I had a lovely time in the UK even though my phone was all but useless and I could only do sporadic updates. It was a truly delightful trip! Here are my Facebook updates all pulled together for those of you that didn’t get them.
Arrived in Heathrow and took the Express train to Paddington Station. (Did a virtual geocache while there). Then off to the Rose Park Hotel to ditch some bags so we can do some unencumbered sightseeing! Woohoo!
Walked a couple of miles passing the March Arch and Leicester Square to Charing Cross to grab our London passes. Yay! Now we can go anywhere! But to start with we’re having dinner at a nice Irish pub called O’neill’s. Brett sucked down a Guinness and said “blech!” He misses his American moose piss beer!
Got back to the hotel and checked into our room which is barely 2 feet wider around than the double bed (and yet still very nicely appointed even if the bathroom door does hit the bed every time you open it).
Then it was time to head off on a mission to find an elusive size 3 urban geocache aka travel bug hotel so that I could dump 8 of the ten bugs that I brought with me across the pond. We walked another two miles out through Kensington Gardens and more until we arrived at a youth hostel and continued around a walking trail. It wad getting dark and now the light rain was getting annoying and we looked and looked and friggan LOOKED and I was about to give up when Brett finally made the find in and area I didn’t think to look at all! (He SO didn’t want to have to come back again!) Hooray!
TBs offloaded… we strolled back and found a lovely restaurant called the Island Grill where Sara our server took great care of us. Three glasses of wine / beer and a delicious dinner later, we headed back to our room to snuggle and fall asleep exhausted from our first day in London!
Ok more my UK memories coming up: First morning in the UK we decided it would be quite lovely to go see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace so we went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast then stepped out into a lovely fall but rather cloudy morning. Walked through Hyde park to discover lots of interesting blockades due to a triathalon in town. Oy! Manged to find our way to the palace in spite of the afore mentioned blockades only to discover that this was not an entirely novel idea even for a Wed morning! The place was mobbed with people and we were lucky to get glimpses of the tops of their fuzzy bearskin caps! But we did not despair .. it was still quite thrilling to be there and to see what we could of the palace live and in person!
Afterward we strolled passed Queen Victoria’s Monument and then on through St James Park heading toward Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliment and the London Eye which were all with in a stone’s throw of eachother! It was really very thrilling for me! Then we hopped on a Thames River Boat Cruise and sailed up towards the Tower Bridge past the infamous Tower Of London! (ooohh ahh scary music)…
Tower Of London Tour – First off .. this place was far larger than I had anticipated and we took one of the Yeoman Warden (aka Beefeater) led guided tours that lasted over an hour as I recall. Our guide was terrifically funny, entertaining and fascinatingly knowledgeable about the Tower.
I was surprised to discover that for all it reputation, there really wasn’t all that much blood and guts torture that took place there .. yes some but not so much as you might expect! But still you KNOW I had to visit the Bloody Tower and the Dungeon. (ooohh aaaahh more scary organ music) This dungeon equipment was definitely NOT made for comfort!
Something else I was surprised to discover was how many animals had been kept there. There were literally lions and tigers and bears! Oh my! In fact Henry III had his pet polar pear cuffed in such a way that it could go swimming and fishing in the Thames! (which considering how much sewage ran through it I am such was a delight for the poor bear! Yuch!
We were not allowed to take pics of the Crown Jewels but oh my word there was some very pretty and ornate stuff in there. There was a three foot round gold “punch bowl” that was so incredibly ornately decorated I could scarcely believe it. And the crowns and scepters! Wow!! I also was delighted to find out that Queen Elizabeth I shared my love of pearls and there were some very lovely ones on display!
I also had no idea how many Kings and Queens actually lived in the Tower! I had always thought it was mostly a prison and execution place but we actually were able to walk through the part of the Tower that Edward “Longshanks” lived in, including his bedchamber. I remember him rather unfondly from Braveheartt” We also got to stand on the spot where King Henry VIII supposedly proposed to Anne Boleyn, promising to love her for as long as she lived. (rather ironic eh?)
We definitely picked up lots of interesting facts and bits of history and then we had a nice lunch, did some shopping (of course) and took the tube over to Barbican station where the “Blood and Tears Walking Tour” began. Our guide Declan McHugh is the author of “Bloody London” and he is definitely quite the authority on all things bloody and murderous in London! He lead our small group quickly through rain soaked dark alley ways of London’s creepy underbelly recounting scary tales of sinister and gruesome murders! We of course grabbed a copy of the book and he was kind enough to sign it for us.
By the time we finished the tour and made our way back to the hotel it was 11p so we got some dinner and crawled into bed since we had to be up around 4am to catch our train to Llangammarch Wells!
Now for my favorite part! I had never met my mother’s sister Anne and meeting her was definitely the highlight of the trip for me! She lives in Llangammarch Wells Wales and we had to catch a VERY early train to travel there from London but it was actually a lovely trip. The countryside is breathtakingly beautiful (with lots of sheep! – There’re SO FLUFFY!! lol) and Brett booked us first class Brit Rail passes (for whatever trains had first class). The train to her home town literally only had one car.
But when we arrived she was waiting on the platform and although I had promised myself I would not make a sappy scene that went right out the window when I saw her because I just about burst into tears and ran to her. I cannot even begin to say how wonderful it was to finally meet her and how delighted I was to find that she and mum are so alike in so many ways and yet so very different as well. She took us over to the hotel which was within sight of the station and her house was almost in sight of the hotel. We dropped our bags and spent the rest of the day chatting and getting to know each other. My aunt has lived a very exciting life full of travel and adventure with her husband Frank who has since passed away. I loved hearing of her adventures! She was a scuba instructor at a time that women rarely did so and she even tickled a cheetah behind its ear when she lived in Africa. (she said it purred just like any cat you know). I love old photos and so I asked if she had any and out came the albums and I snapped some shots of some of my faves (while trying not to seem too creepy) and have shared a few in the post. David and Nadia might be surprised to be included.
We invited her to dinner at the hotel (The Cammarch – btw and truly lovely place!) and she confessed to us that she had not been out to dinner in nearly 14 years! So of course we were delighted to insist she order anything she wants! She and I simply could not decide between so many delicious entrees so we decided to share two of them to be able to try as much as possible! I highly recommend the salmon and potted mushrooms appetizer!
After dinner we said good night and let her return to the dogs: Connie her big mush of a Great Dane and Val her VERY protective (and none too fond of men as Brett discovered) German Shepard. We slept very comfortably and then in the morning we walked over to Anne’s house to meet her and went to a truly beautiful mountaintop: “Sugarloaf” that gave a spectacular view of the area! I only wish the sky was a bit clearer and that the panorama photo I took could do the place justice!
While we were there I had Brett pull up the geocache program on his phone since mine was all but useless and to our delight found that there was a cache right there on the hill. We took Anne with us as we made our way over to it and I bushwhacked the last 50 feet or so to the cache cleverly hidden beneath a rock behind this cute little tree. Anne lit up to discover that there was a cache right there and I left my own travel bug “Kisses from the US” there for some intrepid explorer to move along some day.
But sadly it became time to leave as we had a train to catch and I felt very sad to go because I had only just met her and already loved her dearly. But I know we will stay in touch! She got us to the station and I tried really hard to not cry all over her as we said goodbye on the platform.
Then we began our trip to Carlisle. This one took a fair bit longer as it required several change of trains and then there was that pesky delay due to a barrier coming down on a car in a train crossing. Oh did I mention this was Friday the 13th? LOL well all in all we made our a far cry better than the person in the car I suppose but it did slow down the trip a bit. We finally made it to Carlisle station and my mum’s cousin Carol and her husband Ged were there to greet us! I was blessed to meet them on my last hop across the pond 15 years ago or so and they are just the nicest more gracious people. They looked wonderful and got us back to the house which was even more beautiful than I remembered it and we had a lovely time catching up and a really yummy hot pot of stew. Breakfast was also delicious and we had to explain to Brett what was in Black Pudding after he tried a bit and he handled that pretty well.
We decided to go up to Carlisle Castle to do a bit more sightseeing and it was really nice to be back. Carlisle Castle is where Mary Queen of Scots had been imprisoned for much of her life and they had a plaque on the site of the tower’s former location. I was also fascinated by “the licking stones”. After the Castle we visited Tulle House which is a really cool “kid’s museum” wheich we decided my inner child would quite enjoy!
Sadly though it seems I picked up some sort of a nasty bug because as the day went on I started feeling decidedly unwell: headache, nausea, chills and fever, body aches and general misery so we headed back to the house and I crawled into bed. We ended up having to cancel dinner that was planned to meet up with Matthew and Laura (Carol and Ged’s kids) and Laura’s husband Stuart. Brett spent the evening chatting more with my wonderful family while I did my best to sleep it off but it was a REALLY long night for poor Suze. I felt a fair bit better by morning although I didn’t dare eat anything more than tea and toast. And managed to visit a bit more with them and go over lots of really old photos of people way back in my family tree. Carol had actually researched my mum’s side of the family all the way back to the early 1800s! But sadly again the time came for us to go catch a fairly early train back to London. I think I was most disappointed to not get to see my crazy biker brother and favorite bad boy: David Kinrade.
The ride home was pretty uneventful. I was still not really well and so I tried to sleep and rest as best as possible because I knew the worst was yet to come: the 20 hour trek home! But we arrived back into London right on time – jumped a tube to Paddington Station and popped back over to the Rose Park who treated us to an upgrade room which was remarkably spacious for the area! We went back to the Island Grill for dinner and I had the duck! (It was the first real bit of food I felt well enough to have in 2 days!) Back home to bed because we supposedly had an early flight which we woke to discover had been delayed 3 hours! Ughh!
Ok no worries I wanted to go to the Sherlock Holmes Museum anyway so I grabbed Brett’s phone for the GPS and off I went on my own because he was more inclined to rest a bit more. I got to 221b Baker Street only to discover it was still closed and had no posted hours! Bummer! So I pressed my nose and camera against the glass anyway and snapped a shot then went back to the hotel. We decided to head over to the airport earlier than required since we figured it would be jammed with annoyed delayed travelers and I think it was a good thing we did. There was no way we were going to make our connection in Chicago (yes we flew from and back from Connecticut to London through Chicago – Oy!) They managed to book us onto a later flight to Bradley and got us home after a mere 20 hours of travel. Can you detect a note of sarcasm there? All in all it was a great and amazing and wonderful trip and I am incredibly grateful to my Brett for the best birthday gift EVER!
