Our flights from Melbourne to England went smoothly. We flew Qatar Airlines - knowing NOTHING about them. What a pleasant surprise and experience! Regardless of an uneventful journey, we arrived in the UK exhausted, only to find our rental car situation was a bit of a joke. After an hour of wasted time, we finally had a decent sized car, squeezed ourselves and bags in and drove to Swaffham. The roads were really quiet - I think we made it to Beryl's in record time. Of course, the Queen's Jubilee celebrations were in full force that day (it was the Sunday), so people had an extra long weekend and wouldn't be traveling until the Tuesday... We were greeted by the family, we ate and drank good food and wine, then crashed...
Our first week included Jubilee celebrations in my sister in law's (Sally) village and, my personal highlight, Jake's 10th birthday!! Sally and our nieces slept over the Tuesday night so they'd be there the morning of the 6th. Jake's day was full of food he wanted, cake he wanted, presents he was hoping for and a couple games of bowling. I think all in all it was a great day for him!
On Sunday 10th June, we moved on to Cambridge so John could get settled at the university -- after all, he is still on sabbatical and working pretty hard!! We lucked out with a gorgeous home about a mile from the city centre. To date, we've experienced the busy streets of Cambridge, gone punting on the Cam River (with gorgeous views of the College backs) and taken in a movie. Duxford Imperial War Museum is only 10 minutes down the M11, so I took the kids there to see the very impressive exhibits of planes (including the history of flying), American air museum, Battle of Britain and more! Over the weekend, we drove to Oxford to see our good friend Mark and meet his fiancee. Oxford was such a good time - it's a lively and beautiful city. We visited a museum, several fabulous pubs and went punting again! Mark and John did the honours so it was rather humourous at times!! Sadly we forgot our cameras, so I don't have pictures of the punting...
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| Cambridge |
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| Kings College |
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| Cam River |
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| In Oxford... |
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| Duxford - War Museum... (remaining photos) |
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| Concord (top & bottom) |
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| Inside the Concord |
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| A captured German plane |
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| Air raid shelters |
I am now in the process of enrolling in my classes for next fall. Reality is slowly sinking in. We've got about 6 weeks left before we fly back home... The time is going fast!!
"CIAO!" until my next post...
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