Review of the UK

Here are our pictures from London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow:

London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh

UK highlights:

-Evensong service at Westminster Abbey

-Dinner at Bothy's with Kelli and AJ our first night in Glasgow

-Organ service at St. Paul's Cathedral

-Strolling the Jubilee Walk by the River Thames (tons of random street performers)

Review of Holland

We really liked the Netherlands. The people were really friendly and spoke English amazingly well. Here are pictures from the cities we visited there:

Haarlem, Zandvoort, Amsterdam, and Delft

Some Holland highlights included:

-St. Bavo's cathedral in Haarlem

-Corrie Ten Boom house in Haarlem

-Flemish fries in Zandvoort

-Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam

-Delft (a very cute town!)

Freezing in Edinburgh!

Today we went to Edinburgh, and unfortunately it was the worst weather of our 9 days of travel. It was snowing and really windy (the kind of wind that inverts your umbrella) the whole time. We walked up the Royal Mile and saw the castle then we spent most of the rest of the day inside. We went to the Giles Cathedral, the National Museum of Scotland, had lunch at the Elephant House (the "birthplace of Harry Potter" as JK Rowling used to write there), the Writer's Museum, the National Gallery, then we went by the Sir Walter Scott monument and headed back to Glasgow. Tomorrow we head back to Lyon and we are very ready... we are so tired!

Glasgow

Today we started out at the Hunterian Museum where we saw an interesting collection of deformed stuffed animals, coins, and a little art... then we headed over to the Kelvingrove Museum, another interesting but random museum of fine art and natural history. We briefly caught up with some other assistants also traveling in Scotland. We ate at a Scottish restaurant near Kelvingrove, then we headed over to the East Side to see the St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Art and the St. Mungo's Cathedral. We finished up the afternoon at Starbucks in the City Center. We cooked for AJ and Kelli tonight... Doug made his yummy broccoli pecan pasta and I made a salad and apple cobbler. Tomorrow we'll see Edinburgh!

more London and now Glasgow

Yesterday we started the day with a visit to the Natural History Museum. In case you don't know, Doug has a little-boy-like fascination with dinosaurs, so he was very entertained. Next we went to Buckinham Palace (which is kind of a letdown if you are expecting Versailles). Then we headed over to the British museum where we saw everything from the Rosetta Stone to mummified cats to Blue Willow dishes. Next we went to the London Tower and Tower Bridge. After that we went to St. Paul's Cathedral for an organ service. We had supper at another English restaurant and then came back to the hotel to pack.

This morning after a big breakfast we took a LONG bus ride to Stansted airport, where we had a delay because it was snowing a lot in London. We finally arrived in a very sunny Glasgow. Kelli showed us around a little bit and then AJ picked us up and took us back to their "flat." They took us out to a nice restaurant for a very yummy 3 course Scottish dinner. Tomorrow we'll explore Glasgow and then Wednesday we'll see Edinburgh!

Westminster and more

On our first full day in London we started out with Rick Steves' Westminster Walk. We saw the London Eye, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and more. We had lunch in the Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin in the Fields church. We returned to the Westminster area after lunch and strolled the Jubilee Walk where we saw tons of street performers. There were a few of the standard paint-yourself-a-metallic-color-and-pretend-to-be-a-statue, a few random dancers, people in random costumes, a few musicians, and the weirdest were probably the lady with over 6,000 piercings and the man walking around with a live snake around his neck. We went to Westminster Abbey for the Evensong service, which was really neat to participate in. For supper we went to another English restaurant... I'm not so impressed by English food, but it has been nice to have CHEDDAR CHEESE!! Anyway, we're very tired but still have a big list of things to see tomorrow!

London!

We'll against all odds we made it to London! It only took 3 trains (on one of which we stood for an hour) and an hour and a half on a bus. We checked into our hotel and went out to a Rick Steves recommended English restaurant for supper. Tonight we are taking it easy... tomorrow we'll see the city!