England

Wednesday:

Traveling day again. We'd gotten some of our stuff together the night before, but we still had a lot to do. While we had everything in 5 suitcases (with clothing in vacuumed space bags), for EasyJet, it is cheap tickets, but ya have to pay for everything, so we were doing 4 bags, 5 carry-ons. It was a bit frantic trying to pack everything, make it fit, keep the weight under the limit, and clean up the house, but we did it. Left 30 minutes after our "we have to leave by now" time, but we made it to the airport and turned the car in at the exact time it was due.

So, now it was 3, and the flight wasn't until 8:50. No more car, but all our bags. We were actually able to check in early, so we did, and our luggage was okay! Also, some kind of french strike was happening, so flights were delayed, and they gave us 5 vouchers of 67 DKK each to buy a "snack/beverage." We finished the food we had, went through security, checked out the options, and spent some time in random gates because it was way too early before they would announce ours.

One of the food options was "Food Market" and so we pooled our vouchers a little, and got dinner for all 5 of us (I had a chicken wrap) and only had to pay a total of half a kroner. Translation: about 9 cents.

After that, we were able to get to our gate (opposite end of the airport than we had been on, of course), started hearing some british phrases, and boarded our EasyJet.

We get into Gatwick airport, go all the way through their customs, find the car rental place in the airport, and my dad had left his calendar with receipts and all kinds of things in there, including the thing to get the car. Oh no. My mom tried to go back, but it was nearly midnight and the EasyJet part of the airport was already closed up.

They did give us the car, thankfully. But after we got everything in, we discovered that the cigarette lighter thing didn't work. And when you definitely need to be able to use a gps and sometimes charge a phone, that don't work. Unfortunately, to get a working one, it was a bit of a downgrade, but we did it.

Alex and Bella fell asleep on me, my parents almost got lost trying to find the house, but we finally got to Sue's house. First couchsurfing of the trip! It was nearly 2am, but we got into this incredible house (built in the 1730s wow!) and got to sleep as soon as possible. What a day.

Thursday:  

London!
We got up a little late since we'd gotten in late, and took our showers and had breakfast with Sue while we tried to figure out what to do.

We ended up deciding that we'd try to do as much as possible, and around 1pm, Sue walked us down to the Archway tube station so we could buy our all-day passes and start our day.

First stop: Piccadilly Circus. Here, circle means circle. Kinda like a big roundabout. And this particular one is like Times Square. Never been to Times Square, but you see enough New Years Eves and movies, and it feels like you've been before. You heard all different languages around you, there was so much traffic, street artists, a statue, and a building of big screens of commercials and things. It was also showing world cup scores, which we thought was cool.

We walked out of that crazy section and to where the Apple Building and Beatles offices were. Got some pictures, then headed off to Hyde Park.

We walked through Hyde Park and past the Royal Albert Memorial and Hall. Got on our first double decker bus, headed to Harrods.

At Harrods, my dad left us to go to his appointment at the Stanley Kubrick Archives, and we went in. That place is sooo expensive. And huge. We pretty much only walked around the food sections, where we bought some snacks. You can only eat in the restaurants in Harrods, and we hadn't bought from the restaurant, so we had to walk out, and we ate our snacks by an old church.

The meet up place was Buckingham Palace, so after we ate, we headed that way. At one point, we had to use the underground to cross the street. We also passed through a park that had a Canadian memorial fountain.

We sat in front of the Palace, and continued sitting there for about an hour. Coming from the archives, my dad had a bit of a tube mishap. He went on the wrong north (there's 2). So we got to see a lot of not much happening at the palace.

After he finally got to us, we went off to the British Library. Hooray! Unfortunately,  most of the library closes before the entire thing does, so by the time we got there, the Treasures Gallery with the Magna Carta and Beatles manuscripts was closed. Aww. Next time I'm in London, that'll be worth another visit.

Next up, Abbey Road. My dad wrote on Facebook right before we got there about it, and posted a link to the Webcam set up right outside the studios. It also was still sprinkling. Plus, this is a working cross walk on a working road. So, it was a little cumbersome to walk across the street so many times to get good pictures, but we did it all, and we waved to people at home through the Webcam. That was pretty cool.

After Abbey Road, we went to the river Thames for a walk. Because we hadn't done enough walking that day. To get there, we took the tube. But this particular tube journey stood out because it was about to leave as we were getting there, Alex and I jumped on, but everyone else didn't make it. The train separated us and left. We knew which station to get off at, and we were laughing, but it was just kinda interesting how nobody made a comment or seemed to even think twice about some crazy American family getting separated at the tube station at nearly 10pm.

We walked along the river Thames for a good while. We were all tired. Feet hurt really bad. It was actually dark. Sprinkling, then full on rain (good thing we had rain coats). Pointed out sights, crossed a bridge, and headed home.

It was a long day. We were super hungry and tired. Walking out of the tube station, we asked one of the costumer helper worker people for directions to the bus stop, and he gave us muffins! It was crazy. Such a nice guy. The whole day, people were always helpful.

By the time we got back to Sue's, pubs were closed (they close at 11), so we made BLTs.

Friday:

Leaving Sue's, we headed for Glossop. Glossop is a small market town outside of Manchester. It was about a 6 hour drive with traffic.

One of the rest stops we stopped at had two girls selling makeup at a table near the door. It was like Makeup Essentials or something. I don't care enough about makeup to know all the brands, so I had no idea if I'd heard of it before or not, and whether it's in the US or not. Anyways, didn't buy anything, but they were sweet. We talked some about US vs England geography & maps vs real life (Hawaii and Alaska are farther away than a map shows! And Florida really isn't all that close to Mexico.) and different accents. We're so used to thinking that the general populace probably doesn't like Americans, that it was quite funny that they told us they liked our accent!

Getting into Glossop, we were going over a speed bump thing- and speed bumps here have a little bar so you can only have 1 car going over at a time. So, my dad ended up accidentally hitting the curb, which was a old and rugged curb, and POP. We blew the tire.

The luck of the situation was that our hosts' house was just around the corner.

And beside pretty house, nice hosts (Helen and Les), and good food, that was about all for the day.

Saturday:

They took the car to a place in the morning, so Helen, my mom, my siblings and I went on a walk. We went through the town and out into the Peak District National Park. We saw a lot os sheep, so that was neat. Alex got within a few feet of them before they would move away. But we were basically walking through their land, so that made it interesting.

Back to the car, we only found out like 4 hours later that the guy couldn't change the tire because of company stuff (rental car) but the spare was full size, so we could just use it.

We'd wanted to go to Manchester that day, so we figured we'd try it anyway, just in a shorter visit. We visited a co-op grocery store called Unicorn, and drove around a little before heading back to Glossop.

With the sheep earlier, we'd talked about how we don't eat lamb all that much, so Helen and Les made lamb chops for dinner from a local butcher.

I've had so much good food this trip. It's been one of my favorite things so far. In some ways, it's completely different from what I normally eat, but then, most isn't all that strange. I'm totally up for it all.

Sunday:

Today was the day to move on. But since we weren't able to do Liverpool the previous day, we decided to do a quick run through of it on our way to Scotland.

First stop, childhood house of Paul McCartney. Cute place from the outside. BTW, everything is just a few quick pictures and moving on. I noticed around there that they have blue bins, green bins, and purple bins. What does purple mean? Never seen purple for trash or recycling,  so that was just something I noticed.

John Lennon's childhood house was next. We parked outside the next door neighbor's house, and weren't there for too long, but the guy got passed at us and made grumpy faces at us (wasn't a grumpy old man, though). Seriously? If you buy the house next to where John Lennon grew up, you can't be grumpy at tourists. You bought the house next to John's. I am not sorry.

Penny Lane is an actual lane/area/roundabout thing, so it's not like a 1 sign to get a picture at, but we walked around that a little.

Strawberry Fields was an orphanage, but they just have replica gates now. So, we took our pictures. A Beatles tour bus came up just as we were finishing, so that was kinda funny.

We looked for postcards. I wanted to send people postcards from Liverpool as my England postcards, but we could not find any. It was Sunday, so things were closed. One person almost didn't know what a postcard was. People suggested the post office, but the next day. It was impossible. Shoulda bought in London.

England was a crazy little short trip. We didn't previously know anyone in England, so that helped its shortness. Some day I'll need to come back for longer, but what we had was pretty good. We got into Scotland later that day, and arrived at Steve and Laura's that night. More wonderful food, then to bed. Scotland begins.