Look Kids....Big Ben, Parliament

Ahhhh, Texas. We're back in Texas. Ten days in Europe was fun and fantastic, but it's nice to be home amongst familiar people and places.

The following is an over-abundance of pictures--feel free to just skip this post altogether if you wish. But, I'll try to give you a little glimpse of Europe through my perspective.

OXFORD

We got to London on Monday, Dec. 8 and Lindsay met us at the airport and took us to her home in Oxford.

Oxford is a charming town with about 482,000 colleges. No, not really that many--but darn close. Also, everything is really old. We went through many churches and buildings that were built in the 1600s--crazy! They also have a really neat City Centre area with neat shops and restaurants.

Oxford was the home of C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit). They used to often meet at this pub, The Eagle and the Child, and read each other what they were working on. Cool huh?

We ate there one night. The fish and chips were really good. The mashed peas....not so much.

This is St. Mary's Church in Oxford.

There is a little passageway alongside the church called St. Mary's Passage that C.S. Lewis used to walk along on his way home. He used to walk by the things in the following two pictures. Have you seen (read?) The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Remember when the little girl first goes through the wardrobe and into Narnia, the first two things she sees are the lamp post and Mr. Tumnus. The inspiration for both of those things are on St. Mary's Passage.

Lindsay works at this little clothing shop--Jigsaw. It's really cute and all of her co-workers were really nice. They are FASCINATED with Texas and loved the way we talk!

Look kids....Big Ben, Parliament again.

Little boys playing rugby in rugby shirts. School gym clothes in England are way more stylish than our US school gym clothes.

Lindsay in front of the church she attends in Oxford. The headstones behind her were of people that died in the 1700 and early 1800s.

St. Mary's Church had a tower that you could climb to get an overhead view of the city. The view was gorgeous.

However, getting up (and down) was a challenge. The staircase was long, winding, and extemely narrow!

PARIS
After a couple of days in Oxford, we travelled by train to Paris. On the way to Paris, we got to ride in the "VIP" coach which came with free champagne, which is a great way to travel!

Our hotel was really close to the Eiffel Tower, so that was the first thing we went to see. It was really beautiful!

We did a lot of walking, shopping, and sightseeing in Paris. Lindsay took most of the pictures in Paris and I don't have copies of her pictures yet, so I don't have a whole lot to show of Paris.

However, we did go to the Louvre the last day we were there. Here's a picture of the (in my opinion) extremely overrated Mona Lisa.

My fellow Abilenians--here's the thing about the Louvre. It kind of reminds me a lot of the room that was next to the salad bar at the old Crystal's Pizza. It's filled with a lot of gold ornate decor and pictures of people dressed in clothes lounging on big fluffy pillow type things.

If it's not already obvious, then I'll be honest--I'm not much of an art lover. I was impressed by how old some of these paintings were (like 1400, 1500s--dang!) and the colors and materials used in them. Which, by the way, where did these people get their paint and HUGE canvases back in the 1500, 1600, 1700s? Hobby Lobby?

LONDON

After we spent a couple of days in Paris, we travelled back to London by train.

Lindsay had heard that there was this wonderful, magical, fabulous place in the heart of London that had Texas food. So, since we were all dying for TexMex, the first thing we did was seek out the Texas Embassy.

It was everything we dreamed it would be! I had never been so happy to see chicken fajitas and iced tea!

Their hostess stand had a Texas Tech license plate on it. Love it!

Upstairs, they had both Texas Tech and ACU flags.

The building that the Texas Embassy is in has a little bit of history, too. It used to be the place in London where people could buy their tickets for the Titanic. (Obviously a long time ago!)

Look kids.....Little Ben

The first full day we were in London, we took a bus tour. It was actually really good because it took us by most of the touristy sites in London. We all agreed that we thought the Tower Bridge in London was our favorite site.

We didn't go tour a lot of the sites, but we did decide to tour The London Tower. That big wooden thing in the foreground of the picture is a guillotine--in the background are people skating on an ice rink. Anyone that missed their triple loops got beheaded. Kidding.

One really cool thing at the Tower of London was a tower that we toured where they used to house people that were awaiting execution. Some of them were imprisoned for years. The tower was full of their writings and drawings--many of them were very intricate and detailed. I was amazed at how many centuries old some of these were and how well they had been preserved. (Can you tell that I'm easily fascinated with "old stuff"?)

Look kids....Big Ben, Parliament

I saw this sign in the London Underground (subway). Even the English are subject to apostrophe abuse.

Something we noticed.....we saw a lot of groups of Asians travelling in both Paris and London. And, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME Asian girls would take pictures of each other, they would ALWAYS give the peace sign. Seriously, every time. I'm not being sterotypical, either. It can't be a sterotype if they always do it.

We were at Buckingham Palace around the time they were about to do the changing of the guard. We didn't stay to watch the whole pomp and circumstance, but we did see the band(?) march down the street.

BATH
The day after we returned to Oxford from London, we travelled by train again to Bath. Bath is famous for their Roman Bath ruins. We had a 3-hour spa appointment in Bath--extremely glorious!! and then we walked around and shopped a little in Bath.

I wish I had more to say about Bath. It seemed like a beautiful and fascinating little town, but by the time we got to Bath we were exhausted and in a sight-seeing coma.

However, we did tour one of the ancient Roman baths. Isn't this a great picture of Lindsay and me? :)

We had one more day in Oxford before coming home. We went into town to get some lunch and this guy was performing on the street. He's a fiddle playing tight rope walker. How do you get in to that line of work?

This was all of our luggage (plus Lindsay's roommate's) for our trip home. Our cab drivers loved us. Kidding.

It was a fun and memory-making trip! I'm so glad I got the opportunity to go! However, I'm so glad to be home and finally be with my kids again (I won't see Jeff until Monday). I missed Jeff and the girls a lot!