Home Again

Scott was most disappointed. There were dozens of B & B's in Edinburgh and we just happened to pick the one that wasn't run by a Scot. (Okay, there may have been more than one not run by a Scot, but they aren't relevant to our story.)

So, our B & B wasn't great. It was run by an Indian family, if you sat facing forward on the toilet, your knees hit the wall, and breakfast was... interesting. (If you don't see any jam or butter on the table, don't ask for any because you'll end up with more than you will eat in a year.) But it was reasonably cheap. And reasonably close to the city.

We walked along the Royal mile, from the palace where the Queen stays while in Scotland up to Edinburgh Castle. We saw two guys do a talk on the history of the castle and weaponry and what-not. They were very good. So was the castle in general. Unfortunately, we left one camera back at our room and forgot to charge the battery on the other so we didn't get a whole heap of pictures there, but it was very interesting. We also visited an art gallery, browsed through dozens of tourist shops, had lunch in a pub. We had intended to get across to Glasgow but time was running out for us.


After two nights in Scotland we headed to the lakes District in north west England. It is a place famous for Beatrix Potter and... lakes. It was one of my favorite spots. We searched for a while to find a B & B with a vacancy and eventually found a nice place run by a British guy in really bad bike shorts, then spent the afternoon wandering around the town and writing post cards. Dinner, served by a guy from Canberra, was in another pub.

From there, it was on to Henly-on-Thames. We had intended to stay in Oxford, but it was a Saturday night and apparently, in England, everyone stays in B & B's. So we decided to drive on a bit further to see what we could find. And we drove a bit further. And a bit further. We drove until the next place on the map was London. So we turned around and drove the other way. Eventually we found a twin room at a far. The bathroom was small, the beds (both of them) were soft, the cows were smelly. And we had to lug all our crap up stairs so we could repack the bags in preparation for the London Tube the next day. Henly was a nice little town. Very picturesque-- but then so are most towns in England. We found a internet cafe and organised some accommodation in London via "Lastminute.com" (or a similar site). It looked like a nice place. Close to the Tube, lots of facilities, relatively cheap. Good choice, right...

And so to London. Sort of. If you want to stay in London, I suggest you don't stay in Epping. Technically, it isn't actually in London at all, but we didn't find out that until we hopped on the tube and... an hour past the center of the city, after passing through several small towns and extensive farmland, arrive in Epping, in the heart of... Essex. From there we had a 25 min walk (dragging suitcases). It was not so great-- not the way we wanted to finish our trip, but anyway.

Over the next two days we saw Buckingham Palace, the pub where Kelly lived, Covent Garden, Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral (we didn't go in there, they wanted 15 pounds-- God must be hard up these days) and we read for a while in Hyde Park.

We probably would have seen more, but Kelly wasn't feeling too well and the commute was killing us.

And then we came home. Customs stole the replica antique pistol we bought in Italy. We will be able to get it back but there's paperwork and stuff. And they cleaned Kelly's shoes because we stayed in the farm with the cows (and the foot and mouth disease thing). Channel seven was there filming Border Security but they ignored us (even though we had firearms and swiss army knives).

The trip was great, but we were ready to come home by the end. We were pretty much flat out the whole time. So that's all from us. There will be a flash back to the wedding coming soon (we will have pics on thursday. yay) You may also want to go back and see pics that had been inserted into previous blog entries.

Thank you.