Christmas Break 2010

Over the Christmas break, we, more accurately, I decided to rent a car to tour around the english country. Getting Tony to commit to this plan was harder than I had anticipated. Finally, he admitted to being "a little concerned" about driving in the city. You all know him and so you probably know he prides himself on his driving skills. Driving on the left side is a bit tricky when you have 26 years of experience on the other side.

In the end, it wasn't a big deal. He did fabulous... with the help of a great navigator, of course.

The only mishap was getting on a wrong freeway which you might think is not so bad. You just get off at the next exit and turn around, right? Not so much. The major roadways all start with the letter M and I am convinced that the M stands for MAKE damn sure you want to get on this road before doing so. After many, many miles, we finally were able to get going in the right direction.

Our first stop - Cambridge

It is currently made up of 31 colleges. We obviously didn't see them all but we did see 2 big ones... Trinity College & Kings College. It was a nice town and the grounds were beautiful. Isabelle and Logan did not much care for the second oldest University in the English-speaking world. The most memorable part for them was lunch at Burger King and a look in the £ Pound store : )

River Cam

Trinity Lane

Next day - Dover Castle

It is a great medieval fortress, created by King Henry II. Dover is also at the narrowest point of the English channel, making it the closest point to the rest of Europe. On a clear day, not sure how many of those there are, you can see France. From the castle you can also see the White Cliffs of Dover. They are said to breathtakingly beautiful. My breath was just fine but maybe it also requires that elusive clear day!

Isabelle liked going under ground to look out of a window at the English Channel. There was an exhibit teaching them how these windows were the first point at which a ship or plane would be determined as a Friend or Foe (see 4th picture down).

Logan is extremely fond of all things gun related. I was that mother that didn't allow any kind of gun toys in the house, not even so much as a water gun. It was all for naught!! He's a boy and he likes to pretend to blow things up. So as you can imagine, he enjoyed going to a castle that had lots of canons and other artillery, as well as look out posts.

White Cliffs of Dover

Funny expression... Mom told Logan to sit on the chair for a picture and just as the picture is taken a man yells for Logan to get off the King's chair.

Final day trip - Stonehenge and Bath

What to say about Stonehenge? It is literally on the side of the road. It's like driving on 441 between Athens and Macon, Georgia and casually passing the many "fruit stands" by the road. I'm not sure why I expected it to be more enclosed like a museum. You don't really have to pay to get in to see it but your pictures will have a hideous looking fence in front of the big rocks. It was awe inspiring to see this, mostly from thinking about how in the heck they did it. It was extremely cold that day that we didn't stay to ponder the question for long.

Isabelle and Logan's favorite thing about Stonehenge??? The sheep grazing all around. They spent way more time looking at them than the large rocks.

The Sheep

Trying to move a rock

Ah, Bath! It is a cute town.

The Roman Baths were neat. I can't say I learned a lot since the kids took over my headset once they figured out that someone talked to you when you punched in numbers. It's ok though because they enjoyed it. They really like the steaming water. What they couldn't understand was why they weren't allowed to go swimming in the pool.

All in all, our three day tour was quite interesting. It was nice to see something of England besides London.