famous Big Ben, I took that our first night as we went walking around the city.
I am a huge Hard Rock Cafe fan - I always try to go to one when we travel. I collect HR pins from each city. This is the original Hard Rock.
This is Eric and I in a telephone booth. We even used the booths to call home with our calling card.
This was also taken our first night. We road the underground tube and when we came up from the underground we were right at Trafalgar Square. People would climb all over the giant lions and so of course Eric couldn't miss out on that experience.
This is a picture of the beautiful Westminister Abbey at sunset.
And what would be a trip to London without stopping to see Buckingham Palace.
I loved seeing the London Bridge. It's just so fun to see for yourself all the things you've heard about. After the end of our bus tour we went back to the parking garage to get our rental car and discovered that our lights had been left on so our battery was dead. We asked everyone who came back to their car if they had jumper cables, but we had no luck. Kade called a service like AAA and they came and took care of us.
So after London we drove up to Dudley and stayed near Wolverhampton. This is a picture of us at Black Country Museum. It was a really neat experience to see all the antiques and ways that things were engineered. We also took a canal ride on small boats through the canals underneath the city. That was my favorite part of the museum. The picture above is of Eric and I after we came up from the tour of a coal mine at the museum.
This is Eric and Kade eating some Chips - we loved eating chips! They are pretty much the same as our french fries but had a slightly different taste.
While we were in the same area (I think we're on day #5) we spent some time with the Hardwick family. And I just adore them. This is Richard giving the boys a drive in his mini coop. You should have seen Richard drive this thing - it was a riot. If you look close you can see Eric in the backseat.
The Hardwick's took such good care of us, fed us two meals and showed us some great sites around their home. This is Eric and I in front of Stratford Castle. It is extremely old and falling in as you can tell.
Our next stop was Warwick Castle. It was really neat because it was still maintained and we were able to tour the facility and go inside the castle. The first part of this castle was built in 1060 - that tells you how old it was. This is Eric and Kade being their usual selves.
This is us in front of the birth place of Shakespeare.
This is Harlaxton Manor which is one of my favorite places we visited. It was just amazing and beautiful. It is located in the city Grantham. This was used in the movie "The Haunting" and it is now a college.
Harlaxton Manor again.
Next we made our way to Manchester and then to Preston. This is Eric and I on the Preston Temple grounds. I loved all the beautiful flowers and amazed at how green everything in England was. It was just beautiful.
This is me in Liverpool. The other thing I loved about the country was how old everything was, there is so much history. The buildings were beautiful but I loved how the country had so many small details such as this lion. My other favorite things were all the doors. So many varieties and colors. I told Eric if we ever build a house we'll have to put lots of fun doors on it. He just laughed and thought I was crazy.
This is our sweet rental car. We were already tight with space but as we went along and Jessica and I kept shopping our bags kept getting bigger and bigger. The boys had a tough time making all the bags fit.
We're getting close to the end. After Liverpool we drove to Wales and stayed in Caerphilly. It was beautiful and even more green than England. Then we went to the city of Bath and this is a picture of Eric and I in front of the Roman Baths.
And our last stop was Stonehenge. Pretty amazing and they don't know a thing about who made this or why it's there. I did make sure I got one last ice cream cone as we were leaving. So, that's it. Jessica and I discovered we have way too much fun shopping together and both came home with some fun clothes. We also discovered that the cities shut down way too early 5 or 6 O'Clock. So we went to three different movies to kill some time at night. And if you're still reading my blog after this long post you deserve a big piece of chocolate.
