Summer Road Trip: Salisbury Cathedral

 Let me just preface the following numerous posts with a little tid bit about my dear husband. He is a traveler. He is not a go-to-the-beach all day on vacation type of guy. He is on a mission to see everything that he can in the world (and get a picture with it). Love him to pieces, but I don't understand his travel ways. I am a beach, eat food, go shopping and chill on vacation girl. We are slowly learning to mesh our ways, and I'm learning to appreciate the "sites" a little bit more and he's coming to appreciate our food stops and shopping stops (I hope).

So with that..this is how we spent our bank holiday weekend.

We loaded the kids up in the car and headed to our first stop, Salisbury Cathedral.

Again another beautiful cathedral, but this one had something pretty cool. It had one of the few original copies of the Magna Carta. It was pretty neat to see so close up. 

Right after we got there it started pouring rain on us. Thankfully that amazing stroller has a rain cover and the kiddies were covered. 

After a quick lunch we headed to our next stop along our way to our hotel in Bristol.

UK Road Trip: My favorites

I know my posting has been out of control. I am only posting all of our trip stuff for the sake of keeping track of what we did. In all honesty, the best cathedrals, the cutest towns, and best sites didn't make our best days. Our best days were when we all were happy and spending time together. Our best days on the trip were seeing Livvy and Jude happy and experiencing new things through Livvy's eyes. Here's a list of my favorite things on our trip:

- A full English breakfast included in our hotels. It wasn't like your normal hotel continental breakfast. Oh no, we had to be seated at our table and then go get the crazy-good breakfast. I think it tasted better because I didn't have to cook anything!

- Livvy and Jude going swimming in the hotel indoor pool.

-Eating fish n'chips at Conwy and becoming a believer. Seriously people, I might drive 4 hours to eat those puppies again!

-Seeing Lincoln at his prime in tour guiding. 

-Ordering pizza to our hotel in rainy Scotland and having Livvy eat half of it in one sitting.

-Watching "Britain's Got Talent" as a family and Lincoln and Livvy loving every minute of it.

-Finding Livvy's "sleeping" toys in every hotel cupboard and drawer.

-Seeing countless yellow fields out the window of the passenger seat. 

-Feeling oh so proud that we did it! We changed diapers in the trunk of the car, had naps on the go and survived 8 days of road tripping with an (almost) 3 year old and 9 month old! Thanks for the great trip, honey!

Veronica Visit: Pooh Corner

A.A. Milne wrote the Winnie-The-Pooh series about his only son Christopher Robin and his adventures in Ashdown forest located in the quaint English town, Hartfield. Lucky for us Hartfield is only 20 minutes away! 

So on a bleak Monday morning we drove to Pooh Corner (a tiny family owned shop) that gives out maps to all the pooh sites located in the "Hundred Acre Wood". 

Livvy has slept with 2 Pooh Bear stuffed animals since she was a baby and she was so excited to go see where Pooh Bear lived! She kept asking if "Christopher Wobin" would be there. .

She didn't find Christopher, but she did pick out her very own "Pwigwit" and has been loving him ever since.


We walked about 20 minutes to Pooh Bridge and played a quick round of Pooh Sticks. 

Then we booked it back to the car because we were freezing. At one point I had Jude in the Baby Bijorn and Livvy on my back. Let's just say that didn't last long =). 


We love love love Winnie the Pooh...and Pwigwit. 

Veronica Visit: Scotney Castle

Prettiest castle I've ever seen. I felt like we stepped into a fairy tale.

Veronica Visit: Alfriston

On our way back from Brighton we stopped in Alfriston, a tiny town (literally made up of only one road), to see the old church and try some pub food. 

After checking all the pub menus (all four of them) located within a few feet from each other. We sat down to have a taste of England.

Right after we sat down I looked over at Livvy to see her grinning from ear to ear. She was so excited to be eating at a restaurant. =)

The George Inn was the pub that we ate at and it was first licensed in 1347. It had great food and even better atmosphere.

We ate our food and then were off. It was a nice ending to a busy day. 

Veronica Visit: Brighton

Brighton is a pretty popular beach town located about 1.5 hours from us. It's mentioned in a few of Jane Austen's novels. So, naturally it was a on our list of must sees. 

Besides hanging on the pier and people watching while eating cookies, we also went to the Royal Pavilion which was way cooler than I expected. It was designed by John Nash commissioned by King George IV, who was known for his extravagant life style and overindulgent taste. 

I wish you could see what was inside the spectacular building! It looks so out of place now and I think it was quite the upset back when it was built. On every wall, banister, corner and door there was lavish oriental decorations. From the ceilings hung huge chandeliers being held up by gigantic dragon statues. Pictures were obviously prohibited. We were in shock at how indulgent the king must have been to decorate his palace with so much opulence. 

We had a really great day, minimum tantrums, maximum apple eating and pigeon chasing. 

Veronica Visit: Dover Castle

Our first weekend outing of the Vern Visit 2012 was to Dover Castle, which sits on the coast of England. 

The castle was huge and everywhere you walked was a hill. Thank goodness we had Lincoln to push the stroller =).

We were able to walk through the WWII tunnels that are underneath the castle grounds. It was pretty awesome. Jude however managed to fall asleep on my shoulder.

After the war tunnels we went to the main castle common area and Livvy played medieval games with the other 50 or so kids. She was in heaven.

The best part of the day was seeing Livvy be knighted and ride her little horse. I thought she would chicken out, but she walked right up to the man in tights told him her name and got her helmet on and was ready to ride. 

I'm pretty sure she couldn't see out of the helmet. Best picture of the day.