The Wild Newlywed Yonder: January 2015

We have some pretty awesome people in our lives that are willing to pay and risk getting lost forever by taking a plane ride across a super large pond to visit us. This summer we had the privilege of sharing our life abroad with my best friend (for 10+ years we can’t exactly remember what day/how we met, but we know it was well over ten years ago, I think maybe 13 years to be exact) and her husband. The Thirys currently live in Houston, TX which makes a 9 to 10 hour direct flight to London, convenient. Better yet they booked their flight to arrive in London at noon, best guests ever! Anytime I can get up at a decent hour before driving to the airport is a win.

Upon arriving in the UK, per my instructions, they remembered to use British words like holiday instead of vacation and because of that made it through customs on the fast track because they practically sounded like they belonged. Okay, so they didn’t make it on a fast track but they got through in under an hour which is impressive during the summer. They also looked refreshed and ready to go, not like they stayed up all night. However, we failed to capture our reunion at the airport, where I was holding a sign with their name and yes a strange guy came up to read it and discovered it didn’t have a his name on it. Anyway, I quickly whisked them away into a trip of lifetime starting with traditional British food at a traditional British pub. Stephanie loved all of the flowers (she sounded like my mom and grandma, let me take a picture of these beautiful flowers) and Nate loved the fish and chips.

(Insert Stephanie's flower pictures here)

After lunch it was time to get the bottom of an age old question, the meaning behind Stonehenge. I had never visited Stonehenge before, because I figured we would have visitors wanting to go sometime, and it was amazing. After we solved the mystery that those who came millions of years before us couldn’t understand it was time to head to Chippenham, 3 hours away. Stephanie was awesome and stayed awake with me the whole time. We came home to a delicious home cooked meal prepared by my wonderful husband. It tasted oh so delicious. We visited for a bit after dinner, ate dessert and I congratulated the Thiry’s on staying awake for the entire day (minus the times Nathan slept in the car). I think they lasted until about 10:30 or 11:00pm, impressive! However, we had a tight schedule to stick to and that didn’t allow for many mornings of sleeping in.

What's the meaning of Stonehenge?

We need a selfie stick

Replicating those cliché pictures and all those people who constantly take them...you know who you are.

We left bright and early the next day to catch the Chunnel. As I have described before the Chunnel is when you put your car inside a train which goes through a tunnel under the English Channel and you pop out in France. We drove from Chippenham to Bruges stopping at the trapist brewery in Belgium, where monks make beer, to have lunch. Upon arriving in Bruges we checked into our hostel and started walking around the town. We love this city. It has so much character, yummy chocolate, waffles and beer. We got there later in the day when most things were closed so we basically just walked around, took pictures, lots of selfies, and spent an awful long time people watching and scoping out the perfect English speaking person to take a group picture for us. In case you were wondering that made three countries Steph and Nate were in that day, England, France and Belgium. The next day we climbed a narrow and windy staircase containing 366 steps to the top of the Bell tower where we saw beautiful views of the city and also almost lost our hearing from the bells. We enjoyed some frits and waffles before heading out to our next adventure and spending even more time in the car.

Stephanie doesn't look jet lagged at all does she?!

Bruges

The bell tower

Only the best friends will find, point out and pluck your first gray hair....we are getting old

Being silly with selfies

It took so much people watching to get this picture...

Views from the Bell Tower

We drove from Bruges to Paris. There wasn’t anything too eventful during this drive, minus something flying off one car and hitting another, but I am not really even sure what that story is since everyone except Sam slept most of the time. Stephanie and Nathan could blame jet lag; I just fall asleep in cars because my parents used to drive me around when I was a baby to get me to fall asleep so cars and dryers make me sleep. After arriving in Paris we got stuck in some awesome traffic. It was the day that France was playing Germany in the world cup and there were also lots of police around since France and Germany are such great friends. Stephanie and Nathan had a friend they met in Houston who was born in Paris and living back in Paris so they wanted to try and meet up with her. Since I have done Paris twice and Sam has also done it we decided to take a small side trip while they explored Paris. I felt comfortable leaving them in a foreign country since they would be with someone who spoke French fluently. I think they had a great time exploring all the sights in one big whirl wind of day. They also didn’t have any itineraries to stick to and were able to sleep in. We headed off to Zurich, Switzerland during their Paris days, but that adventure will come through another blog. We parted ways on the evening of Friday the fourth of July. All of us celebrating America in our hearts. We returned to Paris on Sunday night and found two Texans (ha, they love being called that) wondering the streets of a big city y’all so we picked them up. It was great to be reunited yet again and swap all of our crazy “Americans in foreign non-English speaking cities stories”.

On the road again...

The awesome sleeping patterns of Stephanie...

I left my phone with Steph and Nate in case they got super lost in Paris they had a working phone... so of course my camera roll was filled with pictures of Stephs Eye

Her favorite thing to do even in college was fill my phone up with eye pictures. At least she has pretty eyes

The Thiry's take on Paris

Monday was another bright and early start as we were going to be driving back to England. Everything was going great…I was on time for once and we departed as planned. Then we made it to the Chunnel crossing where it took forty-five minutes just to get to the check-in window. This usually only takes about ten minutes at most. There were cars everywhere and people getting out of their cars to check out what was going on and all we could see was a screen that said “there is a disturbance on the Chunnel”. I did my best to research but all that I found was that an incident had occurred and people were waiting six hours to leave England. Once we finally made it through to the check-in they told us we could try and wait for the next Chunnel to cross, which would take up to four hours, or we could take the ferry. We opted for the ferry option. You know we wanted to make sure Steph and Nate experienced all modes of transportation whilst in Europe: Plane, Train, Car, Ferry…yup we covered them all. The ferry crossing was a blast especially watching people get so excited about seagulls. It was pretty much like a mini cruise ship except not as nice. We finally made it to England again!

On the Ferry

The Ferry

SO many birds

Birds..

More Birds

I miss the sun

However, it was too late to eat lunch at La Hogue like we had planned. We still went to La Hogue though and showed the Thiry’s base before we went to pick up Hercules, who couldn’t wait to see Stephanie. We grilled burgers and had a bbq at our house that evening and our friends Taryn and Steve were able to join us. It was a great night and since Taryn and Steve are some of our closer friends here in the UK we knew they would hit it off with Nate and Steph.

Tea time at La Hogue

Delicious BBQ with friends

We had another early morning the next day, Holbrook travels don’t allow for stopping to rest, because we were headed for our London day. We left fifteen minutes later than planned, got stuck in traffic, waited in quite a few queues and gathered on busy tubes. There were also other shenanigans like me texting into the radio one breakfast show “Sam from Suffolk” but texting the rest separately. But Nick Grimshaw chose to read only my blonde moment text out loud so we also became famous. There was also a line at West Minster Abbey, which I didn’t expect, so immediately we were an hour and a half behind schedule but in the words of Juan Pablo, “Es okay”. While Stephanie and Nathan got lost in the abbey Sam and I grabbed Starbucks hung out and looked for bathrooms. We missed the changing of the guards but went to Buckingham Palace after the Abbey, which apparently Prince George was learning to walk along those London streets that day while we were there. After Buckingham Palace we went through Trafalgar’s square where Sam gave a long history lesson and Stephanie kept saying “what”? because she couldn’t hear a thing he said. Neither could I and it became clear during this trip that Steph and I are both deaf and we don’t know what would’ve happened if there was a fire while we all lived together because we wouldn’t be able to hear each other’s warnings. After our history lesson and lots and lots of walking we made it to our stopping point for lunch, The Ye Ole’ Cheshire Cheese. Where Charles Dickens was a frequent customer.

The Tour De France went through Cambridge. We wanted to try and see it but we missed it and so I stole these pictures from a friends fb

Its like we were there

On the tube

He is looking mighty and big

We took a Starbucks break while the thiry's toured the Abbey

Sam's face...

Buckingham Palace

Sad because Rachel and Josh loved this place

Since Stephanie and Nathan love walking up stairs we headed over to St. Paul’s cathedral. Sam and I had never toured the cathedral so we enjoyed listening to all of the history. We also enjoyed climbing over 500 steps to the top. There were beautiful views of London. After our legs were burning and quite wobbly we headed over to the London eye. We rode the double decker bus and made sure Steph and Nate set in the front seat. The London eye gave us beautiful views and we managed to make some pretty awesome pictures. After completing our journey on the London Eye, which we decided we didn’t need to do because of we pretty much have the same views from St. Paul’s Cathedral. We headed over to the borough of Islington where we ate at one of our favorite restaurants in London, La Divina. I love the salads they have and we ate a full three course meal. Finally, we headed back to Chippenham and crashed after a world wind London day.