Vacation in the UK

When our daughter, Kathy, first moved to London earlier this year, I asked the Lord to allow me to go visit her at least once a year for the time she's there. Getting to spend time in the UK has been a lifelong dream for me, and when the Lord answered my prayer with a couple of substantial influxes of unexpected monies, I knew my dream would become reality.

I'm not going to bore you with the oodles and oodles of pictures Roger took or with every detail of our two weeks in the UK, but I do want to share some of the highlights of the trip for us. We left Denver on Wednesday, October 8, and arrived in London on Thursday, October 9. Then started our adventure of getting our luggage from Heathrow to our hotel (B&B) in Islington via the tube. Thankfully it was the middle of the morning, and we didn't have to contend with the huge crowds on the tube at rush hour. But it was interesting enough. We got settled into our room after lunch, took a nap, then headed out for tea at Claridge's.Here we are after we were done eating.
After a good night's sleep, we repacked to spend the weekend in Cornwall, the area where Roger's family ancestors settled after they came to England from Normandy with William the Conqueror.

While we were waiting for Kathy to finish her morning at work, we did a quick walking tour of Fleet Street, which turns into something else down by St. Paul's Cathedral. On our walk we saw such things as the Millennium Bridge and the archway into the Old Temple Bar, the original location of the Old Bailey and many lawyer and barrister offices. Some of the offices are still there, but most of the law community in the City of London are now located on Fleet Street. And Fleet Street used to be the place where all the newspaper and publishing people reigned supreme. Now you walk by buildings that say this was Samuel Boswell's house, or Charles Dickens, or Samuel Johnson—all authors we covered in English literature, both in classes I've taken and taught.

The weather couldn't have been nicer, almost the whole time we were in the UK. We only had one day (in London) that was rainy, windy, and cold. Most of the time we were blessed with lots of sunshine and perfect temps, even in Scotland. What a blessing!

Kathy was done about 1:00, and after we picked up some lunch at a sandwich shop, we headed to the car hire place via taxi. Our driver gave a quick tour past Buckingham Palace and other points of interest on the way. And he gave us a couple of suggestions of places to visit while we were in Cornwall.

Kathy was our designated driver for the two weekends we had car rentals, and she did a great job with her dad navigating for her. However, she soon learned to ignore him when he told her to turn right or left because he seemed to think that because she was driving on the left side of the road that directions changed as well. And that quirk lasted the whole time we were there! We got lots of laughs out of it, but Kathy listened to our NavSat she'd borrowed from friends rather her dad when it came to making right or left turns.

I'll save Cornwall for the next post, but I'll leave you with a peek at the family castle—not kidding! LOL