And then I said...: BEST Vacation EVER recap...Finally! (PART 1)

Please be patient with me as I give you a bit of a recap into my trip.
Here we go, with Part 1:
I know it has been a long time coming, (or maybe it is just the guilt of not blogging in general)but I now present to you a recap of the best vacation ever (official title) in England (and a hop over to Paris).
I started off with a pretty uneventful trip over to England. This is exciting for me, because I love traveling and love it even more when it goes smoothly. I arrived, went through customs, and went to find my good friend, Spencer. I looked around and couldn't find him and had a moment of baby-panic, but then I heard my name over the loud speaker, telling me to meet Spencer at the :insert mumbling here: oh great. So I go to the information desk, and they point me to the "meeting place". I kid you not, there is a big sign that says MEETING PLACE. love it! And lo and behold, that is where we met! YAY! We dropped off my stuff and then headed back into the city. I rode the tube (love it!) and as we came out of the tube station, this was the first thing I saw:

Let me tell you, not too shabby of a way to start a trip! We toured around the city a bit, hitting the famous spots, like Buckingham Palace, where THE royal kiss happened:

I am grateful that I missed all the craziness from the wedding by a week, but still got to see lots of memorabilia from the wedding. We went to Trafalgar Square, stopped in at the National Gallery, where we saw performance art people, strolled through St. James Park, my first of many strolls in parks that made me fall in love love love with England, and realize that America is missing out on the awesome parks!There was a bit of traffic on the way back to Thetford, but it was nice to have that time to catch up and talk. It was a little strange riding on the other side of the car and driving on the other side of the road, but I adjusted pretty quickly.

We got to spend the day with Spencer's parents! We headed to this beautiful place, and had a lovely time.

The grounds at the London Temple are beautiful! We then headed to Dover...as in the white cliffs of Dover:

There is an amazing fort there, one of the oldest in England. There are secret wartime tunnels from World War 2 and it is just a lovely place. We saw France! We had dinner on the way home, and there was a menu with Fajitas on it, and the thing that made me laugh was that there was a pronounciation guide! (FA-HEE-TAS) I guess we take it for granted.

After church, we headed to the Ely Cathedral. It is BEAUTIFUL! We were able to take a tour of the Octagon Tower. I forgot that I don't really like heights until our guide, Doug, started describing the details of the tour. Luckily, I survived!

This last picture is the view DOWN from the inside of the top part of the tower. I barely looked down...it was more of a reach over the edge and snap the picture moment. Luckily, Spencer didn't make too much fun of me! What a great friend!
Random movie trivia for you: In "The King's Speech" there is a scene at Westminster Abbey before his coronation BUT it was actually filmed at the Ely Cathedral, and they have the chair there...SO I sat myself down in the king's seat! :) (geek out moment because I LOVE that movie!)

Our next stop was to Bourghley House...also known as Rosings Park to you Pride and Prejudice fans (the newer one). OHMYGOODNESS! It was so beautiful and ornate. I didn't realize that royalty would just pop over to visit people and stay there, and so there were rooms that were decorated just for the kings and queens!

The gardens there are magnificent. They had the Garden of Surprises, which was more geared towards children...there were fountains they could play with, old lawn games and just a place for them to have fun!

There was also the Statue Garden. I thought it would be geared towards period statues, but oh no. They were quite modern. Some of them were just odd. BUT the gardens themselves were LOVELY!