Wednesday April 21st- Happy Birthday to the Queen! And she got a great birthday present too, the airports opened back up! This was very bitter sweet for me. It means I can go home as planned and see the rest of my family whom I have sorely missed, but it also makes me sad thinking of leaving this city which I have grown to love. All my life I have dreamed of living in London and now that I have, I don't want to live anywhere else. These past four months have been spectacular. I have grown so much, learned a great deal, and grew more self confident than I have ever imagined I could be. I will miss it here terribly.
Our flight was at 1 in the afternoon but since today was the first day the airports had been opened in over a week we got to the airport around 8am so we could make it through lines and make our flight. People must have thought the reopening was a spoof because hardly anyone was there! We had no problems except we were too early to check our bags in! After a much welcomed breakfast, we were able to relax and wait at our gate for a few hours after one last round of shopping, airport stores, got to love them. We had a layover in Atlanta and ate dinner there which I could hardly finish I was so tired and then we were finally home. I was so excited to see my Dad at the airport, I missed him so much, but really all I could think about was how much I wished it could be January again and do my study abroad over. But life must go on and I will always have this experience with me and benefit from it for years to come. Thank you Mommy and Daddy for letting me have this great adventure, and thank you all who participated in making these past 4 months some of the best 4 months of my life.
Goodbye London, see you again soon.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Mom Comes to England! Day 7
Tuesday April 20th- Today Mom and I decided that we wanted to get out of the city and to flee the country. But with no airplanes and no passage on boats to the main land open, we hoped on a train and went to Edinburgh, Scotland! 
Once we stepped off of the 4.5 hour train ride, we heard this man playing the bagpipes! I have heard bagpipes before but never appreciated them till I came up here :] They are a very interesting and fun instrument in my opinion. Though the train ride was long it was fun too, Mom and I talked, then napped, then read, then ate, then watched the beautiful sceanery go by. Still no sign of ash like we are supposed to see.
One of my mom's favorite things to do on this trip was to ride on the Hop-on Hop-off tour buses. This is a double decker bus just for tourists. You receive a pair of head phones upon purchasing a ticket and then plug them into the bus, in the designated holes of course. You then have an audio tour of the city where you see the sights and hear about them. The best part of this is that each bus has the same commentary so you can 'Hop-off' when you want to get a closer look at something and then 'Hop-on' the next bus when you are ready to move on. Mom wanted to ride on the top of the bus and because it was so windy and cold no one else was up there but us!
One of the first things we saw was this- Edinburgh Castle. It is at the center of the city and on a cliff, pretty precarious in my opinion.
It was beautiful and so much larger than I imagined. Here are more pictures of the beautiful city of Edinburgh, wish we had had more than one day here but it was still so much fun and such a good day :]
The Scottish flag, or as they call it, the backbone of the Union Jack.
Mom on the bus driving past the main shopping street, we'll come back here later :]
This is the Scottish Parliament Building. It was built 5 years ago and the designer was a Spanish University Student who won the competition for best design. The Government used to work in an old Greek styled building but it became too outdated so this was supposed to bring them to the 21st century.
This is a statue of a dog that had a large effect on the country. At a time when there was rumor of War and rebellion and separating from all outsiders, this little dog showed such devotion to an old master by laying on his grave every day all day until the dog's own death that it caused the country to reconsider and stay as a part of the United Kingdom. Cute story. Mom got a bit teary eye-ed thinking of her dog BJ when she heard this story.
After riding the entirety of the Hop-on Hop-off bus route, we started stopping at points of interest. The first of which was the castle!
I hadn't gone to the bathroom since waking up at 5 this morning so by the time we got off the bus I was dieing! I had to go sooo badly! The castle gift shops did not have restrooms so we had to go to the back of the castle to the restaurant, which was in the part of the castle that was right over the edge! After relieving my waters, I was able to appreciate how spectacular the view was! In this picture on the tallest tower the top window is what we looked out of while eating.
This is me and Edinburgh! Beautiful city isn't it?
This made me laugh very hard, look how many ways they have written "way out" just so no one gets confused! :] made me smile and laugh so I took a picture. Right before this picture, Mom and I were walking around the treasury and I was caught for the first time taking a picture where I shouldn't have. The Scottish crown jewels really did not want to be photographed. It made me laugh even harder when I got in trouble because I took pictures of tons of things I wasn't supposed to in London which has the tightest security of any city in the world but then I come up to Edinburgh and get caught the first time I break the rule. Good job Scottish Bobbies!
Next Mom and I went shopping and to a mill where they make the many variations of plaid. It was cool to see. I had no idea that there were so many different kinds. Each family has their own special design, sort of like a coat of arms but out of crossed lines on fabric. Mom liked shopping and kept trying to pick out somethings that her friends would like, I was a bit more selfish and bought this hat for myself. It's pattern is a special tartan that was made especially for Princess Diana after she died, part of the cost of the items made from this plaid go to a Princess Diana Memorial Trust to help those in need. Guess it wasn't such a selfish buy after all.
Mom was my photographer showing of my new hat after we bought Grammie and Alyssa and herself cashmere scarves. She said to pretend the manikin was a cute boy I was flirting with, too bad he wasn't real. :p hehe
These are the shoes I wore all week when Mom was here, I think we walked a bit from the look of them :]
I had a marvelous day today with my Mommy :] Our plane is supposed to take us home tomorrow but the airport is still closed so who knows? We may have extra days in Europe than we planned for, and that would be all right by me :]
Once we stepped off of the 4.5 hour train ride, we heard this man playing the bagpipes! I have heard bagpipes before but never appreciated them till I came up here :] They are a very interesting and fun instrument in my opinion. Though the train ride was long it was fun too, Mom and I talked, then napped, then read, then ate, then watched the beautiful sceanery go by. Still no sign of ash like we are supposed to see. 
One of my mom's favorite things to do on this trip was to ride on the Hop-on Hop-off tour buses. This is a double decker bus just for tourists. You receive a pair of head phones upon purchasing a ticket and then plug them into the bus, in the designated holes of course. You then have an audio tour of the city where you see the sights and hear about them. The best part of this is that each bus has the same commentary so you can 'Hop-off' when you want to get a closer look at something and then 'Hop-on' the next bus when you are ready to move on. Mom wanted to ride on the top of the bus and because it was so windy and cold no one else was up there but us! One of the first things we saw was this- Edinburgh Castle. It is at the center of the city and on a cliff, pretty precarious in my opinion.
It was beautiful and so much larger than I imagined. Here are more pictures of the beautiful city of Edinburgh, wish we had had more than one day here but it was still so much fun and such a good day :] 
The Scottish flag, or as they call it, the backbone of the Union Jack.
Mom on the bus driving past the main shopping street, we'll come back here later :] 
This is the Scottish Parliament Building. It was built 5 years ago and the designer was a Spanish University Student who won the competition for best design. The Government used to work in an old Greek styled building but it became too outdated so this was supposed to bring them to the 21st century. 
This is a statue of a dog that had a large effect on the country. At a time when there was rumor of War and rebellion and separating from all outsiders, this little dog showed such devotion to an old master by laying on his grave every day all day until the dog's own death that it caused the country to reconsider and stay as a part of the United Kingdom. Cute story. Mom got a bit teary eye-ed thinking of her dog BJ when she heard this story. 
After riding the entirety of the Hop-on Hop-off bus route, we started stopping at points of interest. The first of which was the castle! 
I hadn't gone to the bathroom since waking up at 5 this morning so by the time we got off the bus I was dieing! I had to go sooo badly! The castle gift shops did not have restrooms so we had to go to the back of the castle to the restaurant, which was in the part of the castle that was right over the edge! After relieving my waters, I was able to appreciate how spectacular the view was! In this picture on the tallest tower the top window is what we looked out of while eating. 
This is me and Edinburgh! Beautiful city isn't it? 
This made me laugh very hard, look how many ways they have written "way out" just so no one gets confused! :] made me smile and laugh so I took a picture. Right before this picture, Mom and I were walking around the treasury and I was caught for the first time taking a picture where I shouldn't have. The Scottish crown jewels really did not want to be photographed. It made me laugh even harder when I got in trouble because I took pictures of tons of things I wasn't supposed to in London which has the tightest security of any city in the world but then I come up to Edinburgh and get caught the first time I break the rule. Good job Scottish Bobbies! 
Next Mom and I went shopping and to a mill where they make the many variations of plaid. It was cool to see. I had no idea that there were so many different kinds. Each family has their own special design, sort of like a coat of arms but out of crossed lines on fabric. Mom liked shopping and kept trying to pick out somethings that her friends would like, I was a bit more selfish and bought this hat for myself. It's pattern is a special tartan that was made especially for Princess Diana after she died, part of the cost of the items made from this plaid go to a Princess Diana Memorial Trust to help those in need. Guess it wasn't such a selfish buy after all.
Mom was my photographer showing of my new hat after we bought Grammie and Alyssa and herself cashmere scarves. She said to pretend the manikin was a cute boy I was flirting with, too bad he wasn't real. :p hehe
These are the shoes I wore all week when Mom was here, I think we walked a bit from the look of them :] I had a marvelous day today with my Mommy :] Our plane is supposed to take us home tomorrow but the airport is still closed so who knows? We may have extra days in Europe than we planned for, and that would be all right by me :]
Mom Comes to England! Day 6
Monday April 19th- Today we spent a nice relaxing day in London trying to recover from our busy days previous. Our first stop was Westminster Cathedral, the tour was very nice and more was opened from the last time I went. The only problem was that there were far more people so you could not see all the graves of people on the ground. It is sad that you have to step on graves I think. But it was still pretty. After that tour we stopped to take pictures in a phone booth, and made our way to the Winston Churchill Cabinet War Rooms Museum. I love this museum because Winston Churchill is my favorite person in history, without him it is most likely that Hitler would have taken over all of Europe and then where would we be? Thank goodness for him I say! After wandering through the museum for a while, we stopped at the cafe and had 'Victory Garden Soup' (vegetable soup)and scones with jam, something that is so good in England and just not up to par in America, I will miss them. It was fun to eat in the little cafe, I'll miss when I don't have my mom to eat lunch with after I get back up to school. I hope she enjoys all the time we spent together this week as I am.
After lunch we went to St Paul's Cathedral to see where Princess Diana was married. We also looked for the bird lady feeding birds for tuppence a bag of seeds. Not only did we see no old lady, and tuppence is no longer used for currency, but we only saw one bird! There goes Disney again, putting ideas of things in our heads when we are little... hehe :] We could not climb to the top of the dome because Mass was going on but it was still fun. We also walked across Millennial Bridge (survived the dememtor attack) and saw the Globe. I wish we had had time to see a production there but sadly the season doesn't open until after we leave, so glad I got to go see Macbeth when I did! Mom didn't want to use the crowed stuffy tube to get home so I figured out a bus route home! So proud of myself! I love public transportation! That is also something I will miss when I go back home.
For dinner we went to Mom's favorite restaurant in London, 'Zizzi Ristarante' a delicious Italian place. We went here after our day at Windsor, Bath and Stonehenge as well, so this was the second time in two days but it is good enough to go every day for a month so I had no complaints! We stayed and talked for a long time after finishing dinner and dessert and bought some olives in a jar for my Dad and Pa because they are the best things to eat here, olives from Italy that are stored in a special mixture of spices, so delicious!! Wish we had bought more for ourselves too! Tomorrow we are going to Scotland so we needed to turn in early, such a good day and another one is soon! :]
After lunch we went to St Paul's Cathedral to see where Princess Diana was married. We also looked for the bird lady feeding birds for tuppence a bag of seeds. Not only did we see no old lady, and tuppence is no longer used for currency, but we only saw one bird! There goes Disney again, putting ideas of things in our heads when we are little... hehe :] We could not climb to the top of the dome because Mass was going on but it was still fun. We also walked across Millennial Bridge (survived the dememtor attack) and saw the Globe. I wish we had had time to see a production there but sadly the season doesn't open until after we leave, so glad I got to go see Macbeth when I did! Mom didn't want to use the crowed stuffy tube to get home so I figured out a bus route home! So proud of myself! I love public transportation! That is also something I will miss when I go back home.
For dinner we went to Mom's favorite restaurant in London, 'Zizzi Ristarante' a delicious Italian place. We went here after our day at Windsor, Bath and Stonehenge as well, so this was the second time in two days but it is good enough to go every day for a month so I had no complaints! We stayed and talked for a long time after finishing dinner and dessert and bought some olives in a jar for my Dad and Pa because they are the best things to eat here, olives from Italy that are stored in a special mixture of spices, so delicious!! Wish we had bought more for ourselves too! Tomorrow we are going to Scotland so we needed to turn in early, such a good day and another one is soon! :]
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