We had a fun weekend! On Saturday, we met Ricky pretty early and took a taxi to the Slough train station. From there, we caught a train to Oxford! Phillip saw Oxford University years ago, but just for a really short amount of time and was anxious to spend more time there. We were both excited because several scenes from Harry Potter were filmed there!!!! We paid to take a tour, which was neat. We took pictures on a staircase in Christ Church College that was in Harry Potter! That was cool!!!! Then we walked to the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and paid to go up to the tower overlook on top. They only let a few people go at once, and we quickly realized why!!!! There were 142 (I think that’s what they said) stairs to the top. The last 50 or so stairs were in a very narrow round section, with tiny stairs spiraling up. There were ropes to hold onto so you could keep your balance easier. There was only room for one person at a time!!! That made it very difficult if someone was trying to go up while someone was trying to go down. One person had to backtrack!!!! The walkway on the top was the same way…only room for one person!!! It didn’t go all the way around in a full circle, which meant once you got to the end, you had to backtrack to the stairs, while trying to squeeze past people. Yikes! It was fun though. We had an amazing view of the city and we got some neat pictures! (Good thing we went there before I got too big…there’s no way I’d fit later on in this pregnancy! Hahaha!!)
We saw Bodleian Library (where several more Harry Potter scenes were filmed) and Radcliffe Camera and then had lunch at the Patisserie Valerie. It was a bakery with grilled sandwiches for lunch. I had an avacodo, tomato, mozzarella, and pesto sandwich. Delicious!!! We gave in and splurged for desserts too. Phillip had a Whoopie Pie (round chocolate cake) and I had an apple tart. So good!!!!
Then we went to the Pitt Rivers Museum – a free museum. We weren’t expecting that much since it was free, but WOW we could have spent all day in there. The place was incredible. It had everything!!!! Phillip’s favorite was the dinosaur section of course. I loved the butterfly collection! Neat place!!!
We took a bus to Woodstock next, which was about 9 miles away. We got to ride on double decker busses!!!! I was so excited!!! We rode on the top part of course! The bus dropped us off right by Blenheim Palace, which is what we wanted to see. We took a tour of the palace and got to see the actual room that Winston Churchill was born in! Neat! The palace was beautiful but I think we enjoyed walking around the grounds just as much! There were trails, flowers, gardens, water fountains, etc. everywhere!!! I was so excited about the fields of daffodils…beautiful!!! We could have wandered around all day! Bad news for us though – the grounds closed at 6:00. We thought the exhibits and everything would close at 6:00 and figured you’d still be able to walk out the palace gates even if it was after 6:00…right???? WRONG! We got to the gates just a few minutes after 6:00 and realized we were locked in!!! Locked in the palace grounds! Oh my! We saw how we needed to get out – there was a road for cars to leave and several cars were driving out that way. The worst part was, we had just been down that road and walked back to get to the gates! It was at least a half hour walk down that road and then we’d have to walk the whole way back on the street to get to the bus station, which was just outside the palace doors. UGH!!! We started walking and a car pulled up beside us. The guy said “get in.” That’s all he said! We all just kind of stopped and then Ricky said “Are you going to take us to the exit?” The guy said yes. He was a Palace worker. We didn’t know what to do!!! We weren’t totally sure if we could even walk out, so we trusted him. He asked where we were headed and we said to the bus station. He dropped us off right at the bus station! Thank goodness there are still nice people in this world!!! (We really wonder if maybe the workers are supposed to watch for walkers on the way out???? Anyway, we were really grateful for him!!!)
We had to wait 40 minutes for the bus though and it was COLD and DARK by that point. There were 3 other girls from the Palace waiting with us. We were all freezing!!!! We took the bus back to Oxford area and walked to the train station. We were hoping to get fast food dinner to go and take it on the train with us, but didn’t have time because the train would be leaving soon! We got there with about 3 minutes to spare! (We certainly didn’t want to have to sit and wait for the next train!!!) We were starving so had some snacks (that we had packed in our backpack) on the train!
The train dropped us off in Slough, we went grocery shopping at Tesco, and called for a taxi. We got home around 10:30pm I think! We fixed a really quick dinner/snack because we were starving at that point! LONG, TIRING, but FUN, AMAZING day!!!!
We were exhausted, so slept till 9:00 on Sunday. When we got up, we realized it was really 10:00! It was our weekend to “Spring forward” and we totally forgot about it! So we got a really late start! We decided there wasn’t time to go into London like we had considered. Instead, Phillip and I took a taxi to Slough and took a train to Windsor. We really enjoyed just walking around Windsor and going in all the little shops. We took pictures in the candy store this time! That place is so cool! One of the bakeries has “candy cakes.” They are so pretty that we had to take a picture of the display case!!! We shared a cupcake that we had been eyeing for awhile. Phillip also bought me a hat and I absolutely LOVE it!!!!! Yes, I realize it’s very weird. Weird is normal here! These hats are actually popular here! We were home by 6pm for a lazy evening. Our legs were actually sore from so much walking/climbing narrow stairs the day before, so it was nice to just relax for a few hours!
Now that the time changed, we are back to how we started out: 5 hours ahead of Tina, 6 hours ahead of our parents, and 7 hours ahead of Sara. YUCK!!! The past 2 weeks seemed so much better, with one less hour separating us! The time change makes it very difficult to talk to people on the phone!!! (We do have our Vonage set up here, just like in St. Maarten, so at least we have a phone though!!!!)
We bought our first England baby item at Tesco on Saturday! It’s a cute little seat that was on sale during their baby event!!! We were really hoping to find a bassinette at the baby event too, but no luck. We did see some in a shop in Windsor though, so we could always get one there for 60 Pounds if we have to!
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