June Adventures-Part 1

 

I know it’s been almost a year since my last blog.  Rather than trying to fill in a year’s worth of activities, I’m only going to recap the last month’s highlights-and so as not to make it too long for 1 sitting, I'll break it down over the course of the next few days.

The biggest highlight/change to our family is that Leah has graduated from high school!  One down, one more to go as I am officially now only home schooling 1 student! 

Leah has been accepted to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, but will be completing her 4-year degree online, so she’ll be staying home and working part time while completing her coursework.  Her focus will be in Biblical Studies in anticipation of doing vocational ministry with the Christian Missionary Alliance.

In honor of her graduating high school, Leah and I were able to go on an epic adventure with my sister & niece (The Paris Crew-from 3 years ago).  This trip took us to England & Scotland, visiting several wish-list places on Leah’s travel list.  The rest of this blog will contain highlights from these remarkable countries.

The first leg of our adventure took Leah & I to Chicago where my sister and family live.  Though we’ve been to Chicago countless times and figured this was a pitstop to our “real” adventures, both Leah and I got to attend some “surprise” venues.  On Friday night, my sister and I attended the Steve Martin & Martin Short Comedy show.  These two are still as hilarious as ever and surprisingly, Lisa and I were one of the youngest in the crowd!

 The following evening, Leah was able to “fill in” for my sister, who had injured her ankle going up the flight of stairs and she didn’t feel she should stand too long on it and wanted to give it a rest before our big trip.  So she sent Leah with my niece & 2 of her friends to the Taylor Swift Eras concert.   Needless to say,  Leah was more than happy to take Lisa’s place.

The following day, we left for the airport for an evening flight that would put us in London at 9:00 am, however the airplane had other plans and our flight was delayed 3 hours after we were already at the airport ready to board.  The airlines did provide us with free water & snacks at the gate as well as food vouchers to be used at the airport, since we would miss out on the dinner on board the plane.  (I think the vouchers were probably a better choice anyway).  Once we boarded, the flight was uneventful, and we arrived in London around 12:00 pm the following day.

After going through customs and acquiring our luggage, we took a cab to our first hotel of the trip, The Bloomsbury Hotel, located in an area of London known for its literary connections, references & quotes from Virginia Woolf and EM Forester.   After checking in and putting our luggage in our room, we had an immediate tour (remember our flight was delayed 3 hours) of the city of London.  We met our first guide, Colin, in the Lobby of the hotel for a Secret London Black Cab ride through highlighting some of the lesser-known places throughout London.  Colin also pointed out the more sought out & well known places but since we would be visiting those with another guide, he focused on the “unknowns” since our tour was the "Secret" Black Cab ride.  The highlight from this tour was the unearthed Roman Amphitheatre that was discovered in 1988  during the building of the Guildhall Art Gallery.  The Art Gallery was still completed, but they made the remnants of the Roman amphitheater one of the exhibits. This is housed in the basement of the now free Guildhall Art Gallery.

After returning to our hotel, we found a nearby place to eat that was acceptable to all four of our palates and walked the streets of London until 10pm. Since the sun set after 9:30 every night, it was easy to forget how late it was.

Day 2: Today took us to visit the Warner Bros Studios where many of the scenes were filmed in the Harry Potter movies-since we are all HP fans. Our driver/guide Paul picked us up at the hotel and having visited the studio numerous times, gave us tips of hidden gems to look out for while we were there.  I think one of the most impressive was the Great Hall where the students at Hogwarts ate and just the knowledge of how much detail went into the props and rooms for different scenes throughout the movie series.

Upon our return to the hotel, we walked to the London Eye where we had a scheduled ride, thankfully, as the line was long, but we had no wait at all.  The view from the very top were pretty magnificent but the time of day where the sun was hitting made it difficult to get any good photos from The Eye.

After we disembarked, we walked around the city some more… and more… and more.  Long enough that the pubs had stopped serving food by the time we were ready for dinner-so we ended up getting room service that night, but did get to enjoy some great street musicians in China town.