Back home...

I'm back at home now. Yah! Sunday night was a little rough, but last night I slept 8 hours straight in my own bed at home. There's nothing like being in your own bed. Of course my cats were all curled up around me, surrounding me with their furry love and affection. Still have a mild headache.... and probably will for a couple more weeks. But each day seems a little better than the last. I'm all congested because of the surgery and I absolutely am not allowed to blow my nose for 4 weeks! Yikes. Back to bed now for me.

Surgery

Surgery is over! Upon awaking in the recovery room, my first thoughts were, "Why did I do this?" I was in a lot of pain and was very uncomfortable. Not to mention that a room in Neuro ICU was not yet available to me and so I had to spend about 6 hours in the recovery area... which was very loud, noisy, busy, and bright. Not good things for someone with a bad headache. I finally got moved to ICU and was feeling better, albeit tired. Today has been better still. I still have a headache, and am tired from lack of sleep, but I got moved out of ICU to a regular room. I have been up and about walking, and even got a shower. Hopefully I will get to go home tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone for all your support during this time.

Back in the USA!

I hope that my last post didn't give the impression that we didn't do anything in London because it was too expensive. We spent all day long every day we were there, going from sight to sight. We got pictures of all the famous landmarks, and had we actually waited in line for any of them, we wouldn't have been able to see everything. We thought it best to do an overview tour for our first trip to London. Someday when we go back we will go inside some of the famous places.

Among other things, we saw Big Ben, Tower and London Bridges, The London Eye, The London Tower, St. Paul's Cathedral, Trafalgar Square, The British Museum, The Natural History Museum, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, The National Gallery ..... and many more sights. We went in the British Museum and got an upclose look at the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Elgin Marbles. We went through the National Gallery and saw a number of famous pieces by the likes of Monet, Raphael, and Van Gogh. We saw the musical Blood Brothers the first night we were there, and Billy Elliot the second night. Both were fantastic. We also did a river cruise on the Thames, and made a stop at King's Cross Rail Station (the site of platform 9 3/4 in the Harry Potter movies).

On the flight home, Daniel snagged us some Business class seats with his Premier United membership. Holy smokes! We could recline our seats until they were completely flat. We had so much space, we felt guilty. Not to mention we were treated like royalty by the flight attendants.

On my way to Hogwart's:

Tower Bridge:

Check out this link about our seats on the United flight. After clicking on the link, click on "Lie flat comfort in Business" on the left hand side to view what our seats looked like. suitedreams.united.com

All in all, we had a wonderful time in Great Britain!

London

Me and Big Ben!
That's Buckingham Palace behind us,... in case you weren't sure:



We saw the changing of the guard yesterday at Buckingham Palace. I gotta say, I was a little disappointed. Partly because there were thousands of people in one location, and partly because the guards did a whole lot of standing around. The video captures well the massive crowd. We were in the middle of it, with thousands more behind us. I held the camera up above my head to film that clip!

Also, London is extremely expensive! Rather than dish out a few hundred dollars to go into the famous buildings, we have opted instead to take pictures of the outsides, and spend our money seeing some London shows. Last night we saw Blood Brothers and thoroughly enjoyed it! We're hoping to snag some tickets tonight for Billy Elliot the musical.

York

York is such an interesting city! Here's a brief history:

AD 71, it was a Roman provincial capital, (northernmost in the empire). AD 306, Constantine was proclaimed emperor here. Rome abandoned England in the fifth century, and the Vikings took it over a few centuries later. A few centuries after them, the Normans destroyed then rebuilt the city, building a city wall on top of the 1000 year old Roman wall foundation. This wall that surrounds the city is over 3 miles long and is unique because it was not destroyed in the 1800's the way many of the medieval city walls were throughout the UK.

Here's a picture of the York Minster. It's bigger than Notre Dame! (Sorry it's hard to see. It's in the middle of this compact city and there's just no good angle!)

Here's a picture of us on the wall I mentioned.

Other fun facts we've learned on our journey here:

1. Restaurants don't know what Ranch dressing is.
2. Foreigners (non native English speakers) don't know that we're American. They can't tell our accents from local English apparently.
3. Breakfast comes with pork and beans.
4. Bacon is really Canadian bacon. So if you order a bacon cheeseburger, you will get a cheeseburger with some ham on it.
5. "Mushy peas" is actually on the menu. It looks like guacamole.

Up to Scotland and back....

What a fantastic trip this is turning out to be! Every couple of days we go to a new city to explore new sights. We are having a blast! After spending some time in Bath, we explored The Cotswolds, a region of villages from the medieval era. Then we moved on to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, and a completely Renaissance city. We took a bus all around the town to see Shakespearean sights and finished the evening by seeing “Julius Caesar” by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was incredible! We then took a train up to Edinburgh, Scotland. We saw Edinburgh Castle, as well as The Britannia, the royal family’s yacht (decommissioned in 1997). We visited the National Museum of Scotland, and hiked up a dormant volcano to get a view of the entire city and coastline, including the North Sea. Now it’s off to York.

In the UK

We arrived in the UK on Friday night and spent the first two nights in Bath. We have had a lovely time so far and have done so much already. We have already taken about a million pictures and what you see here represents just a few of the sights that we saw on Saturday. Sorry this is brief, but it’s late here and we’re exhausted! In one day we toured Stonehenge, cute little country villages, the Roman Baths in Bath, had our first English tea time, and took a dip in the modern day thermal spa. Phew! Stay tuned for more of our adventures!