The Rest of Our Trip

Okay, so I didn't write a daily log of the rest of our trip after Paris. And I'm too lazy to keep doing this everyday, so I'm going to summarize the rest of our trip in this post.

The rest of our trip was pretty chill. Mitch had his conference for 1 1/2 days, so we didn't do much those days. We did go on a tour on Sunday. We went to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath.

• Windsor Castle: pretty much a castle straight out of a fairy tale. So pretty. The Queen lives here almost every weekend. She was there while we were there; too bad we didn't see her! There is a doll house of Buckingham Palace, which takes up an entire room, floor to ceiling. It has electricity and plumbing. Everything is sized to scale. It is so cool. (Sadly, they don't allow tourists to take pictures inside the castle.)

• Stonehenge: it was too cold and windy for me to love it. Maybe I complain too much. It wasn't nearly as cool as I was expecting. You can't get very close to the rocks and there were people everywhere. I guess they're going to bury the road and path around it so it will seem more authentic; however, that will require a 2 mile walk for tourists. (At least we didn't have to walk that far.) Maybe more authentic would mean I would have enjoyed it more. It was very interesting and I still don't know why it was built ...

• We had lunch at the George Inn. They have the oldest liqueur license in England. They also have the only remaining dog spit in the world. A dog spit is a device they used to turn the meat as it cooked over the fire. Basically, they put a little dog in a big wheel, put a piece of hot coal behind the poor dog's legs, and made it run to turn the wheel. How cruel! Of course they don't use it anymore, but it was interesting to see. The town was only four streets and it was SO tiny! All of the buildings looked like they would crumble at the slightest push. I told Mitch that if we lived in one of those I would be afraid of getting consumption and dying. Seriously, they would have been torn down ages ago if they were in America. Cool to see, but I'm glad we don't have buildings like that here.

• Bath: this is a Roman city that was originally built as a spa resort. There are multiple hot springs that were believed to revive youth if you drink the water. We could have paid to drink some of the water, and would have supposedly felt 10 years younger!, but they said it tastes like sulfur and neither of us felt that a 10 year age reduction was worth the nasty taste, so we passed. It was really cool to see how the Romans built the spa and what they used each room for. It was A LOT bigger than we expected. Oh yeah, we also bought some fudge at a fudge shop in Bath. The flavor was Belgian Chocolate and it was ridiculously rich. And Mitch seriously ate more than half of it all at once. I don't know how he didn't vomit. He LOVES sugar. It made me laugh.

The rest of our stay in London we saw some more cathedrals and more of the statues, etc. that we wanted to see. While Mitch was in his conference, I went on a bus tour of London with one of the other wives. It was fun and I learned a lot of random facts about the city. Did you know that the original London bridge was sold to the state of Arizona for just over $2 million?

I went here while Mitch was in his conference:

It was pretty lame, which is to be expected considering that Holmes wasn't even a real person.

And of course we went to the conference dinner. I wish I would have taken a picture of us! We looked pretty snazzy. I like going to the dinners; everyone dresses up and I get to meet some of the nerds, I mean people, that Mitch works with. Ha,ha. Actually, I'm always very impressed by their intelligence. Most of them were British at this conference, a few Americans, and even few French. The dinner was kind of gross (again, British food is nasty), and the dessert was hilarious. The menu said something like, "Apple and pear streusel with clotted cream." Sounds pretty good right? Except, what is clotted cream? Oh, don't worry ... it looked exactly like a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream. I dove right into mine, it looked SO good, but I soon realized that clotted cream = butter. Sick. It was funny to see the Americans' plates afterwards, none of us ate our "clotted cream," but all of the British did. Gross.

We also went to the Shakespeare Global Theater (it's actually just a replica, but still cool). I love Shakespeare.

Another cool thing we did was attend Evensong at Westminster Abbey. It's a mass/program put on by the Church of England. They had a choir singing and the priest spoke. It was interesting to say the least. I thought it was pretty, especially the choir. Mitch thought it was a little dark, but I thought it was nicer than the Catholic masses I've attended. It was cool to see inside of Westminster Abbey. And this is definitely the way to do it since it's free (otherwise it's like $15). The cathedral is completely full of graves with fancy headstones and statues. Sir Isaac Newton is buried there. It's really neat to see.

And we went to the London Natural History Museum. The Human Biology section was SO graphic. Seriously, they had things I never wanted to see. Think "adult content." It was shocking and kind of funny.

Here are some of the funny signs we saw in London:

Yes, that is a stained glass window of the Michelin Man.

Humps or speed bumps?
To rent or to let? As a side note, in England they don't say "restroom" or even "bathroom," they say "toilet." Every time I saw a TO LET sign, I thought it was supposed to say TOILET and they I was missing. I would get so excited, because you know, pregnant women ALWAYS have to pee, but then I would realize that it just meant "to rent."
This is just funny.
Instead of "exit" it's "way out."

Anyways, the rest of the trip was great. And the way home was AWESOME because Mitch got bumped to first class on our flight from London to New York. So, he rode first class the first half of the way and I rode the second half. It was divine; my seat laid completely flat into a bed. Not to mention all the food and drinks you could want. It was so sweet.

We got to New York that night and went to our hotel, another Marriott like we stayed at in London. Only there was one difference: New York Marriott did not have a free continental breakfast. Too bad we didn't know that when we loaded up our plates! It ended up costing us $38!!!! What??? For breakfast??? Yeah, I usually love Marriotts, but they just went down one notch in my book.

Anyways, we spent most of the day in New York. Here's a few of the things we saw:

• Wall Street

• We saw the 9-11 site. You couldn't see too much; it's still under construction. We did go to the temporary memorial site. It made me cry.
• Rockefeller Plaza. Guess how much it is to go ice skating here? 30 bucks a person!

• We ate at the famous Carnegie Deli. I have never seen bigger sandwiches in my life! And if you think the New York Cheesecake Factory's cheesecake is good, you should try REAL New York cheesecake. It's AMAZING!

Mitch was SO excited to eat here. It was really good.

• Central Park was stunningly beautiful. I LOVED it!

• The LOVE statue thing. It was kind of random. It just appeared out of nowhere.
• This is the only horse I have ever seen that is this color. Isn't it pretty?

• And of course, Times Square
• My only regret is that we weren't able to see Wicked. When we actually had time to see it, it wasn't playing in London. We should have planned a little better I guess, but we figured we could just see it one day while we were there. It never worked out. So sad. Here's my frowny face.

Despite not seeing Wicked, it was an AWESOME trip. Trip of a lifetime. Seriously. Hopefully someday we'll be able to go to Cambodia and the Baltics again. But until then, I'm so grateful for the traveling we've been able to do. I love seeing other parts of the world. For now I'm content to stay home and relax with our little family. Until our Panama 2011 Family Reunion that is!