Day 7 & 8

Another day where we woke up to the sweet aroma of a British breakfast. Grandma Shore is the best!! Once we got ready we drove to Great Witley Court which isn't far from her house. It's an old plantation type house that actually burned down years ago but the ruins are still there and the church attached to it was fine and actually still in use. And, the gardens are still kept up so it all looks beautiful. We went in to the church first and were the only ones there so we had plenty of time to walk around and take pictures. While we were there a tour guide showed up and told us some very interesting facts about it and it was really cool to have that private tour. The ruins were very cool. Especially to imagine what might have been where. Anyway, here are my pictures from that:























Of course Emily has more pictures where we pretended to be statues and such. She finally downloaded them to her computer but I haven't copied them yet. I'll get those from her when she gets back from California.

Anyway, because I enjoyed Great Witley Court so much she thought that I would really like to see the Chatsworth house. I asked her what that was and she said Pemberly...you know, Mr. Darcy's house, Pride & Prejudice...YES PLEASE!!! SO excited. It was about 2 1/2 hours away in Darbyshire though so we hauled butt there. It's actually owned by the Duke and Dutchess of Darbyshire and they currently live there but they have a portion of the house open to the public so we can see what a house like Great Witley looked like in it's prime. AMAZING. Oh, and they had some of the Owls used in Harry Potter on display. Very cool. Here are some of my pictures from the grounds and the trip there. I don't have many...of course Emily has more:










Then we headed to stock up on candy you can't get in the US. We bought SO much it had to weigh about 10 pounds. Then we met her friend Gary for dinner at a pub which had some DELICIOUS food. LOVE the food. Then home to pack. Which leads me in to our finaly day in the UK.

You'd think our flying day would be uneventful, but not for us. We bought so much stuff while we were there that we were worried about the bag weight limit. And since I only brought a small bag with me I had to borrow a suitcase to get everything back. We ended up with a rude check-in lady and my bag had to be weighed three times before it was under the limit. The 2nd time it was only .2 over but she still wouldn't let it through without me paying $50. So Emily and I had to shove all the chocolate and candy in our carry on bags to get it under. Oh wait, it's not over yet. Just to be extra rude, the lady decided to weigh our carry on bags too. Apparently there is an 18 pound limit for carry on. Emily said she's never had her bags weighed before. Emily had two bags, one that was just under 18 pounds and then another that was 9. So she tried to make Emily leave one. Mine was just under 9 so Emily said she would just give it to me. The lady seemed irritated Emily was so smart about that but let us go. It was ridiculous and needless to say had us both irritated for a while. But we finally calmed down and had safe flights back.

So that's our trip. It was fabulous. More pictures to come from Emily's camera soon.

Day 6

This day I woke up to this view:


Just beautiful. I also woke up to the smells of a traditional British breakfast that Grandma Shore made for us. It was SO yummy and filling. After breakfast we headed to Wales so we could see the seaside. Before we got there though we stopped for a bite to eat (cause it was a long ride) in one little town. Here's my pictures from that:




The we drove some more and stopped for Ice Cream:


Then we made it to Seaside:






On the way back home I took a few other pictures of the scenery. I love it all!!












Once we got home we relaxed for a bit and then headed to a pub for dinner. It was a fancy pub too and the food was DELICIOUS!! Someone there had their huge St. Bernard in the bar area. I can't believe how big those dogs are. Anyway, that was basically our day.

Tomorrow...more country side and fancy houses...