I’m tired. Washington DC is big and we had the most beautiful day to enjoy it but I’m tired and need a nap, so this’ll be short tonight. We saw the outside of the librairy of congress, visited Lincoln’s memorial, saw the Vietnam Memorial, and the Korean War Memorial. We also stopped by the Museum of Native American History where we saw a very cool copper wall and the most delicious lunch ever (including pumpkin cookies – delicious)! Finally, we witnessed a man being struck down by four policemen outside the White house (now known as beat-down alley). Overall it was a fine day in our nation’s capital.

Lauren is besties with Wayne and his body guards. Mindi wanted, more than anything, to meet and possibly have a private experience with Wayne Newton this weekend which might seem strange when visiting Virginia, but Wayne happens to be the Grand Marshall of the Apple Blossom Festival… so it isn’t really that crazy. Unfortunately, Mindi, Frank, and I had no such Wayne experience. Lauren, on the other hand, met him for a life changing 5 seconds when attempting to board an elevator in the nicest (yes really) hotel in Winchester (we only enjoy the finer things in life so we went Wingate all the way). She greeted him with an enthusastic “Wow, hi there!” Wayne said hello back and then the doors shut. Though Mindi was standing right next to her, she assumed Lauren was greeting an old town bar friend, and not having a once in a lifetime celebrity meeting. Anyway, we’re mad at Lauren as she’s been in the presence of greatness.

After getting over that tragic blow, we headed down to breakfast (which was delicious – thank you Wingate) and saw another fine Winchester celebrity, Miss Virginia, in a gold shiny slinky rusched dress at 9:15am… She is clearly a glamorous pagent winner all the way!

We thought we’d attempt to have another Wayne sighting at the pre-parade street show, but we were tragically thwarted in our efforts when, for the second time this weekend, the glossy brochures held misinformation and lead us astray. Fortunately, we did receive a free bottle of water and religious tract from the Nazarenes – thank you Nazarenes, my thirst is finally quenched!

We decided to leave Winchester a bit early as it was raining (and we’d missed Wayne again) so we headed off to my cousin’s house (which is lovely – thank you for letting us stay Jess and Jeff). We were greeted by an enthusiastic Sophie (of course pictures are in the gallery) and then headed to the Torpedo Factory and downtown Alexandria which is SOOO much cooler than I ever remember it being! We saw oodles of crazy art in the Torpedo Factory (beautiful and expensive!) shopped around town where Mindi bought every kind of turquiose Sharpie imaginable and we tortured the boys (Frank mostly) by shopping for purses and jewelry… again. He’s so good to us!

We sent the boys off to celebrate Cinco de Mayo at an Irish Pub called Murphy’s where Frank was named the “Cricketeer” due to his dart prowess. He, Jeff, and Jon attracted a gaggle of “bar hags” who came over to “learn how to play darts.” We did not come to their rescue but sat 6 inches away and laughed out loud as the married ones kept throwing Jon to the courger… or hag. Murphy’s also had live music that required us to clap and dance along – my favourite kind of bar music Who doesn’t like to join in? I don’t know! Our favourite was the unicorn song and yes, we can show you all of the choreography.

First thing – our friend from Jacksonville (now known as JAX and it’s alright that we have a nickname for him since he called Lauren “blondie”). Anyway, he followed us today as well (check the photos and you’ll see how handsome his is) and we discovered that he was not on vacation, but in fact, was here to work the Apple Blossom Festival as a carnie who was very upset with us when we wouldn’t play his dart, ballon, and three balls for 7 dollar game… “small hands, smell like cabbage.”

While checking out Jax’s fellow carnies, we bumped into Big E or Eric from MTV’s Real World/Road Rules Challenge Fresh Meat. As Eric is who and what he is, we all assumed we knew him from high school, but since none of us went to the same high school (or college for that matter) we discoverd that although his looks aren’t stereotypically “celebrity” he was, in fact, a local celebrity. Frank likes to embarass me so you can see a photo of him and I in the photo gallaries. I’m mortified even mentioning it…. and yet, we’ve fashioned a list of informative questions to ask him in case we bump into him tomorrow… our lives are sad.

We tried to see the coronation of the Apple Blossom Queen but were lead a stray by the informative maps, and guidebooks to a location a mile in the wrong direction that was under construction but the lengthy walk afforded us the opportunity to make wishes on weeds and see the surrounding neighborhoods. Since we missed the coronation, we decided to have a thirst quenching beverage and go shopping for all the things we felt too guilty about buying yesterday… the economy of Winchester (who’s building is very festively decorated) has properly thanked us

Today we attended the world’s largest (yes, that means it was three full hours) firefighter’s parade. Though we waited a very very long time, we did not see Wayne Newton, aka: Apple Blossom’s Grand Marshall, or Tom Wopat, or George Hamilton, or Dorothy Hamill who were all proudly advertised in the brochures and website. Liars in Virginia, all liars. Although, we did see the most laid back townie ever who was mascotting his own tractor/float while kicking back and enjoying the sites… with the occasional nether-scratch. Have a gander, you’ll crack up. We also saw the most poorly behaved musician in the history of middle school marching bands ever. As the photo shows, he is using his trombone as a walking stick, armrest, and cane to lean on as well as adjusting his chin strap as a teething ring while looking around to notice himself being noticed. He is the reason we have all sworn off children that become pain-in-the-you-know-where teenagers. We’ll also remind our families at this point, that we were well behaved and respectful of authority in our youth.

We (Lauren, Mindi, Frank, and I) hopped onto a plane early this morning headed toward Winchester for the 80th annual Apple Blossom Festival (for more information, go to www.thebloom.com). Our first stop was Sheetz where Lauren discovered the wonderment that is the never ending condiment option and Mindi sampled the new and delicately flavoured garlic fries (the car still smells).

We took a short walk around Shenandoah University and saw the cutest goslings waddling near the water. I stopped into the campus health center to see if my favorite sign was still on the wall (so I could share it with you all arounhd the world) but unfortunately, the “Love carefully, chlamydia is not a flower” sign has been taken down and I can only imagine that the students of Shenandoah are now at risk, without that sage advice.

We also walked around “old town” Winchester where we did some shopping (alright, a good deal of shopping) and chatting with the locals. A soiled man from Jacksonville (who itched the area under his shirt continually throughout the day) stopped us to celebrate and share his Florida heritage with us. He made us nervous… especially since he seemed to follow us throughout the day. We found ourselves at Brewbakers (one of our favorite pubs ever) and located the best people watching table ever. We took in the “local culture” and in the end met a man who could not resist my loveliness (it’s no surprise that he had clearly been drinking for hours and was the resident drunk).

We (I) also encounter an angry staring man who huffed at me after I came out of the restroom. Since I remembered to flush, I couldn’t figure out why he was hmph-ing at me and assumed I was being paranoid. He looked a little familiar but not so much that it seemed appropriate to say hi. As we left to head home for the evening, he (according to Mindi) gave me the “angry stare down” so this is my formal appology to the angry man. I’m not sure what I did to you, or wrote you up for in college, but I’m sorry if it had a lasting scarring effect. I’m sure I was in the wrong, and you were blameless, as most teenage co-eds are. My bad.

We’ve put together some new features, including “phrases of Winchester” and “trivia” so please participate in this holiday with us – there might even be a prizzze in it for you! Please respond to the trivia questions by emailing me directly at andrea@andreahendry.com.

Bonjour Disneyland Paris! Our friend James brought us with him to work on the 45 minute Metro (train) ride to Disneyland Paris. He headed to work and we headed to play. The park was beautiful but the most beautiful and fun part of the park was Sleeping Beauty’s Castle (with the accompanying dragon). There were really pretty stained glass windows and tapestries that told Aurora’s story on the second floor of the castle. Underneath the castle is where the fire breathing dragon lives but he must have been on his best behavior because he didn’t breathe any fire at us (we probably just got lucky). We also got to see/ride Space Mountain, It’s a Small World, Phantom Manor and Indiana Jones (which does not go backwards). There was a lengthy psudo-american section in small world that focused on our country’s need to shoot rifles, purchase dry goods, play football, and eat popcorn. I love to see the American people through the eyes of international folks, ahhhh, a breath of fresh air. I really do love popcorn, and considering the popularity of Sams, and Costco, our culture certainly loves its dry goods as well!

James finished working and gave us a tour of the Paris Studios and took us to lunch at their Disney Village at a 50’s Diner which, though terribly greasy, was really quite delicious (especially the onion rings – seriously delicious).

We headed back toward Paris to relax and later on that night James took us to a small Italian restaurant just around the corner. Though this restaurant didn’t have translations of their items in English it was by far the best food we had in Paris (but, then again, I may have just been really hungry). We had a bottle of wine, lots of hand made pastas and delicious sauces clearly made from scratch, and pizza. It was wonderful. We ordered dessert (of course), I had the caramel panna cotta, Frank had tiramisu, and James had some sort of ice cream deliciousness. A nice man a few tables over laughed at me when I proudly finished mine first (I’m a gifted dessert eater), but never fear, I helped the other two polish theirs off.

We thanked James for his wonderful hospitality and headed back to our beautiful apartment in Paris, for our final night of our European vacation.
*sigh*
We’re ready to go home but not for our vacation to end.

Today we woke up bright and early to see the Louvre and it is beautiful. We saw Mona Lisa and the Vince de Milo. Although we did notice that in most of the paintings the men and women are wearing little to no clothing while in battle, which seems like poor planning all around. The men were very exposed for battle with most of them only wearing a sling from which they hung their swords, and it seemed like the ladies must have been trying to distract the enemy by freeing their ladies if you knwo what we mean….

We then met up with our friend James for lunch where we ordered a proper meal “en francais” with a bottle of wine (where Andrea proceeded to spill a glass across the table when garishly ripping her bread – just like an American). Not quite an international incident but an incident nonetheless.

Next we went to see Notre Damn which was beautiful and they were selling take away candles in the middle of the sanctuary along with the remembrance lighting candles. Like take out food, candles can also be taken home for a price. As we looked around the cathedral at the stained glass windows and the amazing architecture we heard an upbeat sound. We looked around and realized that it was some sort of singing group associated with Notre Damn, led by a finger-snapping woman and man on the acoustic guitar. The group snapped and sang with feeling while swaying to the rhythm of their song. I love a cathedral show choir!

We stopped at the fanciest ice cream shop ever just outside Notre Damn where we had formal hot chocolate, huge sundaes and little tiny glasses of water. It was absolutely delicious – probably the best ice cream we’ve ever had! Next we were off to Sacre Ceur which is at the top of a giant hill in the north side of Paris. It was beautiful as well but overshadowed a bit when a large man grabbed Andrea while trying to sell us a string that we think he wanted to put into her hair. James’ actual quote: “What the heck was that man going to do with those strings he was trying to get us to buy?” Just shy of our first formal international incident but luckily for us (and them) Andrea didn’t have to knock in any heads (she’s very feisty when she’s abroad). We walked down the hill back towards the heart of Paris in a meandering was so that we could see little shops and funny side streets along our way. It was chilly but a really great time.
Our last adventure of the day was going to see the Arch de Triumph. It was beautiful but in the center of a road so we walked through the underground pathway to get closer to the arch. It is spectacular and we were fortunate enough to get there when it was reasonably clear so the sky was a beautiful cloudy blue. Overall, we had a great day in Paris.

Tomorrow is the day we are going to go back on our word and visiting Disneyland Paris. We are not going to explain ourselves we are just going to go to Disneyland Paris and we’ll tell you how it is.

Yesterday was a wildly busy day. We were so exhausted from all the fun that we didn’t get to it until right now – on the train with the loud stupid people.
Stay on the darn track jack – no, Frank said, it’s Jaques and he went to get me a …. Cocktail.

I didn’t even make it out of our car when a woman had her leg in the middle of the aisle and when I almost tripped looked at me like I was rude to her. Then I got into the middle car where the baggage is and my bag is just hanging out in the middle of the car like it’s unhappy with France and wants to go home. So I put it back and proceeded on my way to find every other car is sleeping but ours. Also I saw some teenagers curled up in on of the luggage racks and thought if I were 15 I would be doing the same thing, down with the establishment. I finally make it the beverage (the symbol was a wine glass which is how I knew how to find it but Andrea and I made up a new sign for it which is holding your hand in the air like your swirling the martini around). So in the beverage/food car there were clearly two ladies trying to pick men up. Welcome to France! Luckily I didn’t meet the description of anyone they were looking for so I was allowed to pass. I got us a box of Cookies (McDonald’s style but Frenchier and fancier) it also had a picture of an old lady on the package which means that old ladies in France as well as the US make lovely treats (but the ones in France wear bonnets). A “flapjack” which I thought Andrea would like and was very correct. Those snacks and two sodas were 9 euros. Yum…

We got off the eurostar rocket to Paris and stopped into a local McDonalds to sign on in the hopes of finding out where we were going. I assumed we needed to buy something to use their wireless (Wi-Fi pronounced weeee-feeee) services. After several minutes of my fra-nglish conversation combined with charades (while I acted out typing and repeated the words weee-fee, and internet far too many times to even appear polite). All of this excitement going on, only to find out that we needn’t have purchased the most awkward tasting milkshake ever, because Frank was upstairs already using their wee-fee services. My first official French conversation behind me, I was feeling more and more confident that worst case scenario, I could use charades to act out the stupid American I’ve always wanted to be.

We were off on our way to the Metro and figuring that future conversations, at worse, could only be filled with more charades. I love Europe already. We made it to the flat we were staying in and were thrilled to see that it was far lovelier than we would have anticipated. A full beautiful apartment in Paris all for Frank and me, sometimes we really end up somewhere great. We are very lucky.

We headed off to get a snack we found ourselves at a lovely patisserie where Frank had an éclair and I had “une grand chocolate”, I’m very international. Delicious delicious delicious! We stopped by the local grocery store to stock our fridge with breakfasty, frenchy snacks – including our first official baguette, a three dollar bottle of wine, and block of cheese. Delicious delicious delicious. We fashioned ourselves a mini dinner and then headed off to the Eiffel Tower. It is so much bigger and fancier in person then in any picture I’ve ever seen. But most importantly, it’s really freakin’ tall! I know that should be something we realized by seeing pictures or even by seeing it from the bottom, but until we were in the elevator heading up and my ears popped three times we really didn’t get it! Ridiculous! Soooo tall, and windy, and rainy, but don’t worry. More stories will come tomorrow because we were, lucky for you, not blown off the top of the Eiffel Tower!

We woke up bright and early to head to Baker Street to report my camera and jacket lost/stolen. Europe even makes a visit to the police sound exotic, ahhhh Baker Street! The home of Sherlock Holmes is also the home of the underground lost property office. I don’t know if he is working on our case specifically but we’re sure it’ll be handled with the utmost professionalism and searched to the fullest extent possible (while someone smokes a pipe no doubt). After we spoke with a very friendly woman (whose picture we meant to get but were foolishly distracted by actually trying to get our items back – just picture a dirty blond haired woman with a pink button down blouse and a lovely British accent) we headed to see the queen at her house.

We were meeting (get excited) Bev, Will, and Natty to see the changing of the guard and say hi to the queen and as an added bonus, were very excited to be with people who spoke the language again. We were a little nervous about finding them since our cell phones don’t travel well internationally but fortunately for us, Will is a giant and typically carries a very pink Natty on his shoulders which makes them easy to spot, so it took almost no time to find them. We found them and almost instantly the men on horseback came a-trotting! The horses and their riders wore fancy parade day costumes and whilst they marched around the circle in front of the queen’s house, she looked out the window and waved to us – we’re friends of the queen! We knew she’d show, how could she disappoint her American fans?

(At least that’s what we told Natty, and Andrea)

After the changing of the guard and our visit with the queen, we walked through the park and saw really big hungry squirrels, a battered looking pelican (perhaps tired from all the baby deliveries?), and the strangest duck ever. Andrea told the group that she’s seen a duck like that before in New Jersey – that’s what pollution does to animals, changes them all sorts of wonky colours (notice the U, we’re in London baby!). Garden state, I think not!

Next we stopped by 10 Downing Street (or looked at it from across the street) for lunch with our new friend Tony Blair. It was delicious (blueberry cookie dough cheesecake and a chocolate something or other) and Tony kept us entertained all through lunch – boy is he a talker! I don’t know if he has lunch with everyone who stops by and invites him but it was mighty friendly of him to clear some time for us.

We headed toward the eye and to soar over London next. It was beautiful and we took oodles of pictures. We were lucky enough to avoid most of the rain making our flight on the eye a really beautiful one.

Next we headed to St. Paul’s Cathedral which was enormous! I’ve been to many cathedrals and fancy churches but never to one as big and beautiful as St. Paul’s. We were lucky enough to sneak in at the time of mass, avoiding the nine pound charge per person. We’re assuming they hand out a jug of holy water and a bag filled with absolution for that price but since we didn’t have to pay it we carry on, un-absolved. It’s rough. The rain came back in full force so we decided to pass on the tower of London and head to Harrod’s to stay dry and empty our wallets. It, again, was huge.

It was time for Bev, Will, and Natty to head back to their station and we realized that we hadn’t taken care of the only reason that we were in London in the first place – Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station. We ran with all of the energy left in us to the station where we found that one of the Weasley’s carts was still left stuck in the platform – what if a muggle were to see it?!?!? We said our goodbyes to the Carrs and went off to dinner where we ate the Italian meal we’d had a hankering for, for a few days (you all know how we get if we aren’t filled with sugary pastas for at least two meals a day). The food was delicious (Frank had the lasagna, and Andrea had the manicotti – delicious), but unfortunately we were seated next to “those” girls in the restaurant. Yep, you guessed it. We were seated next to a table filled with Penn State sorority girls. The chatter was wildly worldly and educated (we learned that Nova Scotia was not a town and they didn’t understand how someone could know two languages fluently)….. Not that we were listening.

Off to gay Paris tomorrow. We’re really becoming quite the world travelers!

Last night after we wrote we went to a pub called Porterhouse which is apparently a chain like Big River Brewery or Hops that make their own types of beer. Frank of course tried a sampler of the Stouts (dark) beers and their red lager as well. Andrea tried their banana flavored beer which she thought was lovely. Frank, on the other hand, made quite a face (the fruit face to be exact) after trying it. We love Frank’s fruit face!

Some of the funny things we noticed in Dublin were that some American establishments change their names slightly for other countries. Johnnie Rockets is Eddie Rockets and T.J. Maxx is T.K Maxx with the same logos, merchandise and menus. Not sure why they needed to change their names but I’m sure it’s a good story. Also, when you push the crosswalk button a very 1980’s pong sort of electrified sound happens – as if you’ve just beamed into the future according to Doc Brown from Back to the Future.

We realized today that it is shamrock shake time at McDonalds and we’re missing it. we certainly don’t subscribe to McDonalds loving American society but we were torn. How could we miss our favorite fast food experience of the year? Also, how could we be those American’s eating at McDonalds while abroad? We found a happy medium in the airport when the options were Sbarro, a food court, and McDonalds. Needless to say, we broke down and had some McDonalds but then we realized that it was totally fine because it was honorary because we had a shamrock shack in Ireland which is totally allowed – it’s green for crying out loud!.

We had some trouble sleeping but lucky for us, Magnum PI and Air Wolf are both phenomenon that have spread round the world and are now shown in Gaelic so at least we had some entertainment. We also caught the Academy Awards a day late with all of the boring crap cut out – god bless the Irish for being as bored with the cinematography, and make up categories as we are!

Woke up bright and early this morning and headed out for breakfast at our hotel. There’s nothing quite like fresh kiwi and strawberries first thing in the morning to really feel fancy, but the addition of a chocolate-chocolate chip muffin moved us well past fancy to fully international – delicious!

We headed out on our own walking tour of Dublin. We stopped to see Christ Church and St. Patrick’s Cathedral which were both beautiful. After we took in some of the religious sites the only thing left to do was learn about how beer was made in the most famous brewery in the world. Yep, we’ve been to Guinness, and it was good. It was absolutely the fanciest (probably most expensive) beer tour we’ve ever been on. There were flat screen televisions, fancy restaurants, waterfalls, a frizzy haired Irish brew master, and several free pints of bread-like beer…. Delicious… (Picture Andrea shaking her head in an “I can’t drink any more of that” fashion). Needless to say, Andrea sipped her beer and Frank drank his and her left-over’s as well. He’s a trooper.

After that we headed back towards our hotel to dry off (rainy day) and ate lunch. After lunch we walked through St. Stephen’s Green. We stopped to see it (as it’s only two blocks from our hotel) for a few minutes after we arrived and wanted to spend more time there. Due to our drizzly afternoon, we decided to stay closer to where we were staying and took a nice long walk through the park.

Today was a traveling day to Dublin. We ate breakfast at the Mosborough Hall Hotel which, if you’re ever in need of lodging in Sheffield, is a lovely place to stay…. All but the haunted rooms are great.

Bev was nice enough to drive us to the Doncastor/Sheffield Airport. We had to pay 11 extra GBP because we of course brought too much stuff. Once we were settled up we headed out on Ryan Air to Dublin. We arrived fine in Ireland and didn’t even wait in line for our passport stamp. We were told it would be the last free thing we received in Ireland.

We checked into our hotel in downtown Dublin (Trinity Lodge) which is beautiful. We moved our things into our room when we discovered that Irish television plays Lizzie McGuire reruns and Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants in Gaelic. We’re so very cultured. We decided that if there was this much excitement in the room, we could hardly wait to see what was outside our hotel and we were off to find some dinner. At Martha’s recommendation we ate at Wagamama which was delicious. We headed towards a pub next, which lucky for us are everywhere, so it made for an easy search. We ended up in O’Brian’s where Frank got his first official Irish Guinness which he described as nice and fresh and Andrea had a Kilkarny (sp?) when attempting to avoid bread-y beverages. She failed; it was unfortunately very much like a glass of bread but better than a Guinness at least. Tomorrow we are off of to properly explore Dublin – we’ll keep you posted!

Pudding and bodily functions (again) were the themes of the day. We started the day by snoozing too many times on the hotel alarm clock but then were on our way to Bolsover Castle. That’s where we ate some breakfast; Andrea had scone number 1 before the castle and scone number 2 after we did the tour. There was an audio tour which was great and gave us gobs of information throughout the castle and featured some wonderfully painted ceilings and nice windows (even in the bathrooms). The bathrooms were one on top of another to the fourth floor of the castle and they each had a window that overlooked a beautiful fountain to give the pottier some inspiration while doing their business.

After Andrea’s second scone (which she stole from Will) we drove through Chesterfield and saw the crooked spire. Then we went to see Chatsworth House (shooting location for Pride & Prejudice) from a distance and as a bonus walked through the mud to see some sheep.

Last but not least was our pudding trip to Bakewell which featured both Yorkshire pudding (crispy crust filled with gravy and 3 types of pork sausage) and Bakewell pudding (a sweeter crispy crust filled with a raspberry sauce and almond paste and on the side a jug of custard – like a warm vanilla pudding). Yes, I (Frank) had them both.

One of the highlights of the day was seeing this sign that in the US would probably not be too popular.

Tomorrow we’re off to Dublin!

So today was full of excitement but we started out very tired. Our room was said to be haunted so I (Andrea) didn’t get much more than four hours of rough sleep. Needless to say, once we woke up we changed rooms and headed off to continental breakfast where we (just like the Americans we are) each had a bowl of cocoa krispies. Bev, Will, and Natty came to pick us up and we were off to York for our exciting day. We saw York Minster, did some shopping, and had proper afternoon tea at Betty’s Team Room where Frank made his “fruit face” for many English-folk when eating a spoonful of jam – it’s always funny, no matter how many times I see it.

We walked around the old York city wall, saw and photographed countless churches, and most exciting went to Jorvik Viking Adventure. It had smell-o-vision which allowed us to smell the burning wood of ancient York, various unsavory smelling animals, and as will called it, the “midden” (aka: poop). During the “ride through” experience we saw a man (and then proceeded to purchase his photo on postcards) grunting and making faces while he pooped during the Jorvik attraction. All I have to say about this spaceship-earth-like-experience is, awesome! Spaceship Earth would be so much more fun if you got to see people pooping during the ride – seriously. Afterward, Frank, Natty, Will, and I donned Viking attire and played dress-up while giving a friendly heckle to one of the Jorvik employees who we talk into literally blowing his horn, which he did, only after he made several embarrassing raspberry type noises in front of a crowd of approximately fifty…. Priceless. We love Jorvik!

Tonight, the Carrs treated us to a proper fish and chips dinner (in paper and everything) which was delicious – even more than I thought it would be. Frank even liked the fish, especially with the Henderson’s relish on it…. I love sauce. We’re totally addicted.

Hopefully we’ll (I’ll) be able to sleep straight through tonight and we look forward to tomorrow. If any of you are reading this from the Tam-lando area, stop by the house and tell the girls that we love and miss them. I know I do –a lot but thanks for reading. Talk to you tomorrow!

The flight was fine – long but fine. We were both able to sleep for about six hours between both flights so, though we were a bit out of sorts, we were up and ready to enjoy our first day of European travel.

You’ll all want to know that when we were getting onto the flight to North Carolina, we were in front of a man who was very important (well, at least by his phone conversation he certainly was). He said that he met four billionaires in the last month and was clearly a mover and a shaker. He said that he only did business with the best of the best which is why; he said to the person on the phone, they were lucky to be working with someone as talented as he was.

Once we got to London we figured that it was smooth sailing and then Frank’s bag was missing. A similar bag belonging to a Mr. Paul Wood from South Carolina was left and he realized about an hour later that he had taken the wrong bag. He had assigned his bag retrieval to one of his students who neglected to read its tag. Paul Wood kindly called to return it just an hour later and we made the switch – thanks again Mr. Wood!

Just a bit behind schedule we headed out into London. We decided to see Westminster Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and King’s Cross. We were exhausted (of course) and then we headed to Pancras Station to catch our train to Sheffield, to visit our friends the Carrs.

Bev and Natty picked us up from the train station and they took us to our beautiful old hotel where we settled in and showered in a newly refurbished but chilly bathroom. Then Will, Bev, and Natty took us out to dinner where Frank had Beef and Ale Crown Pie “served with an extra jug of gravy” and I had the Brie, Mushrooms and Cranberry Wellington without any extra jug of anything. We discovered a new dipping sauce called Henderson’s Relish which, have no fear, we’re bringing a bottle back with us and will share with all of you next week! It’s a lovely vinegar sort of sauce and we poured it onto everything we ate – delicious! For desert – get ready for this – I had “Clotted Cream Ice-Cream”. We’re going to be so pretty when we get back – I’m getting bigger by the minute! Frank is such a lucky guy ;.) After dinner we headed back to the Carr’s officially British home in Sheffield where we met Paddy and Jesse their dog and cat.

We are exhausted and are headed to bed – see you in the morning!