The Wild Newlywed Yonder: Erin's Euro Adventure of 2013 Part I

When Sam and I found out we were moving to England back in 2011 we had an entire year to prepare for that move, which is very unheard of when it comes to a PCS (permanent change of station) usually you just have months or weeks to get ready for a move, which would be hard with an overseas moves so I am glad that we had a whole year to prepare. Over the year leading up to our move we got married, moved to two separate training bases, and made many visits to friends and family spending as much time as possible with the people we love. During that time, as people learned about our awesome assignment, many said they wanted to come visit. Now, we know first hand that a trip across the pond isn't cheap so we would never expect everyone who said they would visit to actually come. However, during our first summer here with back to back visitors our friends and family proved that they really were serious about visiting and we couldn't be any happier or feel more loved that we had back to back to back visitors this summer! Our first visitor was my sweet friend, Erin, who arrived on July 9th. I think the easiest way to explain her world wind European trip is to do it diary style:

So excited to see Erin! And so blessed to have great friends willing to fly 4,398 miles and travel for over 24 hours to see me!

Tuesday: July 9th
Erin's flight was suppose to arrive at 5:55 am, but unfortunately she was delayed in Chicago, which turned out to be a God thing since her flight from Springfield was delayed, so had her Chicago flight not been delayed she might have missed it. I got stuck in traffic though so a 1.5 hour drive turned into about a 3 hour drive, but it was worth it. I luckily made it in time to wait by the arrivals door and anxiously awaited her smiling face to come through customs. I had heard from my friends here that the best thing to do with visitors is keep them awake, so I had planned to take Erin to Dover. I plugged "Dover Castle" into my GPS and it said we would be there in an hour, so off we went in our American spec car. Unfortunately, there is a Dover Castle pub in central London and it was too late to turn around once I noticed this mistake. So Erin got to experience some London driving and I learned that I am capable of driving through Central London, which gave my driving confidence a boost since I was wary of the driving here when we first move, my how I have grown over the past 11 months! After 2.5 hours of driving we finally made it to Dover, England and had lunch at a cafe, poor Erin did fall asleep in the car but I don't blame her, I didn't keep her moving enough. After lunch we spent a few hours hiking through the White Cliffs of Dover, soaking up the sun and Erin enjoyed her first visit to the English Channel. We headed to Chippenham, with the evening rush hour traffic which made it another three hour drive home instead of two...so if you are a numbers person I did about nine hours total of driving that day and I was tired by the end. I showed Erin our cottage and we got busy making dinner for us and Sam. After dinner we took Hercules for a walk through our village and then we crashed at about 10:00 pm. Erin did great for her first day in England and with jet lag.

Erin is alert for having been up for 24 hours

The White Cliffs are much prettier in the sunlight

Panoramic settings on the camera are fun

This weather was much better than when Sam and I went on a cold rainy day last October

Lovely English Channel

More White Cliffs and green grass

The Lighthouse we hiked to

So happy together

Erin trying not to fall

England looks good on her

More panorama fun

Pretty

We walked down to the rocky beach

Crazy white cliffs

The rocky beach

Wednesday: July 10th
Erin is training for a half marathon so she couldn't afford to take off any training days. She woke up early to take off running and she said it was a bit disorienting to have cars driving at her on the wrong side of the road. After Erin's run I took her to the base so that we could get money and to get her a base pass. Turns out if you have a passport then you can get a pass for six months, who knew??!! After we got her a base pass we went La Hogue and had lunch with my friend Meleah. After lunch we headed to Cambridge with the best tour guide around, my friend Meleah. She actually knows the names and purpose of all the buildings in Cambridge, it is great! We went and had tea and scones at Harriet's, which Erin loved and then we took a punting tour. Meleah and her husband Luke joined us for dinner after our Cambridge day, I made a crock-pot chicken casserole, which was delicious. I really enjoyed introducing Erin to Meleah, who has become a dear friend of mine over these past few months.

Punting and lunch at La Hogue

Tea and Scones plus Cambridge...yes I stole these pictures from Erin's Facebook....I didn't take a lot of pictures since I go to Cambridge often

Punting

Now that I have been punting three times, I can pretty much recite the tour on my own. The original manuscripts for Winnie the Pooh are stored in here....but I don't remember the name of the college so maybe I am not tour guide ready....yet

Bridge of Sighs....there are three in the world....Oxford, Cambridge and of course the real one in Italy...or maybe there were four locations, I guess I need to go punting again to jog my memory

Thursday: July 11th
On Thursday Erin and I headed to the gym on base for a workout with Meleah. Then we had lunch at Webbs, which is a local yet delicious sandwich shop in Mildenhall. After lunch we showered and got cleaned up and Meleah took us to Ely. Another place that she is an expert at! We showed Erin the Cathedral and then Erin and I took a train to London King's Cross. For any of my readers who are Harry Potter fans that station may sound familiar, yes we did find platform 9 and 3/4 but no we did not stand in line to take a picture. I impressed Erin with my schools of navigating the public transport in London and we found our hotel near the O2 Shepherds Bush Arena. It just so happened to be around 90 degrees that day in London and of course our hotel didn't have any AC since that doesn't exist in England so the first thing Erin and I did upon reaching our hotel room was strip off our jeans to try and cool off. After changing into our concert attire we headed to Pizza Express for dinner. Erin told me a story about how when her and her family traveled to Europe a few years ago they ordered a pizza at a restaurant to share between the four of them but it was a personal sized pizza, so we made sure we didn't make the same mistake! After dinner we headed over the the O2 Shepherd Bush Arena for the Rascal Flatts concert my dear husband bought for my birthday back in February. This is a smaller venue, so the acoustics weren't great, and we were on the top floor (3rd floor) sitting on basically a church bench, which wasn't super comfortable and with no AC it was also super hot....but none of that mattered when my boys walked out on stage! They rocked the house as usual and it was really awesome to be in a sold out show for country music where the British people were singing all of the words to every song! It was an amazing concert and I am so thankful that my husband bought us tickets, he is the best!

Ely Cathedral

Harry Potter nerds...I mean fans

Waiting at the overground station

Waiting for RF to come out...notice how sweaty we both are?

Ah! My boys! "I'm gonna stand on a rooftop, climb up a mountaintop baby scream and shout"

"Summer nights everybody feeling sexy...holler if your ready for some summer nights"

"My wish for you is that your life becomes all that you want it to your dreams stay big, your worries stay small, you never need to carry more than you can hold and while your out there gettin' where your gettin' to I hope you know somebody loves you and wants the same things too, yeah this is my wish."

Friday: July 12th
Erin and I had a lovely breakfast at the hotel and the checked out. We headed to Borough Market, which is an outdoor market where we were able to walk around and buy food as we saw, so we bought bread, cheese, olives, chicken sandwiches, and had a delicious lunch. It is a really neat atmosphere. After our time at Borough Market we headed to the Heathrow airport to catch our flight to Paris. Once we landed in Paris I received a text from my sister that there was a fire in a plane at Heathrow and a derailed train in Paris and she needed to know that I was alive and safe. I told her that I was and we had just landed in Paris. After asking around and buying tickets for the metro we started our journey to the hotel...which was only suppose to take about thirty minutes from the airport. We navigated well and everything was going great until we got to the metro (their underground) which was crazy busy because it was the end of a work day on Friday. We also had a big rolling suitcase we were carrying around with us, at one point I got stuck with the suitcase in the turnstile...backing it up. Luckily, there was a nice Frenchman behind me who helped get me through. Once we made it to the platform the next problem we had, probably because of the derailed train, was getting onto one of the trains. They were so full people were literally jumping on and strangers would hug them to pull them into the cart so the doors would shut. Talk about claustrophobia and pick pocketers heaven. We let about four trains pass through, since we had a giant suitcase, before were finally able to get on one. It was a miracle that we both made it on! And I have never had so many guys look down my shirt at one time...but at least we weren't pick pocketed. Once we got off the metro we had a ten minute walk, but google maps led us astray and we got lost. We landed in Paris at 6:00 pm and arrived at our hotel, a trip that should've only taken 30 minutes, at 10:00 pm. Needless to say we were exhausted and starving by the time we got to our hotel. We didn't want to walk very far so we stopped at a local restaurant, where no one spoke English and literally they just pointed at meals other people were having and brought them to us. Luckily, Erin speaks french....which was a life saver....and we still have no idea what we ate that night, but it was delicious.