Another Stonehenge and Bath Excursion

Stonehenge in the rain!

Shortly after I took this picture of Ella, she hopped out of the stroller.  That's the last time we used that umbrella stroller because we left it there on accident!  We got a lot of good use out of that thing.  I hope someone is using it now and it isn't just sitting in a garbage dump somewhere!  Glad we didn't take a nice stroller or I'd have really been bugged.  Wasn't worth the gas money to go back and get it.

Bath in the springtime is beautiful.  It was fun in December, but walking around town is more enjoyable in the nice weather!  We stayed at an RAF housing facility that was pretty awesome.  You pay only ten pounds per night to sleep in a pimped out double wide trailer park!  Awesome deal when the hotels in the area go for hundreds of pounds per night!  Here's a picture looking down on Bath from higher ground on a bus tour.  Out of focus, but you get the idea.

Chilling in front of the pump room..

Rick hit the jackpot while there.  Found 200 POUNDS!..  just sitting by the ATM outside of the grocery store.  Jake and Rick reported it, gave the store contact info, but nobody claimed it.   Score.

We watched a fudge shop make fudge a couple of times...

And more of the city...

Cutie Cricket club...

The Circus...

River Avon

 

I think that's the end of our May travels.  It was a great month.  Thanks for visiting, Rick and Sherry! 

Now hopefully I can get some of June blogged before it's over!

A little of Cambridge.

So, Cambridge.  It's 20-30 minutes from our house and home to lots of shopping, a huge market, fun little restaurants, and punting!  Checking out all of the old colleges there is pretty neat too.  Cambridge would be an amazing place to go to school.  So much history here.  A lot of the single people that Jake works with commute from Cambridge to work since there's a lot more to do than around base. 

 We went punting one day while Rick and Sherry were visiting.  It was great!  Fun way to see the city, and another fun thing to do with visitors :)   Rick took most of these pictures, although some are from my phone.  I left my camera at home.  Here's the group.  I should have worn sunglasses.  Hello raccoon eyes.

This was our tour guide/muscle behind our punting ride.  He was pretty entertaining, and a student here from South Africa. 

You get a great view of a lot of the colleges on the River Cam.

  

After punting we walked around town and went on a tour bus ride to get in some history.  Later on we got ice cream at the best ice cream joint we've found here so far!  Benets.  So tasty!  I've had a lot of ice cream in this country that has tasted like frozen cool whip or frozen milk, so coming across great ice cream is pretty exciting.  It's across the street from King's College.  I'd take this stuff over Coldstone or Ben & Jerrys anytime.  The rest of the fam liked it too.

 Lots of stuff in Cambridge is blog worthy, and I'll probably post more about it another time, but here are a couple more pictures for now!
I love it when gardens and lawns look too perfect to be real.  Check out the grass on this campus.

King's College.

 

Paris

Ahh, I'm getting behind on here.  Too many pictures to wade through so I keep putting the blog off.  Anyway, here's our Paris trip!  (Oh, and just so you know, This is going to be a ridiculously long post.  I want all of my favorite pictures in the blog book.) 

We can hop on Eurostar in London and be in Paris in two hours.  The kids love the train ride since they don't have to be strapped down in seat belts, and it's much more convenient than dealing with airports.  Sweet deal!  Here's Luke and El on the train.  And some France out the window :) 

Just getting off at Paris Nord Station.

We got there in the afternoon and set off to put our luggage in the hotel room.(By the way, Paris subways are not fun with luggage in tow.  They aren't fun without luggage either.  We packed really light, but still.  People are squished in those things.  And they stink.  I think we all accidentally bumped someone with a bag or stepped on a toe or two.  Also, I was surprised that the historic and touristy sites are so far apart in Paris!  Since the subway system was our welcome into town, Sherry and I weren't the biggest fans of the place on day 1.  It really grew on me though by day 3, and now I can say I like Paris!   Not liking it as much as London, but it's an amazing city. 

Crazy story though.. on the second day while riding the subway I noticed my name was written on the subway door!  There's graffiti all over Paris, so nothing new, but it was MY name.  What made it especially weird is that it looked just like how I write my name a lot of the time!  My handwriting!  Weird!?? 
Check it out...

We walked around to check out the city the first day.  Our first big stop was the Eiffel tower!  It's much larger in person than I thought it would be.  Guess I thought the Vegas one was closer to the real thing in size!  Not so.  We relaxed at the park for a while and the kids chased birds and ran around.  We found a cool tree that Luke wanted to climb and El got up there with him. 
I think this next picture is my favorite from the trip!

Some more that I liked of the tower... (because I can't choose just one or two!)

 Standing underneath...  zoomed in

I like these next couple of pictures that Rick took too.  They were taken a couple of days later from another point in the city that had a great view.

There is a great bakery around the corner from the hotel we stayed at.  We indulged a couple of times.  Jake got a really tasty chocolate/cheese croissant one day.  I should have gotten a pictures of that!  So good.  I don't know how French people are thinner than Americans.  It's a country of delicious carbs.  We had our share of baguettes and cheese while there too.  My favorite.  Some deliciousness at that bakery...

Mmmm..

A menu from one of the restaurants.  I tried the burger dudle at this place because, well, it's pretty hard to mess up a burger.  It was pretty good.   

Jake is adventurous so he tried the more authentic French food.  Ella even liked this one.  She took a few bites and then asked for more.  Raw beef...gag..

The second day we were there we took a bus tour around the city. 

Some from around the city and while on the bus...

Moulin Rouge.  Birthplace of the can-can and the "pioneer of striptease."  haha.  The bus takes you through the red light district. 

And more random pictures from around the city...

The white sky in this next picture bugs, but I like the detail in La Madeleine!

Our second day there we went to the Louvre after the bus tour.  Amazing things.  How cool to have your artwork still admired hundreds of years after death?!  There have been some seriously talented people in this world.  I could have spent a lot more time in here. 
Kidos getting their wiggles out outside the Louvre...

We had a great time with Rick and Sherry.  They're fun to have around!

 Luke makes me laugh in this one.  He's not the biggest fan of art museums.  "Mom, I see that guy's butt!"  Haha.. lots of nude people in this place.  Marble and painted people that is...

Saw Mona and Venus among others.  They look just like the copies in textbooks :)  Cool to see the real things though.  I think it's funny that in this pic of the Mona Lisa it looks like she's sitting on Jake's head.  haha..  Rick's too.  Check out their reflection.. 

 After the Louvre we went over to see the Arc de Trioumphe.

I think this next picture was from the day before on the bus tour... the sky was sunnier that day.

I love blue skies and clouds in pictures. 

 And just down the street from the Arc is some great shopping if you've got some serious cash to spend on souvenirs.

And  more pictures I want included on here...

Now on to Notre Dame Cathedral.  The tour bus went by the second day we were there, and then the third day we stopped to go inside before we went out to Versailles.  This was my favorite picture I got of it. 

Love these gargoyles.  They're super creepy and all over the outside of the building. 

Not quite as cute as they are in the Disney movie :)

I wasn't sure if I should go ahead and take pictures inside or not... signs said not to.. I think.  Everyone was taking photos inside though, so I wasn't sure if it was allowed but not with a flash.  Who knows.  Maybe everyone was breaking rules.   I took this one though.  Didn't turn out great, but it's a very cool window from inside.

Group picture outside!

More French Monuments and cool things...

 

 

Versailles!  We spent most of our last day in Paris there.  May must be the beginnings of tourist madness because the grounds were packed.
 

And pictures of inside the palace...

Luke likes listening to the tour guide things.

The gaudiness of it all is a little nauseating, but I liked the little gold angel babies all over the palace!   Cutie.

The gardens... my fav. thing about Versailles. 

Had a picnic lunch on the grounds.

Heading out!  One last picture of the place.  And of the cuties eating gummies there. 

 And, there it is.  I finally finished documenting our Paris trip.  Probably the longest post EVER.  And, it felt like it took forever to do!  But, totally worth it ;)   Much easier than scrapbooking all of it.  After Versailles we went back to the hotel to get our stuff and caught the Eurostar back to London.  Thanks family for a fun time!