The Rest of the Story

Yeah, so I've slacked at posting the commentary for the rest of our trip to England...Oops. So, hm, where was I...ah, yes, the Lake District. We left for the Lake District on Tuesday morning. By the time we arrived in Windermere, it was raining cats and dogs...and it continued to rain the rest of the day and most of the next. On Wednesday, we went to Grassmere which is the town where Wordsworth lived when he wrote Daffodils. That's the one that starts out, "I wondered lonely as a cloud..." It was gorgeous. I truly feel like if I lived in such a bucolic place that I would be a great poet, too. Instead, being me, I just named the sheep things like Sweater and Mittens. Thursday, we took a lake cruise over to Ambleside and hiked to some beautiful waterfalls. Luckily, it had stopped raining this day and we were experiencing some of our best weather of the entire trip. I dare say it was warm while hiking through one particular cow field. Or maybe it was just because we were running around on some Roman ruins. I don't know...So that afternoon whilst having our daily cream tea, we notice the news is on and they're talking about some bombings. Keep in mind, the last news we heard that day was that London won the 2012 Olympics so we make a joke about the French being really pissed. Then I got out our mobile and saw we had missed calls. I listened to the messages and one was my dad saying, "Call us now." Literally, that's all he said. So then I knew something was up. I called mom and she is who told us about the terrorist attacks in London. When we got back to Windermere, the flags were all at half mast and we made a beeline to the bed and breakfast and turned on the news. We tried calling several friends just so someone would know we were okay. Turns out, friends had already hunted down my parents in Huntsville and had already been assured of our safety. (Way to go, Katie...If I ever need to stalk someone, you're my wingman!!)
The next day we left for Bath. It was actually hot in Bath, stupidly hot as our tour guide said. We ran into Bruns and Amy and got to have dinner with them. How many times is that going to happen in life? Ho, hum, walking down a street in England...oh, look...people we know!! Craziness. We did a tour of Stonehenge, Avebury, and two Cotswald villages. Back in Bath we of course toured the baths, and we also went to the costume museum. It was so interesting to see the clothes from hundreds of years ago. And boy am I glad I didn't live then. Corsets...totally invented by men.

So, Sunday we headed back to London. We were on strict orders to stay out of the Underground so we waited in a taxi queue that was about a mile and a half long. It moved suprisingly quickly. We went to the hotel, threw our stuff down, and booked it across town so we could see the flyovers of the WW2 planes that was the culmination of a series of memorials that had been taking place all week. The flyovers were at Buckingham Palace. We got there and we're looking up taking pictures of planes...Mary grabs my arm and hurls me around as she's yelling, "It's the queen!!" And sure enough, there she was. Along with Charles, Camilla, and Prince Harry. She would wave down at the crowd and, yes, I'm a nerd, I waved back. I'm convinced she saw me. Dad's friend, Rob, took us out to dinner and then on a whirlwind tour of London at night. It was a lot of fun. I mean, who else can claim to have been to the smallest house in England (I daresay, in the world). Seriously, midgets wouldn't fit side by side in this thing.
So a grand time was had by all. I look forward to going back to the motherland in October, although the trip will be VERY different. After October, I may start planning my Europe in 30 trip...Anybody up for an adventure??