Monday, January 31, 2011

this weekend we rented a car and headed west.....

first stop: STONEHENGE


i'm glad we went, it was pretty cool to see.... a little weird because it's in the middle of NOWHERE, nothing around but grass and a few sheep, but the view was amazing!

jonathan has a cousin that lives near Bath and we were lucky enough to stay with them for a few days. we had a great time with them, they were so great to let us invade their house and show us around.... not to mention the amazing food they cooked for us!!
our next stop of the weekend: BATH

Pulteney Bridge


Bath Abbey


Roman Baths


us at the Roman Baths

Roman Baths


for all you Jane Austen fans.....


The Circus


Adam was able to squeeze in a little nap during all of our sight seeing


The Royal Crescent

after sightseeing in Bath, Denise and Joe took us to a little park near their house for the boys to get out some energy..... the nice thing about parks in the winter is that we get them all to ourselves!

they had these great little pedal tractors that the boys loved

the next day Denise and Joe took us to the CUTEST little village i have ever seen.... apparently they have filmed a few movies here (The Wolfman to name one)!

our last stop: Castle Combe

St. Andrews church- it has a working medieval clock inside


Manor House Hotel- super fancy


at least we're all looking at the camera.... that's the best i can do!


giant chess board next to the hotel


Castle Combe- so picturesque

we had such an amazing weekend, Denise and Joe live in such a beautiful area and we had so much fun spending time with them and seeing the countryside!
ps. jonathan did much better with the car this time! :)

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

recent activities


cousin Rachel came to visit.... we went to the Hard Rock Cafe (the original)


hard rock


toured the tower of london


toured westminster abbey (thanks to bryn for watching the kids all day so we could go!)


big ben by night


engine room of tower bridge (we also went across the top)

st. pauls

view from the top of st. pauls (we climbed A LOT of stairs)

took a walk along the south bank on a sunny january day


LES MISERABLES!!


us at Les Mis (we also saw Dirty Dancing, it wasn't great, but worth it because i LOVE the movie!)


trafalgar square at night.... we went to the national gallery and national portrait gallery, both were pretty amazing


the palace at night

Thursday, January 20, 2011

PARIS

while my cousin rachel was here visiting we got to take a short 2 day trip to Paris!! we flew out early in the morning and came home late the next evening, so we could maximize our time. we were lucky to make our flight however.... we had to take the train to the airport and we missed the one we wanted by literally seconds, so we had to wait 20 min for the next one. i didn't think it would be a big deal since we didn't have any luggage to check and we had printed our boarding passes. WRONG! the line through security was FOREVER long, when we finally got through the board said 'final boarding call' for our flight which was a 15 min walk to the gate. so i RAN, and we made it, barely.

the first thing we did after we checked into our TINY hotel room (i really didn't care, it was cheap, and for one night.... it was clean and that's all that mattered!) was go on a river cruise down the Seine to get acquainted with the city.



here is our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, when we first got there it was so foggy we could only see about half of it.




after the river cruise our first stop was the musee d'orsey. beautiful museum, it was an old train station, so the inside was amazing!


after the orsay, we headed to the Louvre, this picture doesn't even do it justice, this is only part of one side of the 'U' shaped museum.... it was crazy big, i had no idea! we could have easily spent ALL our time here and not even seen a fraction of it.


anyone seen the da vinci code????


it seemed so weird to me that you were allowed to take pictures in this museum, so i didn't take many.... but here SHE is....



by the time we were done museum hopping, it was dark, and so beautiful!


the Eiffel Tower.... it is SO much prettier at night! :)


it was a lot bigger than i expected, and once we got to the second level, it was a lot higher than i expected.... (we would've gone to the top, but it was closed because of wind)


rach and i


the arc de triumph


do we look tired yet?? we were.... and we were so busy sight seeing that we hadn't eaten a thing ALL day! so we walked down Champs Elysees and grabbed some bread from a bakery (heaven) and headed back to the hotel.


the next morning we had a wonderful breakfast of crepes and croissants.... and ran into St. Michaels fountain


Notre Dame.... besides the Eiffel Tower this was probably my favorite!


the inside was amazingly beautiful!


this is a view of it from the other side


next we took a walk down Ru De Rivoli (and did some souvenir shopping) towards Concorde Square which is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were guillotined!


also in Concorde Square was the Paris ferris wheel (no where near as cool as the london eye, sorry)


we found this bridge totally by accident.... it has thousands of locks all over it, symbolizing peoples love for one another and commitment to each other..... they all have initials and names on them, very cool. i wish i would've known, i could have added mine!


one of the last things we saw before we headed to the airport was the Opera (as in the building, we didn't actually go to an opera :)

we had another eventful experience getting home.... we took the wrong train towards the airport and had to get off and switch trains twice until we finally got on the right one, fortunately we had learned from previous mistakes and left in PLENTY of time..... only to have our flight home delayed by 2 hours. which isn't really a long time, but the trains back to central London do NOT run 24 hours a day! i think there was only one train coming after the one we got on to get back home.... again, we barely made it, but we made it!
we had an amazing trip, Paris was wonderful, and i had tons of fun with my cousin! thanks rach for coming to visit!!