More Visitors...We are so Lucky!

As you know, after our group of friends left, we immediately picked up Jeff's family (his mom, sister, brother, aunt, and cousin).  We were so excited to hang out with them throughout their time here.  After our lunch, walking tour, and quick pint...we left them in London.  Haha, that sounds funny!  They were going to explore London and surrounding areas a bit more before heading up to Nottingham for a couple days of their trip.  They were able to see the big attractions in London, Windsor, Stonehenge, Bath, and another small village.  They were busy!  It was fun to be able to talk about these places with them because we had been there before!

They got into Nottingham on Thursday, and I was able to take them to the famous, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem.  It was so busy, and I was bummed because the upstairs (which is the coolest part) was all reserved, so I could not show that part off.  We enjoyed a great lunch, and then headed up to the castle.

 (L-R) His aunt, Susan; sister, Michelle; cousin, Nathan; mom, Lori; and brother, Matthew

Always can count on Michelle (my sister-in-law) to take a goofy picture with me!

It was the time of year that the castle just had boring paintings, and not the awesome war exhibits like it did in the fall.  We were able to explore the outside area, and point out different buildings and sights from afar.  We headed inside, and walked around the building.  I was able to visit my favorite exhibit (all about the riots), and reflected that it would be the last time I would go in there before moving home! I took it all in, appreciating it all.

Afterwards, we headed for a quick tour around town, grabbed some groceries, and then headed back to our flat so we could hang out until dinner time.  They had all been on the move for the last 5 days, so we chilled for a bit as I made dinner.  We ate dinner, caught up, and enjoyed the relaxing evening.

The next day, they headed to Liverpool, and I stayed back as I had a few things to take care of.  We all met up on Saturday to explore Nottingham a bit more.  They all went to the Galleries of Justice, and I stayed behind as I had already been to the attraction twice.  Jeff went with them, and I think they enjoyed the history side of things.  It sounds like they had a bit of a different experience where they were able to recreate a trial in the courtroom, which sounded really interesting.  I think a few of them were participants, which would have been funny to see! Jeff should be writing this post, so he can tell you more about the experience!

 Siblings reunited after quite a long time

In the entryway of Pitcher & Piano

I met up with everyone at Pitcher and Piano, which is the church that was converted into a bar.  One of my favorite places to grab a pint and/or lunch.  And we grabbed both!  Afterwards, we headed to another pub which is right on the canal, called The Canalhouse.  It is really neat, as there is a boat garage that goes through the restaurant.  There is even a boat inside!  Next up, we explored the caves of Nottingham.  Nottingham is actually known as the City of Caves.  This is something we had not done before, so we were excited to do a new tourist attraction in our own city! It was a 45 minute tour, exploring the caves.  We were even given little hard hats, which we took advantage of! It was interesting to see hear and see what the caves were used for in the past.  It was like another world down there!

 Blurry shot...but having fun underground!  One of the shopping centres was built on top of the caves!

 Digging for bones!

 Our sweet hard hats!

We ended our night taking everyone to one of our favorite Indian restaurants.  Yummy! We hung out at our house later that night.  It was the last night in England for his brother, as he was heading back the following day.  Everyone headed back to London with him, as his aunt and cousin were flying out on Monday.  They enjoyed a few more attractions, like the London Eye and Wimbledon.  Their tour looked fantastic! They were able to see some things we were obviously not allowed or able to see during our time at Wimbledon, so it was fun hearing about their experience.  Jeff's mom and sister are staying a couple extra days in Nottingham, so I'll post about our adventures on the next post!


On to the next adventure...

Road Trippin' Around Gorgeous Normandy

Of course most of our trip was focused on visiting famous WWII places.  Although, we found a couple places we wanted to visit in between the history places.   Now, I remind you that this post is not in chronological order as it is just about the non-WWII places we visited.  For the WWII post, click here!

On Sunday morning, we headed to Mont Saint-Michel, which is an island in France.  When driving here, you began to see the island when we were still 15 minutes away.  The closer you got, the more of a "Wow" factor you got!  This island is basically built on top of itself...does that make sense?  It is so tall, and everything is just crammed on this small island.  The strangest part about it is that nothing else is around it.  There are just open fields and a few little French houses.  Part of the reason for that is the high tide comes up so far (around the island) that not much else can be around it or it would be ruined. 

On the road to the island.

We had to walk about 2 miles from our car just to get to the island.  There were TONS of people there, as I read online that over 3 million people visit a year.  To put that in perspective, the Eiffel Tower has 6.9 million visitors a year.  Pretty impressive tourist area in such a small amount of space.  Once we got into the city, there were just people everywhere.  We immediately knew we should have came at least an hour, if not two hours earlier.  The island was filled with small shops and restaurants.

 This is the walk to the island.  Just a bit further is where the water comes up to during high tide (or so we thought).

 Gorgeous, right?

The narrow streets filled with people!

In the past, it was able to stay untouched during The Hundred Years War because of the natural high tide defense.  Later it became a prison, but now it is most known for its beautiful abbey located at the very top of the island.  Unfortunately, the lines were super long so we were unable to visit the abbey without staying there for hours waiting in line.  We had too much on the agenda for the day to wait in line for a long amount of time.

 Close up of the abbey

This picture makes me laugh because we took about 6 selfies before this.  A man walked up to us and asked if he could take our picture for us. We must have looked like we were struggling. 

On Monday, we woke up really early to hit the road to head to the city of Eretat.  We were heading about an hour and a half to Normandy's White Cliffs.  We were both secretly crossing our fingers that we don't strike out again with the cliffs like we did just a couple days prior.  To our surprise, we had yet another moment of awe, as this was absolutely stunning!  The tide was fairly low at the time, so we went and walked down by the rocky beach.  Then we started making our way to the arches, stepping over rocks of all shapes and sizes as well as mini-pools of water in between the large stationary rocks.

 The view when we first walked down to the beach upon arrival

 The little pools of water. So pretty. I was surprised to not see any fish or creatures though.

We climbed numerous ladders, went through a mini cave tunnel, and made our way to the arch up close.  It was such an adventure climbing the ladders, guessing where we were going to end up in the end.  The tunnel freaked me out for a bit, as it was dark.  But luckily it was short and just a way to get to the other side of the beach.  There was one spot with a ladder that was resting on the side of the cliffs.  You looked up to see a small path that was basically going vertical up to the Eretat Cliff area where you could walk on top of the cliffs.  It is the only way out if high tide comes...ahhhhh! So scary!

 Small cave area.  The ladder we climbed to reach the tunnel.

 Inside the cave

 The famous arch

Words cannot describe how beautiful this area was, and it made our experience at the Cliffs of Moher run for its money.  It was interesting to see the warning signs around our walk around the beach, as when high tide arrives you could be "stranded" in one of the areas for up to 4 hours.  The tide comes up so far that all the area we walked in would be under water.  By the time we left (about an hour later) the tide was already starting to rise. We wished we could have followed the paths on top of the cliffs (you can get to them in another spot...not the scary ladder above).  I could have spent more time in this adorable city, and on the beach.  The weather was still pretty cold, as you can tell we have our winter jackets on.  But definitely one of the mini-trips I'll remember for a long time.

 One of my favorite pictures

 So much green goo!  We had to be careful walking along the edge (you can see the hand rail behind me) as it was so slippery!

 The ladder leading up to the top of cliffs

 The entrance to the cave tunnel

The safety sign

This pretty much sums up our time in Normandy, France.  We had an amazing time, and I know it was one of our favorites.


On to the next adventure...

#1 Birthday Weekend....Ever!

How spoiled am I that we spent my 28th birthday weekend looking at this...

 View from the terrace at our hotel

Dubrovnik, Croatia was one of my Top 3 places to visit while we are living over here. Jeff decided the perfect time to go was around my birthday.  We got up around 2:45 AM, and were at the Manchester Airport to fly out by 5:30.  We got into Dubrovnik, found our beautiful hotel, went into the city, grabbed lunch, and....it starting storming.  We rushed back to our hotel to wait out the storm.  Ended up working out well that we could take a quick nap since we got up so early.  Later that evening we went back out to explore the Old Town (a walled city).  We then fulfilled every child's dream...ice cream for dinner!  Jeff and I walked around the old city eating our ice cream.  We found some places we wanted to explore more in the morning. We walked north of the Old Town to just explore more of the city. We made it to a marina filled with boats, which was pretty cool.  

 View from our hotel window

View from the hotel window...beautiful clear water!

Sidenote: Cats.  I thought Italy was known for the amount of cats on the city streets, but I think I found a place to beat that record.  There was a crazy amount of cats walking around the city.  No matter where we were, like a side of a cliff...there was always a cat around.  A couple adorable kittens (one of which was all black, like Mackey) wandered the streets as well.  All the cats looked like they were in good condition, whether they belonged to someone or not. I just kept walking around the city think of Bob Barker. Yes, you heard me, Bob Barker. I kept picturing him saying "Have your pets spayed and neutered." Dubrovnik needs this...

Back on track. We woke up and went into the Old Town where we walked the city walls.  As you can tell in the pictures, the Old Town was enclosed by walls.  You can walk on top of the walls and boy is it beautiful! It took us about 2 hours to get around it, and that was stopping for a beer about half way through.  It was really fun walking around, and probably one of our favorite things we did while we were there. 

 Could get a little chilly and windy at times. "All you need is a light jacket."--Name that movie!

Great view of the wall we walked around in the Old Town

 At another fortress that has a great view of the city and the Old Town Wall

 The Croatian flag

If we were there longer, it would have definitely been great to go out on a boat!

We headed back to the hotel to go to the hotel's private beach (About mid-60's). We grabbed lunch seaside at the hotel restaurant, and then we laid around reading until the sun was hidden by the large cliffs.  This was perfect timing to head up to Mount Srdj, the 412 meter (350 feet) high mountain. We braved the cable cars, as the walk up the mountain would have took for-ever! Not a huge fan of cable cars, but this one was definitely better than the one we rode in Barcelona. Not nearly as scary.  We made it to the top, went to to Fort Imperial.  This fort was a crucial part during the 1991 war, and much of it is still in shambles.  It was crazy to look from the west side of the fort, as it was beautiful, beach-filled Dubrovnik.  The east side was Bosnia, which was mountainous and bare.  The fort was turned into a museum, but a lot of the material presented wasn't in English. Needless to say, I  lost focus.

 The Bosnia side of the mountain

 The Croatia side of the mountain

We ate at the top, Restaurant Panorama, where I had the best Bailey's coffee ever. Jeff was checking off a few new beers off the count. For those of you who know our goal, I will look at our count later, and get back to you.  We had a great time watching the sunset over the city.  We grabbed an "linner" (lunch+dinner), as the sun was setting around 4:30!  We took the cable car back down, enjoyed another chilly night in the city, and headed back to the hotel.  

Our beautiful view for dinner & drinks

The next morning, we went down to the beach for a few hours.  The feeling of relaxing on a beach, reading a book felt amazing.  Are my snow-filled Indiana friends/family closing their computers at this point? Sorry!  Jeff and I both finished our books, and put our feet in the cold Adriatic Sea.  Well, Jeff braved it and got all the way in. I was a chicken. 

After our beach-filled morning, we went back into the city to check out a bar on a cliff and walk around the city one last time.  We had a few beers at Buza Bar (Buza=hole, not Booze). We grabbed a seat right in front, and enjoyed the view.  It was great to see sailboats, kayaks, ships, etc. go by in front of us.  Besides the cultural side of walking around the walls, I really enjoyed this afternoon.  It was so relaxing! 

 Best view in the house!

So stinkin' pretty, right?

We ended our time in Dubrovnik by walking to a restaurant outside of the city walls and getting a "jumbo" pizza.  I'm not sure if I was just so hungry or what...but it was one of the best pizzas I have ever had (pepperoni, hot peppers, Tabasco, arugula, sauce, and a couple kinds of cheese). We ate the entire thing, and headed back towards the hotel.  

 Beautiful view on our way to the pizza place

 And yes, we ate the last piece! Yum!

Once the sunset, we went on a long walk to the Cave Bar (One of the Top 5 Hotel Bars in the World). It was really impressive, as stalactites were still hanging from the ceiling.  You could also see through the cave floor in one spot of the bar where the water flowed. Really cool!  It was definitely a long walk to this hotel bar, but definitely worth it. 

 This "hallway" leads into the room in which you could see the floor. 

(People were in there, so I couldn't snap a photo)

 The entrance from the outdoor seating

I leave you with an odd picture.  We were walking late in the city on our first day, and found this picture... Many of my loyal readers know my new-found fascination with the world of eggs over here. Bet you have never seen eggs in a pop-like machine! 

Overall, I was very grateful to spend my birthday weekend celebrating with Jeff in this beautiful destination. Thank you to all of you who sent cards, messages, emails, etc. for my birthday.  You definitely made me feel right at home! Love you all! 

Want to come along, too? Check out this interactive website I found!

Onto the next adventure...