Euro Trip 2009 - Days 2 - 4 London, Southampton, Portishead

Day 2: London

Today we actually got out in the city (London) starting out on the Tube (subway) making our way directly into the downtown area where we started off by going to the Science Museum which turned out to be great for the kids.





We then headed into Hyde Park which was awesome; huge, well maintained, and with lots to do it was an awesome time.



From there we took the tube right into the heart of the city, where (when we stepped out of the tube station) we were literally at the base of Big-Ben looking straight up at it!



We then toured around a bit seeing as much as we could of the main area as we could without getting totally fragged :)













Day 3: Southampton

Today we packed up and got on toward Southampton, stopping at a castle along the way. This was our first castle and was pretty awesome, we stopped and had a picnic before climbing around all over it (they don't care about that over here!).





Then we went by Laurens favourite: Jane Austen's house which was pretty cool (albeit girly :)





We wound up in Southampton where we checked out the 3 parks that adjoined the hotel grounds.

Day 4: Portishead

Today we headed to Portishead (oh yeah!) stopping at Stonehenge along the way. A bunch of stones in a field by the freeway, however it was odly mysterious and wound up being a really cool experience.





We then made a stop by another castle on the way where it rained and drizzled suitably the whole time: a truly English experience.





We then wound up in Portishead which is truly the last town on the edge of the water before going in to Wales. We were pointed to an awesome restaurant right on the hill overlooking the water where we could see wales in the distance...very cool.

So that's it for the time being, more posts and pics to come as we have time!

P.S. This pic didn't really fit in anywhere else, but I did want to show off the Full English Breakfast (as done well in Southampton :)

Euro Trip 2009 - Days 1 & 2 Travel and London

Well we made it after a long/exciting/lush/tiring flight :) Kids loved that they each got their own tv's with individual movies/games... and meals that none of us could finish!! Didn't get to sleep that much though and losing 6 hrs of sleep on top of travel pretty much zonked us today.









We were supposed to have our first day in London today seeing the sights, however we spent most of the time recouping in bed. Tomorrow (our last day in London proper) is already planned with a trip to the top of the London Eye and a ride on a double decker bus (amongst other things).

Driving is fun *cough* as long as you don't mind your GPS barking "at roundabout please take exit..." every quarter mile :) Other than a few curb scrubs on the left side tires (not used to having to stay to the right of the lane) we made it well and the car is an 09 so the clutch is making up for a riding that would kill any lesser piece of machinery!



Sorry no pics yet, just getting setup over here, will do shortly though.

Ok, so here is a brief group of pics for days 1 and 2!

Cheers!

Ireland/UK 2009 - Part 1: Visualizing the Route

Alright so I have done some more looking at where we are going to want to see while in Ireland/UK next year, and the list is becoming a bit daunting. Being the visual learner that I am, I decided to put all the destinations into Google Maps and see what the driving distances were like.

One look at the resultant map was enough to make me realize I'm eventually going to need some professional help planning this thing (read travel agent imminent) so that we don't run out of money/patience/steam/time...

It also made me think about the price of rental cars! According to Google Maps the total travel time between all the places represented below is 1d and 23hrs; basically 2 full days of driving/ferry's. Divide that out over the ~30 days we will be there and you have about 1.6hrs of driving EVERY DAY! That's a ton of driving if you ask me, even for a vacation where we will largely be sightseeing from the car.



Although daunting, I know that with the proper planning we can use a mix of Trains, Ferry's, and Cars to get around reasonably well. Smart travel combined with keeping our list of must-see places to a minimum (not like any of them are going anywhere all of a sudden after hundreds of years) will help things go smoothly.

The end result is that we want to have a great trip, with as little stress/rush as possible and if that means waiting a year or two until we're European residents to see the rest of our destinations, then that's fine by us (oops, did I say that outloud?)

Next Time: Looking closer at some of the destinations!

Getting ready for the big trip

As you may or may not know, we are in the full on in the planning stage for our trip to Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales next year. We've got a lot of research, and prep-work to take care of in the next 15 months. We hope to post the most interesting and informative stuff here as we work through the process.



Items to plan for:

1. Readying our house for another family to live in while we are gone.
2. Researching and planning the actual house-swap.
3. Planning the itinerary so we see EVERYTHING : )
4. Researching costs, and saving for the trip.
5. Getting passports, documents, tickets...
6. Convincing work to let me go for an entire month.