Finally Connected!

Still not dead!


So, on Sunday I moved in to my flat for the next three weeks of my study abroad. :) Meaning that Sunday was the fist day since I left Utah that I had internet on my computer. I was all ready to blog and catch up on the nine days of England that night, but the blogger website wasn't letting me insert pictures at all, which made me really mad. But I've fixed it now, so here it goes. This is gonna be a long one.

The flights themselves weren't terrible. I sat next to weird people, with more weird people behind me, and took selfies with them. :P

We don't look related at all. Nope.

Lots of selfies.

Funny story! We were flying over the Great Lakes and Braeden looked out the window and then nudged me and pointed down, then said in all seriousness "Look! It's the ocean!" Silly boy. :) I had to gently tell him that no, it wasn't the ocean. We were flying from Utah to New York, and there isn't an ocean between them. Then I proceeded to mock him mercilessly. >:)


Then we took a shuttle to the right terminal at JFK in New York and took more.

Obviously, I'm the happy one.

The plane was delayed for a long time because the pilots were called in late and had to get to the airport, then we had to wait for a towing team to get us to the runway. It was after 11:15 PM by the time we started moving when we were scheduled to take off at 10:30. : \

But we eventually took off and left the continent. :)

In-flight dinner. . . yum. . .

So we landed in Heathrow almost three hours later than planned, took a long time getting through the border control, then took even longer waiting for the rental car place to give us our van. During this time, it was decided that Mom and I would be happy drunks while the rest of the kids would be grumpy drunks and Dad would just go around saying "What?" :) This is based on our levels of alertness and general happiness once we landed at Heathrow.

While we were sitting on a bench outside waiting in line to get the car to take us to our cottage, the children were dropping like flies:

 

We ended up having to upgrade to a bigger car at the rental place (Europcar) in order to fit all six of us AND all of our suitcases, so we got this beautiful monstrosity:

Our own Golden Hearse. Wonderful. :D

No wheel for Momma!

Finally, we were able to load up and get out on the road for the long drive up to York.

Let me just say: Driving in England is super stressful, even if you aren't the one actually behind the wheel! You are on the wrong side of the road, the roads themselves are super skinny and windy, everyone drives really fast, and there aren't many intersections to stop at and get your bearings, just traffic circles or roundabouts, and weird road signs that we don't know what they mean! It was sort of terrifying.

"It's weird to look over and not see anyone driving the cars!" —Dad

All the other children fell asleep in the car at some point, often like this:

We drove straight to Luton to go eat at Nando's, a Portuguese chicken grill restaurant. I love it! Possibly my favorite place to eat anywhere (except for La Puente/La Fountain and Chuck-A-Rama of course).

The 1/4 chicken, Lemon and Herb spice level, with chips and garlic bread. I don't think I've ever gotten anything else. . . (£7.25)

Over the course of this entire vacation so far, I think we've gone to Nando's at least 6 or 7 times. :)

Anywho, we hit the road again and I finally fell asleep for the first time. Unfortunately, I fell asleep on my backpack and melted the Rolos that I had inside. . .

We got to York at 10 PM and went to the ASDA (British WalMart) to get food for breakfast and towels so that we could all shower in the morning. The side of the building says "24 hours", but we got there at 10:02 and they closed the doors on us. How rude. Apparently the store is open 24 hours a day EXCEPT for Saturday, according to a law or regulation or something. How misleading.

Our cottage was in Sheriff Hutton near York and it had a plaque calling it Tranquility Base. The key to get in was an awesome old-fashioned gold key. :)

My future house must have a key like this. . .

It was a tiny little thing with a master bedroom, a shared bedroom, a single bedroom, a tiny kitchen, living room, and an entry room with a daybed for Braeden. I had the single room, just a little bigger than the bed inside it, and decorated in a horrible old-country pink and flowers style. . . The first thing that Marissa said when she saw it was that "I clashed with my room." I have to agree. I was wearing my charcoal Star Wars T-shirt with jeans and my black backpack and my spiky hair. It was hilarious. :P

Slightly creepy paintings of children on my walls. . .

Sunday morning, we didn't end up getting up and out until after 11 AM. We went to McDonald's for breakfast/lunch, then going to ASDA and NOT getting kicked out. :P We got peanut butter and nutella and bread and poptarts and towels and oranges so that we wouldn't starve the next morning.

We then went in to Old York. We went to the Castle Museum by Clifford's Tower first. :) and walked through the old jail cells and such. Then we went up to Clifford's Tower itself. Riss and Braeden's first real castle! :) The guy at the ticket desk was really talkative and asked us all about last winter's weather in the states and then offered us some wine samples. . .

Marissa likes to make creepy faces in half of my pictures; I apologize in advance. :P

We then went to Pizza Hut for dinner and got a delicious thincrust Meaty pizza for the kids with ground beef, pepperoni, ham, and chicken on it.

Then we did the York Ghost Tour because it was Sunday evening and everything else was closed. It was rather hilarious. Ridiculous and cheesy, but hilarious. The old guy who did it looked a bit like Donald Sutherland mixed with Hugh Laurie and had a Manchester accent. :) He was wearing a long black trenchcoat and walked around with a sneer on his face all the time, shouting suddenly at the group to make the women at the front scream. He picked on Dad a lot because he was about a head taller than anyone else there, calling him "that big one there".

The next day, we went to Old York again and got British sim cards for my phone, Manda's phone, and Dad's phone from the O2 store so that we could text each other and get emails and have data so that we could keep in contact with people back home (*cough* Valeena *end cough*).

We had lunch at Subway (I'm seeing an American trend here. . .) and Dad offered me Braeden's bag of crisps while conveniently covering the flavor on the front. They looked like some sort of cheesy chip, so I ate one. IT WAS NOT CHEESY. It was PRAWN COCKTAIL. Seriously? Who even came up with that flavor?! And let me tell you, having that when you're expecting cheese is not okay. Not at all.

The cheese and onion flavor was much better.

For the rest of the day, we went to the York Museum (spending quite a bit of time there), then the Jorvik Viking Museum (which has a ride in the basement that takes you through a set of an authentic Viking village, complete with authentic smells. : \ Oddly, I don't think it smelled as awful as when I was there five years ago, but then again, I was sick and had the worst headache ever at that time), then peeked our heads into the York Minster cathedral, then went to Nando's again for dinner. :)

We thought about going to go see a movie, but How to Train Your Dragon 2 doesn't come out in the UK until July 11th! D: We left Utah on the day that it came out (June 13), so I haven't seen it yet and might not get to see it until August! :(

The rest of the first week was spent staying at the cottage and going out to various ruined castles and abbeys:

Helmsley Castle:

Awesome statues. :)

Reiveaulx Abbey: (By far the coolest ruin we went to, and we went to a lot of cool ones)

I really like this picture. :) So artistic. It is now the lock screen on my phone.

Scarborough Castle:

The North Sea!

We got a steak and potato pasty at the cafe and all tried some. I didn't think it was that great, but then again, I don't like potatoes that much. :P Everyone else enjoyed it.

We went to a local restaurant suggested to us by the lady at the castle visitor's centre in Scarborough: Winking Willies. We all got the fish and chips and it was so good!

First real British fish and chips! The fish still had the skin on it on one side. :)

Whitby Abbey:

This abbey was a gorgeous, Gothic style ruin with a surprising amount of sculpture and detail work left. Note the windows with the scrollwork and the main top window shaped like a flower with the stone still intact.

On our last day staying at the cottage, we went back up to the Scarborough area and went to Robin Hood's Bay (no joke) and played in the water and walked along the beach. :) The water was cold, but it wasn't any worse than going to a beach in Washington or Oregon. I was paranoid of dropping my phone in the sand or water, so I don't have any pictures of the actual beach part. :(

But the town was called Fylingdale and the roads were crazy! Most of the town was built on a 15-30% slope with windy, one-way streets between super cramped adorable little houses and shops, all with different colored doors. :) But even with the steepness, there were all these people, mostly old, retired couples, walking up and down the hills and riding bikes! Also, it seems like everyone in Scarborough has a dog. Seriously. So many dogs. :)

We went to lunch at Candy's Cafe about halfway back up through the town to the parking lot (which was up on the other side of the town at the top of the hill). I got the Haddock and chips and it was so good! I think I might have liked it better than Winking Willies.

Then we went to Pickering Castle which I ended up not taking any cool pictures of. :(

Anywho, we spent practically all of Friday driving from York to our hotel in London. We did try to stop at Stonehenge, but we didn't realize that it was the summer solstice. Bad idea. There were so many people trying to get in. So we ended up just driving past it, but I will be going in a couple of weeks so I'll have pictures then.

We finally got to our hotel room (Naylands hotel, just north of Kensington Park and near Paddington Station) but we didn't fit in the parking spot out front because they had piled bags of garbage in the way! Ugh. These Londoners and their rubbish. . .

We went to a restaurant called Garfunkels for dinner and it was really good, if a bit expensive. I got a pizza with ham and an over-easy egg on it. :) It was delicious.

We went to the Tower of London on Saturday and the displays in the white tower were so cool! They have the line of kings display on right now with all of the the previous kings' armor and horses' armor and amazing weapons displays. :)

Look at those swords! They are taller than the actual armor and the crossguards are wider than the shoulders! How would you even swing that for any length of time? How would you even carry it around?
Also, why would a little boy not even to an adult's hip need a full suit of armor? . . . It is awesome though. :D

This is one of my favorite weapons in the exhibit. It is a pistol battleaxe. :D No joke. There is a pistol with five (or six) shots designed into the blade of the axe. :) Can you image how weird you would look to be aiming one of these though...

And we found a dragon made out of weapons on the top floor of the tower. :D

We also went up on the Tower Bridge tour.

View from the top of the Tower Bridge, looking over the Thames. 

I found this sign down in the engine rooms of the Tower Bridge. >:) No Escape!

Riding the tube is always fun. :D

I couldn't resist. :)

My weirdo little siblings. . . All of our little tootsies were sore. :P

On Sunday, we went to the Royal Albert Hall, which is gorgeous inside! I want to either see a concert there or play on the stage someday. :) Unfortunately, the ballet for the Romeo and Juliet performances were practicing during our tour, so we couldn't take any pictures. :( But I took some of the outside!

This is in Latin and carved into the base of the statue in front of the Royal Albert Hall. I actually know most of the words here, which is cool, but I'm going to do a real translation later. The line goes something like "This monument commemorates the renowned Prince Albert"

Aaaaand. . . I think I've hit my limit of pictures for a single post or something, because it suddenly won't let me put any more in. XD I didn't know that was possible. Well, it is nearing midnight and I still have some homework stuff to prepare for classes tomorrow—Yuck, classes—so I'll end here and then finish up the last couple days in the next post. :) This post is obnoxiously long and monstrous already anyway.

Good night, America! :D