Idaho

We flew back from London just in time for Chris' family vacation in McCall Idaho. Chris' parents rented a fabulous five bedroom cabin that we stayed in for the week.

We had such a great time hanging out, going on walks, playing games, cooking dinners, having a campfire, playing at the beach, and waterskiing and tubing. Thanks for the great vacation Johnsons.

One night we went out to explore the countryside and stopped by this lake to walk around and take a few pictures. The sun was setting and it was gorgeous!

The Johnson five.
The boy cousins... Ryan, Luke, Spencer and Tyler.

Our last day in London

Planes... trains... and automobiles... We traveled by everything but boat during our European week. Our last day we took the train from Edinburgh to London. Thanks to Brian and his laptop we worked out all the paying details, and handed over big checks to Doug and Missy... thanks again for organizing everything!... and then said goodbye to them when they jumped off an early stop to head to their home in the English countryside. So sad to say goodbye.

The rest of us headed on to Kingscross Station in London, got pictures taken at Platform 9 3/4, took our luggage to our hotel and then met again for lunch and a full afternoon of sightseeing.

I loved all the red and black telephone boothes, taxi's and double decker buses. It's just so London. We got a 'hop-on, hop-off' bus ticket and waited here for our double decker bus to arrive.

Our bus was open on top so we got to ride through the city with the breeze on our face, snapping pictures of everything we saw. It was perfect! We hoped off to walk around and take pictures of the Tower Bridge.

Don't you just love handing your camera over to a strange tourist? It would have been nice if the whole London bridge was in the background. Is that really asking for a lot?



Favorite pictures from our afternoon atop our double decker bus...
The Eye of London...

the Parliament Building and Big Ben ...

the Thames River, the Westminster Bridge and the houses of Parliament...

so many cool buildings...

a few more of Big Ben,



and the Buckingham Palace.

After Buckingham Palace we walked through Hyde Park and then over to Herrod's... a huge department store that makes Nordstroms look like Kmart. It was crazy! It was fun to see all the fancy cars driving by and all the super rich people shopping. Whoa! We walked around a little but mostly stayed in the Herrods gift shop browsing overpriced mugs, bags and stuffed animals all saying Herrod's! After all of our sight seeing we wandered around and found an italian restaurant for dinner. It was Chris' birthday... 35! ... so we sang to him while he ate dessert and then headed back to the hotel on the metro!

(so excited for the metro!) Terri, Geneva and I ... getting ready for our last metro ride. One more night in our fancy London Marriott and then off to the airport in the morning.

Truly an amazing trip!!! and the best part? That every minute was spent laughing and talking with our friends... talking about our kids, our callings, our wards, laughing about the good ol' days in Maryland, talking about where we might settle down, planning which vacation is next, laughing at Doug's 'dingle peninsula' joke, laughing when some got off the subway at the wrong stop, laughing about the sewer... every moment was a party. Thanks friends!

Edinburgh

Day two in Edinburgh started with breakfast at our castle hotel. Chris tried haggas and blood pudding. He thought the haggas was fine but couldn't eat more than a bite of blood pudding. After the whole week of watching Chris try everything (and like almost all of it) Doug said 'Chris' taste buds aren't ones you can trust.'

After breakfast we headed into Edinburgh to tour the castle. We walked around the base of the large stone mountain until we found the pathway up. The boys thought about storming the castle and climbing straight up the rock but it would not have been succesful with how long it took them just positioning for this picture.


(castle ruins near the bottom of Castle Rock)



A picture of all of us before we enter the castle... if it looks like we are giggling it's because of how Doug is leaning to take our picture. Luckily I was taking pictures of him while he was taking pictures of us. Priceless...

The castle was amazing... it's one of the things I was most excited to see on this trip. I loved the weathered stone walls and archways. I loved seeing the layout of the fortress and imagining how people lived here. I didn't realize I was so fascinated about history until I saw it up close and personal. They say that people lived atop Castle Rock as early as the 9th century BC although most of the structures were built in the 16th century... all except St. Margaret's Chapel, the small square church built in the early 12th century... the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh. The Chapel was closed while we were there because of a wedding. It was fun to see all the people dressed for it. We stopped to listen to the perfectly dressed bagpiper for awhile before moving on. Usually I don't care much for the bagpipes... but in Scotland I was delighted to hear them.

(a picture inside the Edinburgh castle and fortress)

(outside one of the buildings in the castle)




(views of downtown Edinburgh from the top of the Edinburgh Castle)

The Edinburgh castle is guarded by sheer cliff on three sides. The last side is a gradual slope called the Royal Mile... a lot of Tourist shops, boutiques, and of course another Cathedral.

(typical Scottish teenagers)

My favorite shop was called Ness and had the cutest girly tartans. I bought purses for my girls and one for me. I love it! (If you click here it will take you to the website so you can see my purse... it's the front one on the row of purses on the rotating pictures up top. I got the same plaid for my girls.)

After we had walked around for awhile we headed down an alleyway through several flights of stairs to get to the rest of the city and headed towards Princess Street Gardens for a better look at the Scott Monument. I had seen it the day before from a distance and was hoping to discover it up close. It looked black and gothic and I wondered what it was. It was built to honor Scottish author Sir. Walter Scott in 1844. The boys and I climbed the 300 curly stairs to the top lookout and enjoyed the view of Edinburgh, the castle, the train station, the far away hills... I just love a good view. It was starting to rain a little and was gloomy looking but still spectacular.

From the top of the Walter Scott Monument...





After checking out the Monument we made our way a couple blocks to the restaurant where we had reservations.... a nice fancy Scottish restaurant with beautiful table settings and a soothing atmosphere. We sat at our table and opened the menu.... and just stared at it... anything.... is there anything on this menu we could possibly stomach? It had a few options but most of us were not in the mood to pay 20 pounds (40 dollars) a plate to TRY something and hope for the best. We talked about leaving but weren't sure what to do. Then Doug said..."Is it harder to swallow our pride or Duck?" We agreed it was harder to swallow duck and politely excused ourselves from the restaurant. We had already seen a Hard Rock Cafe and immediately started back towards it. Ahhh, that's better. Big juicy burgers, loud loud music and the only restaurant with refillable drinks in all of Edinburgh. Much more our style. We yelled to each other over the music, laughed about 80's music videos and drank our weight in soda. We even threw back a few desserts in record time as we hurried to make our Ghost Tour at 8:30. With full bladders and stomachs we raced back through the streets and over to the cement stairs leading back up to the Royal Mile. The first few of us chased a mouse up the stairs. But that 'us' would not include me. I waited at the bottom of the stairs for the mouse to be completely out of sight before I even started. Yuck!

We made it to the start of the Ghost Tour a minute before it started. We heard the history of Scotland and the Castle of Edinburgh from a young Scottish fellow with the best accent ever. Then he took us through the graveyard and stopped at several tombstones to tell more stories. He said the graveyard used to be a valley but now is a hill... and that we were standing on more dead bodies piled on top of each other than any other graveyard. That's of course why it is so haunted... lots and lots of spirits. At the very end they had us all step inside a dark cell-like graveyard with an iron gate. All 30 of us piled in as he finished with his scariest and most haunting stories. He told us if our temperature dropped 10 degrees then to just step out of the way of the poltergists columns'... and when we were all on edge, someone in a dark cape jumped in front of the door and yelled at us. Of course we all screamed even though we were expecting just that. I even thought there might be someone on the tour that was in on it so I kept scoping everyone out for anyone looking suspicious. It was not the spooky ghost tour some were hoping for but it was fun nonetheless. Creepy deep cemetaries at night -- still spooky. Another great day.

PS: I'm impressed if you read all this. I know you must think this is the vacation that never ends... but I only have one more day to do and I want to get it all written down in detail while I still remember it!