Mother's Day

I am such a pampered Mama. 

 

I woke up on Mother's Day to Rob making pancakes- some of which the kids brought me for breakfast in bed.  I told them it was very sweet, but I'd rather eat breakfast with THEM in the kitchen.  I was then completely drowned in homemade cards, coupons, bath salts, treats, and flowers from the garden. Jake even gave me a toy car.  I love their heartfelt and homemade gifts!

 

And this!  This is the act of a husband who knows and appreciates me.  Rob and the kids washed every dish, all weekend.  My least favorite chore, and the most thoughtful gift.

I am so grateful for my sweet family and these years that we have all together.

My cup runneth over.

The Great British Road Trip: London

We visited London for the first time about 7 years ago, when Toby still fit in a crib and did SO MUCH on that short 3 day weekend, that this time around we just wanted to spend our day strolling and not doing a lot of what you might think of as "must do" sightseeing.

 

Our first stop was the Harry Potter store in King's Cross Station.  We had planned to do the photo op at platform 9 3/4, but even first thing in the morning the line was an hour deep.  Charlotte said she didn't really care, and would rather see the city, so we didn't hang around.

 

The kids liked riding the tube and the big red double-decker buses around.  Transportation + entertainment = win.  The British Library was our next stop but it was closed for Good Friday! Dang it.  We had visited there before, but both Rob and I were looking forward to seeing their treasures again. 

After that disappointment, we trudged on to the British Museum.  Charlotte and Toby have become quite the experts on Greek mythology lately as they've been reading the Percy Jackson series together.  Toby says he most wants to visit Athens, so we'll have to try to make that happen, but I told him that some of the most famous Greek sculptures are actually in the British Museum.  

 

The "Elgin Marbles" were originally part of the pediment, or top of the Parthenon in Athens.  They have been displayed in the British Museum since the early 1800s.  Charlotte and Toby read the description beneath each sculpture to see which God or Goddess was being represented.  They know way more about this than I do.

 

Jakey mainly wanted to see a mummy.  He was also asking me a lot of questions about the mummification process and wanted to make sure that the mummies could NOT come back to life and chase him.  It was really crowded in the Egypt area, but we saw some mummies and managed the experience without having any nightmares that night.

 

London was so incredibly crowded!  We decided to try and escape the crowds for a while in St. James Park.  The flowers were beautiful, and while there were a lot of people here too, we got an ice cream and headed to the playground.

 

Our kids love going to playgrounds and meeting other kids that speak English.  But we heard so many different languages in London... more so than anywhere else we have visited recently.

 

And you can see Buckingham Palace from the playground.  No big deal for these mini-globetrotters.

 

Next we headed toward Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and Parliament. The kids insisted on getting into one of the phonebooths.  It actually still had a pay phone in it!  Very novel to our little ones growing up in the smartphone era.

 

Big Rob and Big Ben.

 

 

From Westminster, we next headed toward the London Eye which we had tickets for that evening. The most direct route was across Westminster Bridge- site of a recent terror attack.  We stopped to listen to this bagpiper and watch the boats in the river.  Before going to the Eye, we found a nice Italian restaurant called Locale and sat down to relax and enjoy pizza and pasta after all of our walking.

 

Then it was on to the grand finale.  The London Eye!  Tickets are timed to a 30 minute window, and you have to get in line 30 minutes before your assigned time.  The line moved quickly once we finally got in it, but Amelie did manage to take a nap with Rob and I taking turns holding her.

 

The Eye does not stop very often.  You get into your pod while it is slowly moving with the river just below you.  At this point, I was questioning my judgement. I don't like heights much, and I especially don't like ferris wheels.

 

It moves slowly and you make one trip around the wheel.  It hardly felt like it was moving and it was completely enclosed which made me feel safer- no one could fall out.

 

Nearly to the top, I took a photo of the pod next to us.

 

And Rob took this shot of Parliament from the top.

 

Final group selfie of the Great British Road Trip! 

The London Eye was a neat experience, but not one I feel like we need to repeat.

 

Nearby we found a carousel and playground so of course we had to visit those before heading back to our hotel for the night.  I find it hilarious when Rob forgets to smile in these selfies because he is concentrating!  But he did get Toby, Jake, and Charlotte all into the picture.  (London was the only place where I found two triple hotel rooms cheaper than an airbnb accommodation.)

  

The next morning we were on the road by 7:30 am and headed home!  We took the ferry from Dover back to Calais and I got one last photo of England- the white cliffs of Dover. By the time we got home that night we had driven 2,960 miles!  Everyone was exhausted and Rob and I were both starting to get sick.  But we made a TON of memories on this trip, and it was really a once in a lifetime experience. I love it when a plan comes together.

The Great British Road Trip: Edinburgh and Hadrian's Wall

 

On our one full day in Edinburgh, we got up early and walked up to the Castle. So early, in fact, that we were there 30 minutes before they opened.  We walked around the square and were third in line when the gate opened.

 

 

Cannons are cool.  They have one there called Mons Meg, that I didn't take a picture of, that is the largest ever used in battle.  It was built in the 1400s.  It could fire a 300 lb. ball up to 2 miles.

 

Did you know that the national emblem of Scotland is the thistle?  We saw this symbol all around, and I kinda love it. Anyway, we walked all over Edinburgh Castle, saw the Crown Jewels (no photos allowed), and enjoyed the prisons (which were most recently utilized in WWII, which is crazy to me.)  And then headed out to see some more Edinburgh and buy a bit of Anderson tartan.

 

Our next stop was down the Royal Mile a little at St. Giles Cathedral.

 

The cathedral dates from the 1300s and is the seat of the Church of Scotland.  I love the Gothic details!

 

We paid our 2 pound donation for the privilege of taking photos inside and enjoyed a stroll around the interior.  It is simpler than some we have seen, but had some neat accents.  See that blue ceiling in the background? And the stained glass, dating from the 1800s, was lovely.

 

Amelie favors the comfy seats over the common pew.

 

In case you were wondering, St. Giles is the patron saint of Edinburgh, and also of "cripples and lepers."  He was very popular in the middle ages.

 

This is just a shot looking back up the Royal Mile toward the Castle.  Blue skies and sunshine!  Yay!

 

And bagpipers. 

We only saw a few on this trip, I actually thought there would be more.

 

 

The last place on my "must see" list was the National Museum of Scotland.  I imagined we would learn all about Scottish history, but after a few rooms of that, the kids were over it.  The museum is like a mini-Smithsonian with everything under one roof and we dabbled in the interactive technology wing, the art and fashion area, and Rob took the big kids into an extensive exhibit on primates while Amelie and I took a break and watched people.  It was VERY crowded inside and I didn't take any pictures. Oh well.

After the museum, we went out to dinner near our apartment at Nando's.  The kids and I had never been to Nando's, but Rob had in Maryland and said it was good.  It was, we ejoyed our yummy dinner and then headed down the hill behind the Castle grounds because it looked like there was a city park there.

 

The park was lovely with flowers blooming and people strolling.

 

And a great playground!  So that was pretty much a perfect evening activity for our family.  

We were just getting ready to head to our apartment for the night when I realized I had left my purse under my chair in Nando's! No bueno!  I ran back to the restaurant while Rob headed to the apartment with the kids.  It wasn't there, so I asked a waitress, and she got the manager, and he came out of his office with my purse.  Everything was in it and "all's well that ends well," but boy can I be a space cadet sometimes!

 

The next morning it was time to leave Scotland and head south toward our London finale!  We stopped at the border for a stretch and a photo.

 

Just a little further south we stopped in at Housestead's Roman Fort and to see part of Hadrian's Wall. There was an itty bitty museum with some interesting info and then we headed out to the wall.

 

Hadrian was the Roman emperor around 122 AD who kinda consolidated Rome's empire and fortified it's borders. This wall originally reached all the way across England- 74 miles coast to coast- and had Roman Forts along the way.  The kids are actually standing on a segment of the wall that it is okay to walk along in this photo.

 

Housestead's Roman Fort was a place for the Roman soldiers to live- but many of them also had their families with them and seemed more like a modern military base than I imagined it would before we visited.

 

Those soldiers really would have been at the last frontier of the Roman empire looking north into the land of Barbarians.

 

We love places like this- history out in the open.

 

 

And you get to climb on it.

 

The kids were tired after hiking around the wall and fort for some time and we were all ready to get back on the road to London.

The Great British Road Trip: the Road to Edinburgh

 

We left Isle of Skye pretty early, as we had an important stop on the way to Edinburgh.  But first we had to check out Eilean Donan Castle. The castle was founded in the 13th century and is connected to the Mackenzie clan.  We didn't go explore the ruins, because we were short on time, and what it is most famous for is how it looks from the outside anyway.You might recognize it from Highlander or The World is Not Enough or even Made of Honor.

 

But we had bigger fish to fry.... namely Nessie. 

We drove along the banks of Loch Ness until we came to Urquhart Castle and then stopped to explore. We watched a short video about the history of the castle- dating from the 13th-16th century, but mostly we were there because it was scenic spot to look for the Loch Ness monster.  Or at least, that's why I was there.

 

It was extremely windy out there by the water!

 

No sign of her yet.

 

 

We trekked down to the water's edge for a cold, windy family photo.  I was kinda hoping Nessie would photo-bomb us.

 

Mythical monsters, or not, it is a beautiful lake.  

 

This big chunk of the castle appears to have fallen off and landed just right to make a perfect stone play house.  Anyway, that was our main pit-stop on the road to Edinburgh.

 

We arrived at our airbnb and the location was fantastic, just below the Edinburgh Castle.  The apartment itself, was an extremely basic walk-up in a very old building with 12 foot ceilings.  But the location meant we could park the car and go on foot everywhere we wanted to go.

 

We walked down the street and saw so many interesting restaurants.  We ended up at this place called the Cooley Picture House.  It was an old silent movie theater, converted to a restaurant.  The setting was awesome, but the food was just okay.  After that, we tried to get some sleep for a big day of sightseeing in the morning!