2008- Bath, England

-Bath-

This is one of my very own photos. I know you know this is already going to be a great place.

Oh the town of Bath, England! Also known as Bath Spa.

 We see Bath as we walk from the bus station into the town. It's A-MA-ZING. You know when a town or city just seems to suit you for whatever reason? Something about the place just jives with your personality? I think I have found my place. I love Bath immediately. It's beautiful and breathtaking. It's like a town they must use in movie making. It's full of hills and cathedrals and tiny little side streets everywhere full of treasures. We see a butcher shop, and a cheese shop. There are no malls here, or big department stores. It's the kind of town you hope to find on your travels in an increasingly commercialized and western-influenced world.

We drop off our stuff at the hostel, and explore immediately. In Chelsie's travel book, it recommends a great place to eat called "Porter's" (see picture above). We find it easily, and like it instantly. It's  a pub/restaurant, and we look totally out of place...because we don't know what at "jacket potato" is when we go to order. 

The guy at the bar tries to explain to us, and we finally figure out it's just a baked potato. Oh.

We order two waters, and get the strangest and most amused look from this guy taking our order.

"Water?"

"Yep."

"Ha. Okay."

We should drink beer. Everyone drinks beer like it is water here. I wish I could if the smell didn't make me gag. Especially the smell of Guinness. That is a nasty one.

We could look out the window and see these cute colored houses across the street. (Also, my photo. If it's not my photo, it's from Google.)

The meal was so good, we decide we are coming back tomorrow.

Our hostel was pretty central I think, and in the main part of the "downtown" sort of area. There was a hill, it was like, THE hill of the town. The most expensive houses were on this huge hill, and we needed to see them. The sun was also setting and we wanted to watch it go down from the top of the hill.

So we climb the streets. But we are having trouble finding a place to actually see the sunset. There are too many houses and trees everywhere. We don't argue...but Chelsie and I definitely each have our own suggestions on which turns to take as we go higher, that will show us this sunset. 

We end up missing the sunset. At least the way we wanted to see it.

We do come across a very posh part of the hill where it looks almost like townhouses that sit at the top of a pasture of...sheep? When I tried to google image search this place, a lot of the images brought up Crescent Hotel. I am wondering if we stumbled upon this grand, and massive hotel, or a part of it, and didn't even know it.

We walk down a path along the pasture, sort of dazed and happy and in La La Land about how beautiful this town is. Here I am. I know pictures are more interesting if a person is in them, and if you know that person. That is my vintage bag I bought and used the whole trip. And this is me in a nutshell really, starting to feel the laid back vibe from these towns, and trying not to look so much like a tourist.

It's getting dark and we head back to the hostel (above). Tonight we are in a female-only dorm, but tomorrow night we will get moved to a mixed room. Not sure how we feel about that. Okay, yes we are, we hate it. The last thing we want is to share a dorm room with stinky traveller boys. Not kidding, they wreak from their unwashed hair to their unwashed clothes. We find all this out later in our travels, and it is not pretty.

We wake at 7:30am. I am on the top bunk, and Chels is below me. When in dorm style rooms, we tend to stick together, because at least if one of us is shaking the bunk bed, the other can tell her to quit it. 

It was so hot in our room that night that I couldn't even sleep with pants on. Why do I tell you this...Well, as I sit up, thinking about making my way out to the bathroom and I see a person on the top bunk in the corner of the room. The person is "sleeping" in their own sleeping bag (this is a no-no in hostels, you have to use their bedding for hygienic reasons), and the person is essentially sleeping with their travel backpack.

The person is on the larger side, and I begin to realize that this might not be a female sharing our female dorm room. I see three other girls on the beds on our side of the room still sleeping. They must have come in during the night and we didn't hear them. I sleep with earplugs, so I can't hear a thing at night generally.
I have to go to the bathroom bad. But I have no pants on. What if this is a guy? What if he sees me getting out of the top of the bunk bed? The matter is urgent, and I have to get out regardless of the mystery person on the other side of the room. I carefully try to crawl out onto the ladder without shaking the bed around too much for Chelsie underneath. As I begin my descent, the person starts to move and peer out of their covers....crap! I go down faster, and as I am getting half of myself dressed, the person emerges out of it's bed, and down the bunk bed ladder, takes HIS bag, and walks out of the room. Yikes! It really is a he!
Chelsie is awake and I tell her of the dude in our room. We are super weirded out, but guess that maybe the guys dorm was full and he was allowed to come into ours? We also suspect he was trying to get out of the room before we all discovered him, became weirded out, and it all got super awkward.
We are now way less excited to go into the mixed dorm the next night. Yuck.

We are up, and on our way to have more adventures in Bath. We go take a look at the Abbey, and then pay some money to hang out in a beautiful park where a small waterfall under a bridge flows. We had stopped at a small bookstore before, and I bought a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Austen lived in the town of Bath for a portion of her life, so there was a lot of Jane Austen books in this store, and it felt almost like betrayal to buy a Bronte book, but I just have a craving to read Jane Eyre instead. By now I really needed some new reading material. One of the books I had brought with me was a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. Why?? It's not like I can understand any of them without sitting in a University english class. What is wrong with me.
The late morning is dedicated to taking it easy. With all of the time changes and travelling, my body is getting worn down, and I am getting a cold. We rest in the park, read among ducks, and watch the water rush by in the sunny weather.

As we become hungry, we leave the park to find lunch.  We come across an East Indian restaurant. We order, and are soon disappointed with our appetizer. One tiny samosa each. Are they for real? The rest of the meal was good, but also small. We still aren't sure how tipping works here in England, and we leave a 10 cent tip...and because we felt ripped off. We find this immensely funny, and nearly pull the tablecloth off with us as we try to get out of there before our waiter gets back. Giggling hysterically, we are back out on the street, and try to decide what to do next.

The town is so small (or at least the area we care about with the shopping) that we can figure out our way around quite easily already. A decision is made to split up for the rest of the afternoon and meet back at the hostel for dinner.

I have a town map, and I want to explore more than what we have seen so far. I see that there are some cool antique stores on the map, and decide to try to find one of them. It's a beautiful sunny day, and I make my way to the first store. The first one is beautiful, full of very expensive items, and owned by an older woman who looks like she is an antique in there herself. I find a set of cloth napkins, and leave it at that.
I try to find the other one, but I am getting lost, and I am tired and hot after walking so far in a short amount of time, so I decide to make my way back the way I came. I am not really worried about being lost, this is the safest town I have ever seen. I have not heard one siren, or seen one police officer. The creepiest thing that has happened has been weirdo dude in our room.
 It's all very exciting to be on my own, as Chelsie and I have not split up once so far. I come across a very old church that no one seems to use anymore. It's very small, and has a very overgrown graveyard that surrounds it.
It's incredibly beautiful and creepy all at the same time. I didn't really understand the graveyard- a lot of the graves had names on small signs, or on the headstones, but it seemed more like a historical burial place than one where normal townspeople were buried. I walk around, reading the names like I might come across one I recognize, and then I eventually move on.
I finally make it back unscathed from my afternoon alone, and Chelsie and I go try to see where Jane Austen lived.
We go to the number of the "flat" (that's what they call the apartment) and there is no indication that this is the one she lived in. We thought there might be a sign? Hence my expression in this photo.

 There is a small museum for Jane Austen as well and  we go in. The doorman is dressed from Austen's timeperiod, but I write in my journal about his "disgustingly cracked lips and bad teeth." And get this, I actually found a picture of him on Google!! Yeah I know, he really is a nice guy despite...oh nevermind.

Yeah, this is the outside of the Jane Austen Centre...the mannequin is not creepy at all guys...

We aren't overly impressed with any of it. There are just tons of different copies of her books with revised covers, and a lot of merchandise from  A&E's 6 hour BBC version starring Colin Firth, including a painted portrait of him as Mr. Darcy? Who the heck would put that up in their home?
Disappointed, we go have dinner in the bar underneath our hostel. It's another St. Christopher's Inn hostel, and it looks kind of fun down there, in an english-bar-kind of way. We are too tired to find another interesting hole-in-the-wall place to eat tonight.
We order, and then sit and chat about our afternoons. Chelsie went back to the park with the bridge and waterfall to read and have her alone time. It was good for us to have a break from each other for a while, though we are both still too nervous to do much more of that. Some who have travelled more would probably find that amusing, but we are proud enough of ourselves just for making our way across the world with only each other!
As we talk, our meals come. Our waiter is a big, tall guy from behind the bar that had checked us in the night before. As he sets our plates down, I see a small piece of white paper folded and tucked in by my fries.
"Chelsie, look.."
"What...what is it??"
I open it and read to her, "Call me, my name is David! Ask for me @ the bar. 0789..."
I try really hard to not make any expression, and I realize he is probably watching me from across the restaurant as I read it. I can tell Chelsie is about to die, and I give her the eyes that say "Don't...."

We go back to our room which is the mixed dorm, totally laugh about my note from dinner (that I never responded to by the way), and get ready for bed. It's like 9pm. You see? I have always been going to bed early. Three other girls share the room with us, and no boys yet. The girls tell us that they have been travelling the world for at least a year if I remember right. Their bags are actually colossal sized suitcases filled with tons and tons of clothes. They are getting ready to go out and get wasted, basically, is what they tell us, and want us to join them. I still feel sick, and we are both exhausted. And getting wasted is probably not the smartest thing for us to do at this point. We just hope that no more mystery creeps crawl in our room again tonight...

Last morning in Bath. We plan to take a bus back to London, to then stay the night in the train station for our train in the morning to Paris. In hindsight, this was the dumbest plan ever (the part where we stay overnight in a station, and not a nice, warm, hostel bed).
I go have a shower in the big, communal bathroom. The showers are in stalls...really nasty, dirty, hairy, plugged drain stalls. I am going to barf. I hate this, I hate hostels, I want to go home and have a shower. Sick, gross, gross. And there are guys out there...EW. One smiles at me as I brush my teeth at the sink, and I give him a look, and leave. I am tired, sick, and just don't smile at me pal, I am in no mood.
We try to find internet access somewhere in the town, and have no luck. We stumble across a library, and somehow manage to log on and get 1 hour of free internet. You have to have a library number and password to do this, so we thought this nothing short of a miracle that we got on. We had to check out itinerary and book a hostel for Paris.
We did not plan out where we would be staying ahead of time on this trip, we just booked hostels a few days before, hoping that they were available for when we needed to be at our new destination.

Before our bus ride back to London, we go rest in the beautiful Henrietta Park. The trees in this park are huge and beautiful. One massive tree sort of has rose coloured leaves among the green. We sit and read and write while some knob drives his remote control car around the park like a 5 year old ruining the mood of the place.

We go catch our bus, and arrive at St. Pancras Eurorail Station. Like I said, we are staying here overnight to catch our morning train to Paris. I think our reasoning was that "it won't be that bad" and "it will save us a little money". Yeah I know, bad plan.

This is one of the statues in the station.

I won't go into detail about this night, it's not worth your time reading really. Let's just say it was long...SO LONG. And I was half crazy by the end because it was next to impossible to sleep on a bench there. Worst night ever. I manage to write in my journal at 4:20am- "Feel like I might die. Wanting to get on train so bad. One hour to go. Hope I don't get sicker because of this. And I really want a hot bath...and SLEEP. Chels is going crazy- laughing and silly. I am consistently blah."

It's true, Chels started to lose it by about this time in the morning. I shut down, she goes manic. We are a great team.

The train finally arrives, we get on, exhausted and with our eyes barely open. I don't remember a thing of that ride.

To Paris we go...

Total and Utter Cuteness

Pigtails!!

2008- Brighton!

- Brighton-

I manage to dig up just 2 whole photos of my own from Brighton. Here is one from the boardwalk.

It's 6:30am, and we are awake and getting ready for our journey to the town of Brighton. You will notice that throughout our trip, we go to bed early, and get up early. It's just our thing. However, it really pisses fellow hostel roomates off that are out partying the night before and come in at 3am and then we wake them up by us getting ready...but then they piss us off when they come in and wake us up. I guess it's a trade off. (My mom hates the word...piss..sorry Mom, it's the best word for it though.)

Around 10am we are heading to a Starbucks (there are about a million in London) before catching our bus. We get really cheap tickets, and are amazed at how thrifty we are able to travel. Patting each other on the back for being so awesome, we get on our bus within an hour, and realize why our mode of transportation is so cheap.

I go to use the bathroom at the back of the bus before it's supposed to take off. Chelsie has to hold the door shut for me because it doesn't stay closed on it's own. Lovely. While I am in there, the bus decides it's a good time to leave, jolting me, and nearly sending me flying out the door of the bathroom that probably hasn't been cleaned in a few bus trips.

The ride was about an hour and a half long in total, and it was THE WORST. I am certain we don't encounter a worse mode of transportation for the rest of the trip, that one won the prize. It was a hot day, and the air conditioning wasn't working, and the driver was insane, he just ripped around the countryside. I don't get carsick easily, but I sure was by the time we arrived. My favourite part? How the hot bus smelled of dirty bathroom the entire ride. Someone pass the smelling salts.

The bus dropped us off at some random bus stop, not a station. We had no clue where we were, or how to find our hostel from there. As Chelsie and I stand there and scratch our heads on what to do next, a random girl asks us if we need help finding something. We tell her the name of the hostel, and she says, "Oh, that is just over here, I will take you to it!" Well, that is really nice of her. After she leaves us at the hostel, we both conclude that we are fairly certain that she is a lesbian. Just one of those things based on her apperance and her mannerism, you know, really judgemental stuff like that. Not like it bothered us, but we noted it. *I was searching on Wikipedia to be able to tell you what ocean Brighton sits next to, when I discovered something interesting about Brighton that I did not know until I wrote this post. Apparently Brighton is known for having a large homosexual community. They also have a nude beach. Not sorry that we didn't find it.*

It's not until we actually see the hostel that we realize that there is a bar on the main floor, and the rooms are on the floors above. Greeeeatt...that's going to be a nice quiet stay.This isn't the ideal situation for us and Chelsie informs me that she has booked a few of these hostels (same company) in a few of our next destinations. Perfect. Oh well, how would she have known?

We ditch our stuff in the room assigned to us, and head out to do what every person should in a new place that you have limited time in...shop!

The shopping in Brighton is amazing. They have these huge clothing stores all lumped together in one area with really cool stuff and very cheap. I want to buy at least 10 dresses, luckily for my bank account, it's hard to find my size. I do buy one very cute grey one in the end. It's a lot hotter here than we expected for May, and though we love to shop, we are finding that a few clothing necessities are needed for this nice weather. Fine by us! We also manage to find a really cool second hand/vintage boutique. I found a bag/purse that I still use to this day when I remember that I still have it. It becomes my constant companion carrying my essentials as we walk around endlessly everywhere we go.

We ar now hungry after much shopping, and want to find some dinner.

Now, Chelsie is a vegetarian, which is fine of course. However, we are in Brighton, a town on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. She doesn't eat fish normally. This place is famous for their fish and chips. You can't come here and not eat it, and she knows it. We go to the pier and pick up some fish and chips for ourselves, and they taste fantastic as expected. It's a beautiful evening, sunny, windy, very windy.

We hang out and walk around there for a while, and decide to call it a night. We go back to our room to rest and just read and relax.

This is when I come to the end of my first roll of film that has my initial pictures of London and our first day in Brighton. I have no idea what I am doing, and I wind the film improperly, pop it out of the back of the Pentax, and realize I did it all wrong. I have ruined my film. *$%@. &%@*. #$&!. Literally, I said that in my head. I remind myself that Chels has a camera too , and I still have my digital camera with me to take more reliable photos. Sigh.

Chelsie was ready for sleep at 7pm. This was a little too early for me, I mean, it wasn't even dark out yet!

Chelsie had borrowed a cell phone from our really kind travel agent for our trip, should we have an emergency or just want to simply call up home for a quick chat. I had been carrying the phone on me this evening just in case maybe Kenton would call. He never did, which was probably a good thing, because I still missed him a ton and would have been sad.

Instead of sitting in the room bored, I took my new bag and went to the beach which was just outside of our hostel's front door. It was a perfect night, and the sun was setting. It was still very windy, which I think it always is there. As nice as it was, it was lonely to be out there by myself, not to mention a little scary. (My parents are reading this and thinking, 'What were you thinking?!?'). I end up going back to the hostel after I walk around a bit, and the sun had set, and head to bed.

Here is a picture from that night. 

I have found the town to be quite touristy, and look forward to Bath which is apparently smaller and less commercial. But I have loved it here and wish we had more time to hang around, but we are excited to move on again.

Our hostel is called St. Christopher's Inn, ( I just saw that now in my travel journal), for any of you looking for a fun hostel. No one ended up sharing our room the night before, and it wasn't noisy up there at all. I also have 468 pairs of earplugs for this entire trip, so I don't hear much anyways. We find that the hostel is actually kind of fun, and more "grown up" than Baden Powell House in London, that had nothing to do, except watch tv.

We get up and have breakfast in the bar...no beer for breakfast, just cereal...with milk. And we are very happy that we both finally slept through the night!

We do have some time to kill before we leave, so we find a really pretty park further into the street. It's an uphill walk, and I am dying under the weight of my bag as usual. I am like an old grandma needing to ask for rest breaks every 5 min. I am also wearing my slip on shoes, not my good, supportive, comfortable Nike's. Those will not see the light of day very much during this trip. Like...ew.

We find this super cool cafe called "Taste" and eat lunch there. England seems to be much farther along on the whole "organic" and "local food" kick than Canada, but leaps and bounds. We like it.

I get a call from Kenton and talk to him on the phone for a bit. We hop on a train at the station to head to our next destination, the quaint little town of Bath, England.

I am still in love with what I have seen so far of England and want to shop here always. I am also loving watching the English countryside whip by, and really happy that I am not on the same bus that we took to get to Brighton. Gag.

We get to the main station where we will take a really fast train to Bath. I don't know what it is called. If you know, you should tell me! :)

I am feeling very homesick again after talking to Kenton, and have a few tears at the station. I decide that it's probably better to not talk to him on the phone, and just stick to emails. We tend to check our emails every so often on the internet at the hostels. All this moving around from place to place is also quite jarring, and hard to get used to.

We get on the train, and on this train, you have to sit where your ticket tells you. Our tickets tell us that we are sitting on the seats facing backwards. Oh joy.

It's not long into the ride that we are feeling queasy...it's not a very pleasant ride going backwards on a very, very fast train. Yuck.

We can't wait to arrive in Bath...

                                                                          -

An Update on Wren's Sleep Training

The transformation that we have seen in Wren's sleep this week is worth sharing. In one week, we have seen a huge change in the way she goes to bed, and stays asleep. It's amazing, and we are nothing short of elated!

 We now have a set routine, and it goes like this:

Bath, pyjamas, playtime, stories and bottle, sleep.

The stories happen in her room with only her lamp on, and she drinks her bottle while we read. After about 10-15 min, it's bedtime. We say 'night-night' and into the crib she goes with her soother.

Night 1- Cried herself to sleep for 1 hour. Checked for a throw up every 10 min. That was hard. Woke up in the night for a bottle. Gave her half of what we used to. Let cry for about 10min, back to sleep again until 7:30am.

Night 2-  Cried for half an hour. Less stressful, still kind of hard. Woke up for a bottle again, didn't feed her, just let her cry. Not sure how long that went on, she sort of cry/whined off and on for over an hour but woke at 7:45am.

Night 3- Cried for only 15 min....starting to be very encouraged that this might be working. Slept until 3:30am, cried for over an hour. Finally gave her a bottle just to get her to sleep already since it was very early morning. Slept in until 7:30am.

Night 4- Cried for maybe 10 min. Woke again around 3am, cried for a while, finally fell back asleep, up at 7:30 again.

Night 5- Cried for 30 sec. Out like a light, AND slept through the night. 7pm-7am. 

I never expected her to sleep through the night so quick. I just wanted to stop rocking her back to sleep whenever she woke up, which was a lot. And she is now waking at a normal hour of 7-7:30am, not 5:30 or 6am. She also seems happier during the day and not so tired all of the time, especially in the mornings when she would wake up crying and grouchy.

Hurray Wrennie! Just thought I would let those who were interested know, especially if you are considering the cry-it-out method for your baby. We are living proof that it can work even with the most stubborn baby who barfs to get out of things. 

Now she has better things to do, like enjoy some more Sesame Street.

2008- We're In London!

- London -

I am taking tons of pictures as we are in London. So why aren't there any in this post? Well, you see, I was taking them all on an old Pentax camera, the kind you have to wind manually when a roll of film is finished. I will finish the first roll of film, containing all of my photos from our first few days in London, once we have reached Brighton. It's in a Brighton hostel that I wind the camera wrong, and lose all the pictures. Ultimately depressed beyond belief. And remember, Chelsie lost all of her photos from the trip when her computer crashed after we had come home. Double suck. So sorry, all of the pictures are off of Google :)

As soon as we officially arrive in London, we get off the bus, and decide to do some sightseeing before arriving to our hostel. It is about 7am their time you know. It's a halfhazard way to see the city, drunk with exhaustion, unable to barely focus your eyes on anything in front of you. This day is a blur to me, and I barely remember anything we did. Despite all this, I am thrilled to be here! I love London already and know that if I could live here forever, I probably would.

We see Buckingham Palace briefly and even catch the changing of the guard.

Insert Google image...because I have nothing else. But I would say this is close to what it looked like to me that day.

We get a glimpse of Big Ben and the London Eye, and ride a double decker bus to Hyde Park, all while carting around our backpacks.

I want to tell you that our view looked something like this...what a photo! (Again, all of these are off of Google)...

...But it looked more like this...also great!

And, I made Chelsie take a photo of me in this exact phone booth, much her her dismay (could I be any more touristy?), and sadly, it was another good picture I lost.

By now I am cursing my backpack, and while in the park, I dump a grocery bag full of clothes behind the bench to get rid of anything I won't need and desperately trying to lighten my load.While in Hyde Park, I am hitting a wall. I can't stand anymore, or even sit up. My body is hating me, and screaming for sleep. We find a bench along a path, and I lay down on it. I have no memory of what Chelsie did, and I didn't care, I just tried to fall asleep. I am sure people stared, as it was painfully obvious that we were tourists that looked like we were living in the park or something.

We make our way to our hostel, and to tell you the truth, I have no recollection of how we managed that given our sorry state. I do remember that on our way, we stopped in a small grocery store to get some food for lunch. Chelsie and I were stocking up on some fruit, and I grabbed a plastic bag to put my apples in, and one flew off and stuck to this kid's face beside me. We were so out of it, that we burst out laughing at the kid, and headed to the checkout. This was my first experience paying for something in cash with foreign currency. I fumbled around with my change to pay, asking Chelsie what was what, and finally got out of there! Enough embarrassing myself for one day thanks.

We stayed in a hostel in Kensington (a very posh part of London) called Baden Powell House. It was sort of like a boys and girls club location in a way, with several floors full of rooms which had tons of bunk beds. The higher you went in the building the lower the water pressure became...for example, you may have drips for a shower. Sounds nice hey?

I am jumping ahead though. We check in, dying to fall into a bed and sleep, only to find that we cannot have access to the room until 3pm because they are being cleaned. We have a few hours to wait, and I am ready to lose it by this point. I feel all weird and zombie-ish and out of my mind from exhaustion, I am in a completely new and unfamiliar place, and right now I wish I wasn't there. I want to go home. Okay, not really, but I was really, REALLY, homesick. And not sleeping can do funny things to your head. I am trying to hold it together as we sit in the lounge area watching tv, but I am reaching a breaking point. I burst into tears. I blubber to Chelsie about how I am feeling, that I really miss Kenton, that I feel half crazy, and that I am miserable now. She is very understanding (as she is also very tired), and I am filled with a sense of relief just by spilling my guts at that point. Suddenly, I am feeling slightly better, and that I will make it to 3pm.

We are finally let in to our room. We pick our beds, turn off the lights, and take naps lasting about several hours. I wake up before Chelsie, and still feeling off, I explore the hostel a bit. There are hardly any guests, and the place is quite empty.
I discover on the third floor, a sort of balcony patio thing. The building is on the corner of the street, and the balcony faces the main intersection, and a museum across the street. I basically hang out there, watching people walk by and cars drive around, for a few hours. Staying out here calms my nerves down, and I am getting used to the fact that I can't go home for another 3 and a half weeks..


We had planned on only being in London for a couple of days. At the end of our trip, we would return for another few days before flying home again. Despite being totally jet-lagged, we try to see as much as possible.
I wake in the morning on Monday, May 5th, to a girl staying in our room doing some bizarre pelvic excersie while leaning on the wall. This is a good start to the day.

Realizing that the day before we had rushed our sightseeing, and probably need to do round 2 of London, we go visit Westminster Abbey and Big Ben again. It was incredible! The detail, the size...just everything blew me away. The day we were walking about, the Westminster Bridge was full of tourists, and also people selling things. This was my introduction to...pan handling Euro style, I guess you could say. A lady handed me a little flower, and me, being totally naive, took it. Then Chelsie said, "no!" and I quickly shook my head and gave it back to the lady without really knowing what she wanted. Chelsie late explained that it's people's way of getting you to give money. You take their token, you give them money, and they are everywhere we travel.

We also visit Picadilly Circus. Chelsie is re-visiting places in London she had seen on her last trip there. She was showing me around a little...

Here is a bird's eye view of Picadilly Circus. To give you an idea, it is huge intersection with a big fountain in the middle.

See? Fountain. You can pretend you see me in the picture. But I am not the lady sitting on the steps in the centre with the white t-shirt and pants.

I am blown away by the transit in London. The underground trains are always there when you need to go somewhere. I can't believe how easy it is to get around. Oh look, there I am with Chelsie, you see us? The blondes? We can pretend.

And in the actual subway...

The escalators that take you up, up, up, up back to the ground again. One time we were so far down, we had to take 5 sets of escalators just to get back to the surface again, sheesh that is a long way down!

 We take the train to go see Notting Hill and do some shopping. I had not seen the movie before coming here, but I watched it as soon as I was home. Cute homes!

I am on the lookout for cute clothes by now, dying to buy something more stylish. It feels like everyone in London has style, and I am standing out bad. I probably just look like...well, a tourist.
We eat a very english meal of...Subway. We didn't realize that it was actually a holiday, and that nothing would be open come evening. We had also tried to shop Portobello Market, but again, because of this holiday, it wasn't so great.
This is what it would probably look like on a good day though...

So we went back to the hostel that evening, and probably to bed quite early, still trying to turn our body clocks around. The next day we would be taking a bus to the coastal town of Brighton!!
I am excited to continue our adventure, but I am glad we are going to be back in London for the last few days of our trip before we go home. It's beautiful, exciting, and I know we have only scratched the surface...

To Brighton we go...

2008- Flying to London

Jumping right into things, Chelsie and I decided to start our trip in London, England. I have always wanted to see London, and she had been there before when she was about 13 I think. We would then stop in Bath and Brighton before we headed to Paris.

The towns of Bath and Brighton were chosen for two reasons:

a.) They are said to be incredibly beautiful.

b.) We love Jane Austen, and she lived in Bath for a period of time.

Chelsie and I spent the better part of a year planning this trip. We found a great travel agent, and we made our itinerary. Chelsie did most of the hard work, figuring out where to go, how to get there and so forth. I basically okay-ed everything, seeing as I had no idea about any of it. Chels was organized though, so I had a lot of faith in her skills.

I don't think my parents believed me when I told them of my plan. The summer of 2007, I was working at an out of school care center as a summer student, and returning to school in the fall. I had decided to put away half of each pay cheque every month into a savings account that I would use for the trip. I probably saved over $4000.00, if I remember right, just in that summer alone. My parents have never travelled abroad, so I was entering new territory.

This was the plan, graduate from school with a BA in Psychology, work for a few months, and then leave for my trip. After I came home? Anything was possible.

I graduated, (very exciting, yes, yes it was), and found a job at a bakery in Riverbend. I sort of just wanted any job and didn't really care what it payed. I was also working part time with kids with autism, juggling the two jobs until I would leave.

Time to leave.

I had no clue how to pack, what to bring, what not to bring. I packed like I was going to be camping for 3 weeks. Seriously, the clothes I brought...what was I thinking. Worn hoodies and Nike's, it was like I would be hiking in the bush, not travelling in civilized cities for crying out loud.

I also brought the most boring books on the history of the planet to read on the plane. Was I thinking they would suddenly get interesting on the plane? I sort of left the ipod to the last minute too, and didn't really put a lot of music on it that I would have liked, not realizing how often I would be listening to it as Chelsie and I covered miles by train and plane. My preparation in these areas was just stunning now that I look back.

Chelsie came to my house in the morning, and Kenton was to drive us to the Calgary airport for our afternoon flight. I had said goodbye to my dad the night before because he was going to already be at work the next day when I left. Chelsie's mom had brought her over. We all chatted for a few minutes, and after saying our goodbyes, our moms tear up. The realization that we were actually leaving for real, was setting in. Their daughters were flying across the ocean, by themselves...two girls...roaming around in foreign places. Oh dear.

 Our wonderful travel agent helped us get the cheapest flights possible, but you pay in another way for those. I didn't know what "red eye" flights meant until that departing flight.

Um yes, I was very sad to leave Kenton. We were dating at the time, and a month was like...FOREVER to be apart. In Chelsie's words, "You handled it better than I thought you would!" Thanks Chels.

By the way, I journalled most of our trip, and that is what I am referring to as I write this. Thank goodness, just reading it all now shows me how much I forgot.

-The Flight-

This was my first time on a plane, ever. I can honestly say now, after being on a few more flights since this trip, that I do not prefer air travel. This may be foreshadowing for a story later on...

It's about an 8 hour flight to London, Heathrow Airport, and the tv screens on the headrest in front of our seats don't work. Awesome. An 8 hour ride with no movies...just Top Gear resetting itself every 15 min and playing over and over and over...By the end of the flight the screens do work again, but I fail to realize that I can plug in my own earphones and hear what is being played. I watch Harry Potter 5, in silence. Why am I so smart?

It's basically impossible for me to catch a nap on this flight. When we arrive in London, it will be 6am their time. I am too excited to think about how tired I will be once we get there. I can't even believe this is happening now. Almost a year of saving up, planning, discussing, fretting, and being giddy, and we were finally doing it!

We have arrived to London, and we are exhausted, but sort of running on the adrenaline of arriving and needing to figure out how to now get to the city.

We are in Heathrow, meaning we still have a short journey ahead of us to actually get into the city. We get our bags, and I have realized I have slightly overpacked. To give you perspective, Chelsie is carrying what looks like the size of an elementary school kid's backpack, and I look like I am about to climb Mount Everest. I borrowed the backpack from my friend Lindsay who took it on her YWAM. It was big. Too big. And she gave me a cover for it so that none of the strings or things got ripped off in the shuffle. Chelsie thinks I am crazy by this point, and I ditch the backpack cover, the first of many things I will be leaving behind throughout this trip.

We wander around and figure out that we are to take a bus. This bus leaves in about 2 min and we have no clue where it is leaving from in this foreign place of people rushing about. Running through the airport (yeah picture me right now, lugging this bag as big as me, trying to run and not cause us to miss a bus that won't come around again for a long time), we make it to our bus before it decides it has everyone it wants. It is a beautiful morning, the sun is coming up and dew is shining on the trees across the street. Seeing how nice it is out, I kind of forget how tired I am for a moment . The countryside of England is also something you just have to see in person once in your life. It is amazing! The ride is about half an hour to our true destination...

...

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Stories of a trip- Europe 2008

I have been meaning to write a small series of posts sharing my trip to Europe in 2008. It's now 2011, but some good stories are timeless, and I will be avoiding the "had to be there" moments if possible. I went with my friend, Chelsie. Some of you know her as the hair and make-up girl at our wedding.

Since going on this 3.5 week trip in May 2008, I can't shake the memories that flood back to me every Spring. Not to mention, some of the stories are too good not to tell, and as much as I tried to relay them to all who cared at the time, it was impossible to tell everything all at once, with pictures included.

I still have a good handful of pictures from this trip, but some are missing, and you will find out why. I am also missing all of Chelsie's photos that I intended to have fill in the gaps in mine...but a believe it had barely been a year after the trip and her computer crashed, losing all of her photos. We were bummed to say the least. Still am!

So like I said, these posts will happen in a sort of series, and may be sporadic depending on how much time I actually have to write each one.

Our travels included 3 major cities, London, Paris and Rome. We also payed some smaller places a visit in between.

I will still be posting some of our real life things in between all of these travel posts, but I hope you enjoy a little something different now and then to read!

Wren reads.

Wrennie has a special spot on the shelf for her books. Her books actually take up 3 or 4 squares on the shelf to tell you the truth. 

We are on night 3 of our "sleep training"...aka. "crying it out". It's...going? Last night it took an hour for her to fall asleep. Tonight, who knows, she is still crying. I blog to stay sane, even though the computer is in the room next to hers, by the vent, so I can hear it all. All the chokes, gags, sobs, screams, etc.
I tell you all this because you might be a parent like us needing some really detailed accounts of what it is like, and know you are not alone. It took a long-distance friend of ours to give us a step by step and detailed run down of what they did with their kids. I guess that was our final push to actually do this, we needed to know exactly how someone else did it.

We now have more of a routine for her,
bathtime, play in the living room, change diaper, bottle and stories in her room, and then to the crib for cries.

Okay, so she only cried for half an hour tonight. Yes! Did she puke? I don't know, I only checked on her once...and after I left, who knows what happened in there. Oh well, she still wakes up in the middle of the night for a bottle, and we are slowly weaning that one, we just don't want to do everything at once. We will clean her then, poor stinky barf baby.

Well now that she is asleep, off I go to do something in my free evening time :)

Catching up with Wren.

Life is busy as usual, and with me working part time, two of those shifts in the evening, a lot of my time to blog has disappeared. Wren also likes to dominate the computer with Sesame Street watching. Let me just say that loading her videos and trying to load blog photos makes both her and I unhappy, as neither really gets what they want.

Speaking of not getting what you want...

Wren has been feeding herself for a while now, but recently she has decided she needs to have her turn with the spoon. I know, so many of my latest photos are her in the highchair with food in her hair. A walking child is not still...not even for a photo. Here at least I can catch her. But today was funny, as yogurt was flung...across her face!

Some spoon banging happening.

Independence can be a messy thing. She was having one of those hair days where it looks like we plunked a toupee on the top of her head.

We have been so housebound, probably just like everyone else. So much snow, but also too cold to go out for a walk with the sled. Wren really likes sled walks, I think. She just sort of sits there and doesn't smile the entire time.

I have been keeping busy in my downtime by trying to knit some legwarmers. At this rate, they may be ready by March. The other day I was showering while Wren watched Sesame Street in the other room, and she came into the bathroom and showed me my knitting....thankfully nothing unwound itself as any knitter knows how hard it can be to fix big knitting mistakes without ripping out your whole project and starting over!

I finally tried to take some more nice photos of Wren. She doesn't hold still, ever. So a million pictures later, I came out with a few cute ones.

This face...oh this face... :)

If I have talked to you lately, you most likely know that Wren's nights have not been progressing as we had once hoped they would for her age...
She is now completely over any sickness, but her sleep has taken an even bigger turn for the worst. She is waking up twice a night, usually midnight and 4:30am. In the past, we would just give her the bottle, and within maybe 15 min she would be back asleep. But now a pattern has started and she always wakes up and is now taking over an hour to get back to sleep if we are lucky. An HOUR.

After a week of sleep from  h- e-double hockey sticks, Wren decided to end an exhausting week with the worst night of all. Last night she was up from 2am until 4:30am...I think...or was it 5? I don't even know. After an hour of me trying to pat her bum to sleep without success, we tried another bottle (I know, you probably are picking out everything we are doing wrong right about now, I know I am in hindsight).

After that didn't work, we let her cry. 10 min in, she barfs. We clean it up. Let cry again. Another 10, more barf. Clean up. Let cry. Let cry. Let cry. I can't even tell you how long it took.
I think Kenton went back in and tried again to let her fall asleep with the bottle, but I don't think she wanted it. So he left, she cried two more sobs, and that was all. She woke up at 6:30am, I rocked her back to sleep and we heard Wren at 7:30 again but she wasn't quite awake and Kenton got ready for work and I heard Wren again at 8am. I was so tired that I heard her crying in my dream so I didn't go to her right away until I groggily realized it was time to get up now.

That was bad. Really bad. Like, she must be popping the rest of her teeth all at once for this to make any sense.

We have always rocked her to sleep with a bottle. We tried to let her cry before, and it sort of worked, but then she figured out barfing got us back in the room with the lights on. Even at nap time she gags herself until she barfs if I leave the room! It's awful!

So now we are in the let-cry days. We tried the "no cry sleep solution"...but let me tell you, that has not proven to be any better either. If anything, it has made everything ten times worse. And I can't lie, I know I definitely feel like we failed somewhere, and it's very frustrating. It's like I want someone to just come and tell me exactly what to do to fix it.

We are going to keep at the crying though, because it is our last option, so we will see how that goes.

If you have helpful suggestions or went through the same thing, feel free to send me a message or email, I would love to hear them. Especially if you experienced the barfing problem with your baby!
I know our doctor said it's a behaviour she does to get her way. So we are doing our best to ignore any gagging and barfing. (Um yes, we clean up the barf, but then move on quickly without making a big deal of it.)

We do a lot of laundry these days, that is for sure.

On another note...sorry it's not more positive either! Kenton's Grandma Jeske is in the hospital at the moment. She will probably not be with us much longer, maybe not past this week. This turn of events has happened quickly, more quickly than our family has expected.
We went to go visit her, and she seemed to notice Wrennie and smile when she saw her. Grandma Jeske has had Alzheimer's for several years, and it's the only way I have known her, and it has progressed quickly over those years. This may be a hard week for us coming up, as we are not sure what is going to happen.
It is sad, however, Kenton's Grandpa Jeske passed away over 10 years ago now from cancer, and it is comforting to know she will finally be going home to him.

I am glad she was able to see a great-grandchild in her lifetime too. Even in the short time I have known her, there are memories I have to smile at when I think of them.

One of my favourites was when I was about 8 or 9 months pregnant with Wrennie and I was shopping with Grandma J and Judy at the mall, and we sat down for some ice cream. Grandma's Alzheimer's was quite far along and she often couldn't find the words she meant to say. So I had a few bags to carry, and as we were getting up to go, Grandma looked around me and said,
"Oh! Let me help you carry...um...carry...the...the...the baby!" Then she laughed as she probably realized what she had said didn't make sense, but it was quite funny!

I think one word that would describe Grandma J is Lovely. Everything about her that I know has always been warming and loving, and just lovely. I will say more on her another time. This post is growing longer and longer as I go.

Oh here is this silly face again. She's doing "the hulk". Her specialty.

I could also use some warmer weather just like everyone else. We have a baby sled to get out and use already!

I can't wait for summer.