Our brief, but adventurous travels abroad
Well, it has been some time since I last "blogged" and we have put on some serious train miles since last month.
As you may remember, Gigi and Fritz visited us in October. One of the places we travelled to was the city of York. It is an amazing city with a rich culture and history. Sadly, our kids don't give two shits about rich culture and history- that is unless it involves Disney Princess culture and/or the history of Barbie movies. Therefore, we did not do too much sightseeing in York, but we did visit the York Minster, one of the oldest and largest cathedrals in England, and got a Yorkie chocolate bar. Yorkie chocolate:England :: Hershey chocolate:America (I hated those damn types of standardized test questions... I mean, really, isn't that kind of crap subjective?!?!?).
Our first adventure before arriving at York was getting to York via train. It was our first legit train ride :)
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| Train rides nowadays are pretty comfy and first rate. Atleast the larger trains that travel farther distances... and kids 5 and under travel free. That saves the Sandbergs quite a lot of money!! |
The York Minster is a place of pilgrimage and was originally constructed in the 800s. Since then, it burnt down several times (as has most everything in this blasted country, I swear) and was raided by William the Conquerer, but it is still, through its many stages of reconstruction, an amazing cathedral. Guy Fawkes, a name synonymous with English uprising, was born and baptised on the same block as the Cathedral... so the area is steeped in history and just cool to see.
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| Emily getting her prayer on at the altar while the older girls played bride and groom (a game they play at every Cathedral where one plays the bride and the other, the groom, and they march down the aisle to get married...whatever works as long as they are well behaved). Emily needed to get her prayer on- see below. |
We quickly noticed that the girls were hungry, restless, and wanting to move on. Sadly, besides this Cathedral, York offers a ton of touristy locations. Why is this unfortunate? Easy answer! Or kids are too young for days of sightseeing. So, we took a bus to the nearest playland and let them get all their pent up aggression out on plastic toys and other children. Our children are a joy to travel with sometimes (please note my sarcasm here).
Scotland
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| Posing...what a gorgeous site. Both the cuties in the foreground and the amazing view in the backdrop! |
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| Cecelia practicing her photography. |
We already knew that we had to travel to Scotland the following Tuesday for a very short trip. Not being told before we left the States, we had to get a paper notarized by an American notary. The closest one is located in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is a 2 hour train ride.
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| Cecelia was all "fashionista" that day so I was compelled to snap photos. She is standing on the stairway to a huge, old cemetary... not sure she knows that ;) |
Our plan: take the train 2 hours to Edinburgh, walk to the American Embassy, get the paper signed, get lunch on our walk back to the train station, and get back on the train to come home. Since Emily proved, while in York, that travelling was not really her "thing" we knew that she should stay home. We put her into daycare for a full day (she only attends for 4 hours in the morning normally) and we headed to Scotland.
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| Oustide the train station staring at... I'm not sure. |
Everything was on schedule, but the notary with whom WE HAD AN APPOINTMENT was not available until 1 1/2 hours after we reached the US Embassy. No big deal, right? Wrong. We had to sit in a room the size of a small doctor's office and wait- for security reasons, of course. If you know me well, you will get the following statement. Asking me to wait in a small room with nothing for my children to do while I am sifted through an incompetent system that should be fool-proof since some chick had only to spend 2 minutes stamping her damn name during the appointment time we made 3 weeks prior IS A SECURITY ISSUE! I had to practice the little patience given to me by God...but our children were great. All we kept thinking was "Thank God Emily is having fun with her friends at 'school' because she would have hated this experience." This "waiting game" gave us approximately 35 minutes to grab lunch before getting on the train. So, all I have to show you are some pictures of amazing sites that we did not have time to explore or even found out what they are.
Edinburgh looks FANTASTIC, and we plan on taking a weekend trip there next year when the girls are a little bit more tolerant of sightseeing.
I have so much to catch up everyone on so look for more posts soon - Halloween experiences, taking Cecelia to London for the weekend, and visiting the Beamish Museum.
Have a terrific Thanksgiving. We truly have so much to be thankful for, regardless of which side of the pond we reside.
Love to all,
Kelly
Your life sounds amazing!!
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