England 8-11>14-09

London 8-11-09

After much anticipation the day finally arrived to leave for Europe. My parents and Annie dropped me off at Sky Harbor airport where we met the Ballors for our final good bye. With much excitement Grace and I checked our bags, got through security, and waited for our plane. We took a 10 hour flight to London on British Airways. The service was great. We all had our own personal touch-screen tv to choose whatever we wanted to watch. So I watched the new Star Trek movie which my mom has been raving about, and I really enjoyed it. After the movie I took my brother's advice and slept the rest of the way to prevent jet-lag. When Grace and I arrived the plane was to big to go into a normal terminal so they bussed everyone on the plane to the customs/baggage claim area. Once we got our bags we went straight to the metro and took it to downtown London to find our hotel and our other friends. We got off of our stop and walked for a while and ended up having to ask directions to the hotel. We happened to ask a real-estate agent who knows the area really well and gave us really good directions. We made it to our hotel and the manager said that Teresa and JP had come by earlier this morning but it was too early for them to go in the room. So he gave us the keys and we unloaded our stuff and got situated, and took a quick nap. Teresa and JP showed up a little bit later and we all relaxed a little more then went out. We first stopped by a Pub were JP and I enjoyed a two for one burger deal and a beer, and the girls had a meat pie with a beer as well. We then took the Subway to Buckingham Palace. It was a really neat sight. The Iron fences laid with gold and the stationary royal guards were really cool to see. From there we went off on the subway and went to see Big Ben, Westminster Abby and the "Eye of London". All of which were amazing. We then took off to the London Tower and the London Bridge and called it a day. We headed back to the hotel and got ready for bed and printed our bus passes for our trip to Dover!

Dover 8-12-09

We all woke up around 7:30 and went downstairs for a nice breakfast of fried eggs, beans and toast. Once we finished we went back up to our room and started to pack up. We checked out and set off for Dover. On our way to the bus station I stopped by a hardware store and had to purchase a hack-saw because of a luggage lock that appeared on my bag which I did not have a key for and have no idea how it got there. It happened to be locking the pocket with my orthotics… Knowing I was going to be walking a lot it was worth paying 3 pounds for a saw to cut it off. After that we took the subway to the main bus station and waited for our buss to Dover. We took the bus thro

ugh the country side stopped in Canterbury and ended up in Dover about three hours later. Along the way there was about a mile stretch that smelled so foul, it was some sort of dairy farm or something the bus reeked because all the windows were open because there was no air-conditioning. It wasn't too bad though it was just a scent to remember. Once we arrived to Dover we had to take another bus closer to our hotel. We really had no idea where our hotel was we just had an address so we asked a guy at the bus station who looked it up for us. We got directions and walked to our hotel which was right on the coast. We unpacked our stuff took a little nap then went off to explore around. The Grounds around the hotel

were really nice. It was connected to a big green patch of grass and a walkway down to the beach. We made our way down to the beach and just took the beauty in for a while. It was slightly overcast with a small breeze. The water was pretty calm splashing against the rocks. Instead of sand like I am use to the beach was covered in small and large rocks that were super smooth from the waves of the water. After a w

hile we walked down the pier and found a fish and chips shop. These fish and chips had to be some of the best I have ever had! They were so fresh and so huge. They filled up a big basket of fries covered them in salt and vinegar then put the huge battered fish on top. It was amazing. We ate our fish on the beach and head back to the hotel. Later on we went to explore the city. We found a small fair going on but non of us really wanted to spend our cash so we went on. We stopped by a few pubs but never went in. We ended up stopping by a store and picking up some food and stuff and went back to the hotel where we relaxed the rest of the evening.

Dover 8-13-09

Grace and I got up around eight and secured our bus tickets to get to Cambridge. Later we got out our peanut butter and jelly we bought from the store the previous night and made breakfast. The hotel breakfast was about 9 pounds which comes out to be about 15 bucks so we improvised and had a great inexpensive meal. We then got ready for the day. So Grace, Teresa, JP, and I took the bus back to Dover (our hotel was in Folkestone about 20 min away by bus) Once we got off the bus we treked up the hill to Dover castle. Grace didn't really want to go in so she went off while the rest of us paid the entrance fee to get in. The Castle of Dover was an amazing structure! The lady behind me in line was saying that the reason why it wasn't bombed in WWII was because Hitler wanted to use it as a stronghold. Once I got inside the walls I could see why. It was a multilayer structure with thick stonewalls. I went up into the archer's tower where it had a series of long diagonal windows for the archers to attack. It was really cool. I kept along the perimeter and it had about 50 posts for cannons along the walls of the outer rim of the castle. It also had pads of cement put there during WWII for antiaircraft guns. As I went deeper into the castle I saw more and more the grandness of the structure. I climbed up one of the

main towers of the castle and could see the entire city of Dover and also the white cliffs of Dover. I could also see France int the distance across the English channel! Once we got out of the castle we met back up with Grace and she told us of her adventure hiking up the hill through a sheep pasture and seeing the cliffs of Dover. From there she lead us up the road where she came from to the sheep pasture. We got an amazing view of the Dover castle. We continued hiking up the road dodging the cars driving on the "wrong" side of the road. Along the way we picked crab apples and blackberries to snack on. We finally made it to the cliffs. What an amazing site that was. We took a ton of pictures and set ourselves down on the side of the cliff for a picnic. We whipped out our PB&J and made some more sandwiches. While we were sitting there I pulled out my ipod put it on full blast and played "Cliffs of Dover" by Eric Johnson WHILE ON THE CLIFFS OF DOVER! (what a great moment-haha). We all took a nap after our lunch and listened to the waves crash beneath us. From our spot we could see a trail that led down the side of the cliff to a small beach. We decided to take it on and explore down the side. We made it down the trail and it lead us to some old WWII wartime tunnels inside the side of the cliff. I walked though them all and there were little century posts with rotted out steal bunker type rooms. It was really cool. After the tunnels we went down to the beach where JP got into his bathing suit and took a dip in the English channel. We could clearly see France in the distance, it was just amazing. We had a couple hours until the sun went down so we made our way up the cliff and back to the city. We walked all around looking for our bus station. We stopped in a few stores along the way and JP picked up a UK flag as a souvenir. We made it to our buss and head back to Folkestone. Where we had dinner and drinks and went back to the hotel. This was a great day well spent.

Travel from Dover to Cambridge 8-14-09

The next morning I was woken up by the birds outside. At about 6:30 a.m. they made a lot of noise and I couldn't fall back asleep so I packed up my stuff took a shower and posted my pictures online. We had to check out by eleven and our bus was around one to go to Cambridge. So we got our stuff together and checked out of the hotel. We found out that our host in Scotland went to the hospital and couldn't have us anymore, the Brekan's cottage is being used and all the hostels online are completely booked! So Grace and I found a campsite and decided to search for a tent. We went all over town and couldn't find one anywhere… So JP and I dropped our bags off with the girls at the bus station while we continued to search the city. We stopped by a salvation army and they didn't have one but a man in the store told us he knew of a camping store called MASH. So he lead us all the way there (I was a little wary about this, I thought he might try to rob us or something so I was on my guard) In the end he lead us successfully to a camping store. We were really thankful. We found our tent and got some camping gear. We made it back to the bus station and left for London to make our connection to Cambridge. Unfortunately along the way we ran into some serious traffic and our bus was late to London… We missed our connection and they made us purchase another ticket. It was a real mess but we made it to Cambridge and got to our hotel which was really nice. Once we unpacked our bags we went for a search for food. We walked straight for two hours and couldn't find anywhere serving food. We eventually found a grocery market and got some food. We took it back to the hotel and went to bed after eating to get some good rest before our journey to Scotland.