England
I went to England!
I've been back for a couple weeks, but I forgot to post. We timed our trip to miss both the Jubilee and the Olympics. It seemed easier that way. It was still crowded, but it was usual city crowded, not major event crowded.
It was fun. We were there for ten days, most of it in London. And we still didn't see everything we wanted. We saw places we've only read about or seen on TV. We walked a lot, and got very comfortable with taking the Tube. It's kind of odd to see so much history, so much old stuff, just crammed in with the new. The U.S. really doesn't have much history. We visited places older than our country.
The weather was on the chilly side for most of the trip, with drizzly rain. The day we went to the Tower of London it was miserably cold and wet, but we still spent hours there. Of course, back home it was miserably hot and there were power outages, so the cold and rain weren't so bad in comparison.
Other than London, we went to Windsor, Bath, Stonehenge, and Salisbury. We originally intended to see more outside of London, but there was so much in London and driving the rental car was harder than anticipated. For the first week, Mom watched the drivers and fretted about driving on the wrong side of the road, but Dad was confident. "I learned to drive in Pakistan," he said. "They drive on the other side, and you have to avoid the chickens and cows. It'll be fine."
We had the car for one day. One stressful, long day. Then we returned it. It didn't help that our GPS was either helpfully routing us around the worst of the traffic by taking us off the highway and through series of roundabouts (they really love their roundabouts over there), or it was passive-aggressively punishing us for not taking the route through the city that it originally suggested. At any rate, it was a much longer drive than it should have been, and Mom and I said "you're drifting" a lot. Apparently adjusting to being on the wrong side of the car is not that easy after all. So we took the train the other two days we left the city.
Many places had audio guides that you carried with you. It meant we didn't talk much among ourselves because we all had headphones on, but it also meant the people around us weren't babbling and being distracting. At Westminster, the audio guide was narrated by Jeremy Irons. I like his voice. The one at Stonehenge was kind of annoying--lots of speculation, a lot of it based on assumptions. I like learning the different theories, but after awhile I feel like saying "Just admit you don't know! It's really old and you can't find the manual."
I would definitely go back. There's a lot more I'd like to see. My sister is horribly jealous. She went several years ago with her history class. They went in January. She has no sympathy for us needing long pants and sometimes a jacket.
We're enjoying the Olympic coverage. We say "we were there" and "we saw that" a lot.
I could make a much longer post, but I won't. I may post some pictures later though.
I've been back for a couple weeks, but I forgot to post. We timed our trip to miss both the Jubilee and the Olympics. It seemed easier that way. It was still crowded, but it was usual city crowded, not major event crowded.
It was fun. We were there for ten days, most of it in London. And we still didn't see everything we wanted. We saw places we've only read about or seen on TV. We walked a lot, and got very comfortable with taking the Tube. It's kind of odd to see so much history, so much old stuff, just crammed in with the new. The U.S. really doesn't have much history. We visited places older than our country.
The weather was on the chilly side for most of the trip, with drizzly rain. The day we went to the Tower of London it was miserably cold and wet, but we still spent hours there. Of course, back home it was miserably hot and there were power outages, so the cold and rain weren't so bad in comparison.
Other than London, we went to Windsor, Bath, Stonehenge, and Salisbury. We originally intended to see more outside of London, but there was so much in London and driving the rental car was harder than anticipated. For the first week, Mom watched the drivers and fretted about driving on the wrong side of the road, but Dad was confident. "I learned to drive in Pakistan," he said. "They drive on the other side, and you have to avoid the chickens and cows. It'll be fine."
We had the car for one day. One stressful, long day. Then we returned it. It didn't help that our GPS was either helpfully routing us around the worst of the traffic by taking us off the highway and through series of roundabouts (they really love their roundabouts over there), or it was passive-aggressively punishing us for not taking the route through the city that it originally suggested. At any rate, it was a much longer drive than it should have been, and Mom and I said "you're drifting" a lot. Apparently adjusting to being on the wrong side of the car is not that easy after all. So we took the train the other two days we left the city.
Many places had audio guides that you carried with you. It meant we didn't talk much among ourselves because we all had headphones on, but it also meant the people around us weren't babbling and being distracting. At Westminster, the audio guide was narrated by Jeremy Irons. I like his voice. The one at Stonehenge was kind of annoying--lots of speculation, a lot of it based on assumptions. I like learning the different theories, but after awhile I feel like saying "Just admit you don't know! It's really old and you can't find the manual."
I would definitely go back. There's a lot more I'd like to see. My sister is horribly jealous. She went several years ago with her history class. They went in January. She has no sympathy for us needing long pants and sometimes a jacket.
We're enjoying the Olympic coverage. We say "we were there" and "we saw that" a lot.
I could make a much longer post, but I won't. I may post some pictures later though.