As a Coast Guard cadet on the Eagle many moons ago, we sailed around in the English Channel for several days before we pulled into a port in Weymouth, England. We saw the white cliffs of Dover for many days, but never got to go up close to them.
We went to visit some friends from Brussels who moved to England and Charlie and I went up first and took the ferry from Calais to Dover. Charlie didn't quite understand why I was so excited to actually pull into those white cliffs, but maybe someday he will understand if he has his own Coast Guard adventures. (note his sweatshirt)
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| Great Mom & Charlie trip! |
It was great to catch up with our buddies and the kids loved their great school playground. It was so fun to be in a place where everyone was speaking English! It was also a treat to listen to radio, go to a card shop and be able to read all the cards and even grocery shop and know what the labels were saying!
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| Huge hit at the playground it was like a hanging merry go round! I liked Charlies flying feet in this picture! |
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| I'm embracing being a tourist! |
Our friends live pretty close to Southampton which was a very cool port city. We found a treasure hunt walking map for kids and attempted it. We didn't manage to finish it but it got us to explore bits of the city that we might have missed. It started on the old walls, which we walked along following clues. I liked this cool old building down by the docks.
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| I wanted a picture of the kids in these but they were busy at another playground! |
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| A cool mural we had to find a clue on, we needed the word under million...this commemorates the departures on D-Day. |
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| A cool pub we passed on our hunt. |
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| Another picture of the pub. Wish our crew would have let us stop for a pint! |
We also needed to find some clues on the Mayflower Memorial, I loved knowing that we saw the Memorial on this side of the ocean, and have many times stopped by Plymouth Rock when go to eat with Nana & Papa Hughes back in Massachusetts!
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| We had to read everything on the memorial as the clue was asking for some obscure dates about the 3rd Governor! The kids had given up by this point! |
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The entire memorial. Cloudy that day so tough to get a good photo. The ship on top was very cool.
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While Charlie and I were in Southampton, Greg and Kelly were coming to meet up with us, but first they stopped in London to see a show. The laughed through the Book of Mormon and marveled at how busy London is on a Saturday afternoon.
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| Living it up in London! |
Where was Katie for all the fun? She was skiing in Norway with her friend Astrid. She was loving getting to see moose wandering around the neighborhood seeing everything covered in white. Here they are going cross country, they also got to go downhill for a day, lucky girls!
Sadly we had to head for home bright and early on Sunday. We were lucky with traffic and just made an earlier ferry. Greg noticed this sign and with all that is going on with Brexit he wondered how much longer this would proudly be displayed on the British side?
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| The cliffs up close... |
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| Leaving behind all that good old English! |
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| Homeward Bound... |
I'm hoping we will find time to make another trip, so much more to explore and I would love to attempt another of those cool treasure hunts!
