Pounding the Pavement

London continued...

Us in the San Diego airport waiting to board our flight!

Fish & Chips

Our second day in London we pounded the pavement. We walked EVERYWHERE! Our first stops were the National Gallery, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, then Buckingham Palace. Lunch in Hyde Park, Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Shakespeare's Globe, dinner, then shopping! Phew, our feet were tired after that.  The longest walk was probably to Hyde Park from Buckingham Palace, then to St. Paul's from Tower of London. I posted about Tower of London in the previous post. So that is not included in this post.

Westminster Abbey

Horse Guard Parade: they go to Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Hyde Park

The restaurant we ate at. The restaurant is under the tree. Pretty cool!

Our view eating lunch

Lunch grub: tacos and a burger.

St. Paul's Cathedral

The front of St. Paul's Cathedral. We went inside and listened to Evensong for 15 mins or so to rest our feet. It is pretty and the dome is gold on the inside.

Crossing Millennium Bride (Or also known as the Swinging bridge) It does not swing anymore, but when they first built it, it was not reinforced correctly and could swing up to a foot in either direction! You can see the Tower Bridge in the background.

View of St. Paul's on the bridge.

Pretty modern cool looking bridge

Shakespeare's Globe

Infamous Harrods. We walked in for about 10 mins, but went shopping elsewhere where we could actually afford something!

It was a busy crazy day! The next day was Sunday, so Nana showed us around St. Albans and we visited Kyle's "Aunt" Janice. She is Nana's niece. After Sunday, we would be heading to Paris on Monday! More of St. Albans, England to come...

Cheers, Mate!

We're back from our European Vacation!

We left Sep. 2 and came home Sep. 16. We were gone for two weeks! Overall, everything went smoothly and great while we were there! There was one hiccup on our way home, and I thought it was the end of the world (I was so tired that day)! However, it could have been so much worse. More on that later.

Our itinerary going on our trip was flying round trip to and from London. We would leave Wednesday and arrive Thursday (England time). England is around 8 hours different than SD. We would spend Thursday - Sunday with Nana, then go to Paris Monday - Saturday, then back to Nana's Sunday - Wednesday.  I kept in touch with family via e-mail and face time or wi-fi calling.

It was definitely a trip to remember! It was amazing to make one of my dreams become a reality, and it could not have gone any better. Kyle and I did really great together figuring everything out, staying calm, and finding our way around! We're a good team! 

Our first 'day' in England our plane landed between 9-9:30 am. We only got like 2 hours of sleep, Kyle even less. We flew from SD to Philadelphia and from Philadelphia to London. We left Philadelphia at 8, but that is 5 o'clock in the evening our time! So when we were supposed to be sleeping on the plane and it was around midnight East coast time, it was only 9 pm our time! When we landed in England it was 1-2 am our time! Yeah, crazy time difference. The planes have a 'Netflix' type program where you can pick what movies you want to watch or tv shows or games, etc. So Kyle and I were able to watch about 2 movies before trying to get some sleep. It was a 6 hour flight from Philly to London. So 2 movies took about 4 of those hours. The flight didn't feel too long, but the time difference was hard when we got off the plane.

By the time we got through the border check and picked up our bags and went to the bathroom and got to the underground tube to take the trains to Nana's, it was around 11:30 am! So it took a couple hours. By the time we figured out what trains to take and riding the trains we got to Nana's train station around 1:30 pm. So another couple hours! By this time our eye lids were having a hard time staying open. We were told to STAY AWAKE when you get there, so we still had a ways to go before we could go to bed.

Nana picked us up from the train station in St. Albans which is only a 5 minute car or taxi ride from her house. I think we unpacked and got everything situated and ate a late lunch. After lunch we decided to take a little tour of St. Albans.

St. Albans is where Nana grew up and started raising her kids, including Kyle's Dad, Mark. St. Albans is a 20 minute train ride north of London in the county(?) of Hertfordshire. St. Albans is a very religious community and they have a famous cathedral/abbey. It is a definitely a big suburb town of London and like all things in England, old.

Here are some pictures of our first little tour of St. Albans.

This clock tower is original to St. Albans

The Verulamium museum. There used to be a Roman city before St. Albans was St. Albans and the Roman city was called Verulamium. The museum has a lot of roman artifacts and skeletons that they found where St. Albans is today. Pretty neat.

One of the large roman mosaic pieces they found.

Where we stayed: Nana's house, it was her late husband's home. 

So this is not where she or Mark grew up.

We went to bed around 8 that night and Kyle and I slept until mid night. We woke up pretty awake, but fell back asleep after an hour for the rest of the night! So that was good. 

The next day we planned to head into London. We convinced Nana to come with us, but we all woke up late and didn't leave until around 11. We took it easy and ate lunch when we got in the city. After lunch, we  took the red topless tour bus around the city. From beginning to end, I think they said it takes 2.5 hours and they take you by all the famous sites. It is a hop on and hop off bus, so you can get off at any of the stops and get back on at any of the stops. We rode most of it for about an hour until we got to the pier. The bus ticket included a Thames river cruise. You go up one side and come back down the other side looking at all the famoous sites by the water. It was fun to get on the boat and have a different view from the water than from the bus. We got back on the bus after our river tour and took it Trafalgar square and Piccadilly Circus. We ate dinner at Piccadilly Circus. Nana was pretty wiped out at this point, so we hopped back on the bus and got to the train station and went home. It was a long day, but Kyle and I were ready to hit the pavement the next day and really explore. 

Tower Bridge

Tower of London

Westminster Abbey

Parliament Building

Behind Parliament building by the river

DaVinci drawing/painting at the National Gallery. I took pictures of the art I studied in Humanities at BYU. Very cool to see it all in person!

VanGogh Sunflowers

Claude Monet, Water Lillies

Kyle in the empty guard both at the Tower of London

Entering the gates to the Tower of London

View of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London, they are really close to each other!

THE Tower of London

Walking up the stairs exploring the fort around The Tower of London

Kyle looking Medevial, ready for battle to protect the crown jewels!

The REAL reason to visit the Tower of London: The Crown Jewels. Unfortunately, it is against the rules to take ANY pictures of the crown jewels. It was very worth it though. We saw the REAL stuff. And there are guards still protecting them outside.

Tower Bridge

There are many more posts to come, so stayed tuned for more Europe updates!

Family Time

The end of July my mom came out to visit for a almost a week. We had fun showing her around Escondido. After I got off work Friday, we went and got pedicures. Later that night, we went to Cruising Grand Friday night and tried hamburgers from Susie Q's diner. It was fun and tasty. As we walked around looking at all of the classic/old cars, we got gelato about halfway through on our way back to the car. 

Saturday we woke up and got donuts from Savoy's. It is a local doughnut shop and they always throw in extra donuts or doughnut holes just because. After donuts we went and saw Ant Man. It was entertaining and more comedy in it than I thought there would be. We had fun. After the movie, we went out for lunch later at Pieology. It is practically a subway, but you create your own pizza and they cook it in the fire oven. It is delicious. After lunch we headed to the Safari Park. My mom went there after our wedding 3 years ago. They have a new Tiger exhibit and the gorillas had another baby over a year ago, so there were some new things to see. It was kind of hot, but we managed and saw most of the animals when they were active. Especially the cheetahs. Overall it was a good day to go. Sunday was the Sabbath so we went to church and took it easy the rest of the day. 

Monday I had to work in the morning. After work we went to Oceanside beach. They have a huge pier and a diner at the end of it. We walked the beach for a while and found out that the water was surprisingly warm. We decided to try and get our names on the waiting list for the diner around 4 because it is usually busy. Well it was really busy. We waited 45 minutes, I think to be seated. So we took pictures while we waited. When we were seated though, we found out that the diner was celebrating their Anniversary, so their classic burger was only like $2. So that is why it was crowded. They are also famous for their shakes, so we had to get a couple shakes. We were pretty full by the time we were finished. So we decided to walk the beach some more. After we walked off some of our food we headed home because we were tired. Probably from being out in the sun most of the day. 

Overall it was a good visit and my mom enjoyed having a break from work. Thanks for coming, Mom! We always love having you here. I miss you already!

Emily and Scott came to California to visit Scott's family and have a vacation before they have their baby and before Scott starts school again. We were very grateful they decided to include us in their vacation plans. We saw them first on our way to Sea World. We followed them there then carpooled into the park so we wouldn't have to pay $16 to park. It took a while to get into the park because it was busy. We went straight to the dolphin show and went to every show after that. We stopped at the splash pad for the kids to play in and looked at animals as we went. Kylie loved the shows and would point to the whales or dolphins jumping out of the water and say "more." It was so cute. It was hot that day, so it was nice to take things slow. Kyle and I were just happy to be there and glad we could tag along and spend time with Emily, Scott, and Kylie. 

She loved feeding the flamingos. The ducks were really eating the food though.

Kyle got this great picture of the seagull. 

Aubrey wanted to be in the picture, too.

At the penguins

Saturday, Emily & Scott drove down to Escondido from San Bernandino (where they were staying with Scott's brother) and we went straight to the wild animal park. Thanks to Trudy and my sis-in-law, Whitney, we got Emily and Scott in for free! 

We went straight to the bird show. Kylie loved it. She was jumping up and down she was so excited. It was another hot day, so we took things slow and saw what Emily & Scott wanted to see. We went to lunch after the bird show and Kylie sort of ate her corn. After lunch, we headed towards the tram and looked at animals on our way there. Kylie loved the tram, too. There are tons of animals to see from the tram. It was a good thing we took the tram also because it was the only way to see the lions that day! 

Kyle & Scott tried to take Kylie to pet the goats, but not long after they got in there, they were closing, so I don't think she was in there long enough to warm up to the goats. 

We also got some delicious soft served ice cream to try and cool off. However, I felt like I had to eat kind of fast because it was melting pretty fast! We saw the Tigers on our way out and Kylie loved them. I think they were her favorite. We left close to 7. 

After we got home, Scott and Kyle got groceries for dinner. We had spaghetti and chicken Parmesan. It was delicious. We saved and made the dessert for lunch on Sunday. 

Sunday, I threw up that morning and missed church. It was a bummer I was not feeling well. I think it was from all the sun in the past couple of days. I stayed home while everyone went to church. After church, all of Kyle's family came over and we all had lunch together. 

A few hours later, Emily & Scott left because they had a couple hour drive back north and did not want to get back late. They had been driving a lot, so we understood. It was a fun visit and some very fun filled weekends, with my mom and sister here! Can't wait to see you guys again! Hopefully it won't be as long of a wait!

Uncle Kyle & Aunt Brianna love you, Kylie girl!