Airports and International Flights: Take 3

For our first international flight with the kids, it went like this.  The second international flight was just Hannah and I, and it went like this.  This was the third.

When people would ask me if I was excited about our trip, I would say something along the lines of, "When we are in our bed in Florida, about to fall asleep, I'm going to get so excited about our trip."  This is totally true.  

Now, I'm not a pessimist.  I'm actually an optimist.  (Which, in hindsight, is maybe why I focused on the point when things will be going right instead of the possibility of the things that could go wrong.)  Anyway...

Overall, everything went just fine.  There were lots of delays, including before we even could leave London, but we all managed just fine.

I had found a Rescue Hero at a store in London despite the fact that they don't typically carry those here, and had set it away for the trip.  That morning before we even went to the airport I gave it to Jayce, and Captain Cuffs made the day's layovers much easier on my buddy.  

 

We flew from London to Texas, and then a short flight over to Florida, so international flight was around 10 hours.  It was pretty darn long, particularly since we typically fly to somewhere in the North like Chicago or Newark that only takes about 7 hours.  But I had an arsenal of activities to keep the kids busy, including some less typical ones like play dough, 

 

and mini 3-in-1 Lego sets.

 

 

Hannah slept once for about 45 minutes.  Jayce didn't sleep at all.  He was awake for 20 hours straight.

 

 

But we made it, all in one piece, and that night when I was falling asleep, I started to get really excited about our vacation.:)

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Flying to London

Last Wednesday, at 3:00 am, I got both kids up and loaded them into the car to drive to the airport and begin our move to London.  

It was the start of one of the worst days ever.  I'm not going to elaborate in any detail, but generally think about anything that you might have problems with when flying, with a 1 and 4 year old, on 2 international flights, while moving you and all of your possessions, and beginning your day on 3 hours of sleep.  Almost all of those hiccups occurred.  

I could not have done it without Chelsea, who was tireless in her enthusiasm, never complained, and kept me from unravelling on what was truly one of the most stressful days of my life.

But now that day is over and we are here.

 These are a few of the pics that I would have been instagramming if it were still an option to do so.

More soon.  We JUST got a reliable internet connection and I am eager to share pictures and happenings, particularly now that I am caught up on my sleep a bit. :)

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Edinburgh Part 2

This is the second part of our trip to Edinburgh. I wrote about our first day here.

Our second and third days in town involved a little bit of business, but mostly continuing to visit old places and take the walks that were a part of our everyday life not too long ago.

We started out day 2 at Chocolate Soup, which I gush about here if you missed, and then walked down to our old flat.

Chris used to make this walk every day of the week, about 45 minutes one-way, and it was a great way to unwind after a day of research and writing. The walk went down the famous Royal Mile, a mile-long road through the heart of the city from the Edinburgh Castle (which is beside New College, where he studied) to Holyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she is in town.

This little cobblestone road was at the bottom of the mile, just before the park.

Into the park,

Holyrood Palace on the right,

(view from the front,)

and onto Holyrood Park.

We loved living here. This beautiful picturesque park was always full of runners, people walking and playing with their dogs, and was lined with these incredible rolling hills.

This (below) was the view from our flat, and we would often talk about how we would probably never have a view like this again in our lives, at least not at such an affordable rate. We spent many mornings staring out at it over our breakfast, had names for the regular dog walkers and our favorite dogs.

The middle hill is the highest hill in Edinburgh, which you can see from most anywhere in town, Arthur's Seat.

We have lots of memories of Arthur's Seat, aside from staring at it over our coffee. We climbed it the first week we lived in Edinburgh, and every person who came to visit us in climbed it's as well and has pictures of themselves at the top. There is a road that goes around Arthur's Seat and I would often run this when I was training for the mini, since a lap around it and the park was about 3.5 miles. We watched the fireworks set off from there, including one year that a firework went awry and lit the brush beside it on fire.

This beautiful pond was located at the bottom of the hill and had swans living there year-round. I never got over how incredibly quaint this was.

The final path at the edge of the park that we took to our flat.

We walked down to our old flat, walked inside the building, then turned around and left, and I burst into tears.

I'm not really a "burst into tears" sort of person, but being back in a place that felt so familiar, so much like home, and so "us," and being confronted with the reality that our time there was over was a strange thing.

I wouldn't rather be living our old life instead of our current life, but it was a wonderful time filled with great memories worth celebrating, so that's what we did.

We walked back up to the center of town, stopping for lunch at our favorite pub along the way, and then headed to New College where Chris was doing an honorary lecture as a part the Templeton Award.

There was a reception afterwards and it was so funny to stand around and talk with everyone. We knew several of the PhD students since many of them were in their first year when Chris was finishing up. It was so funny to listen to their interactions with him now, several huddled around him in a little group, asking questions about their upcoming submissions and vivas, their job options and applications, on moving back to the US after being away, etc. It was funny because they were obviously very excited and impressed about the Templeton Award, and since Chris received it based on the research and writing that he had done in Edinburgh, they had a "one of us made it to the big leagues" sort of feel, and they were trying to soak up every last bit of information that he could give them.

This was a really nice part of the trip. It would have been strange to have come to Edinburgh strictly to sightsee, and done nothing at all with the University since New College is what brought us to Scotland in the first place. It seemed appropriate to stop there, not just to say hi, but to stop off for a bit of "work."

That evening, we had one of our favorite Edinburgh dates. We went to a great gourmet pizza place, walked over to Starbucks for coffee and then headed to the movies.

Dinner and a movie has always been a favorite date of ours since our dating days, and at first when we were feeling homesick, we loved that we could still do something familiar in a place that was unfamiliar. But it eventually became it's own thing, not a way to do our "date from back home," but a favorite date in Scotland. The food and movie parts were similar, but the rest was different.

First there was the leisurely dinner and walk to the theatre. Since British restaurants have no sense of urgency in bringing you your food and bill in a quick manner, we were forced (at first) to allow ourselves tons of time for both, which meant we had ample time to chat, enjoy our food and our dessert. The theatre is the nicest I've ever seen. The lower level is home to several expensive and high class bars and restaurants, which kind of sets the tone that your evening at the movies won't be surrounded by dozens of middle schoolers and standing on old red carpet with pictures of animated popcorn on it. Going to the movies was a classy affair. That is, until afterwards. Inevitably, the weather would turn while we were inside, and we would step out to rain completely unprepared. We then headed over to the bus stop, which was populated with other people leaving movies, shows and pubs. The bus ride home was ALWAYS interesting, and luckily it was a short ride.

The next day was our last, and my camera was firmly tucked away in the hotel room so that I could soak every second. We had a leisurely breakfast and then parted ways. Chris was meeting with his old advisor for lunch and I was going to lunch with my old colleagues. I rode the bus out to campus and met up with them in my old office. We went to lunch and had a perfect time, chatting, catching up, eating yummy food followed by yummy dessert. It felt like no time had passed at all. At the end of our lunch they walked towards the car and I cried as I walked towards town to meet Chris.

That evening we stayed with some of our best friends in town. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, this cozy little hamburger place called Bell's Diner. It only had 7 booths, you needed a reservation to get in, but it was completely unpretentious and absolutely delicious. We stayed with our friends that evening and stayed up far too late talking. First thing the next morning we were on our way back home.

It was a perfect trip. A beautiful and emotional reminder of a place and stage our lives that we loved. But we were thrilled to be headed home to a new life that we love, and one of our favorite parts of our new life, a little boy who we missed desperately and we couldn't wait to be reunited with.

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Visiting Edinburgh Part 1

If you were thinking that this post might never arrive, I was with you a little bit! But I've realized that if I don't just put the pictures together and write about our time in Edinburgh than I might never do it, so I'm finally doing it.

Anyway, on to our trip. As I said earlier this month, it has been 3 years since we moved home from Scotland, and I've been reflecting on that a lot lately, and shared some of my thoughts in this post. Though we love our new life, we regularly and fondly think back to our time back in Edinburgh, so when the opportunity presented itself for us to visit last year after our trip to Heidelburgh, we were right on board. We would be in Edinburgh for 3 days, and the only mandatory part of our agenda was a public lecture that Chris was giving at New College one afternoon. We decided that we wanted our trip to have as few commitments as possible so that we had ample time to roam the city and do or see whatever we felt like. And that is exactly what we did.

We chose our hotel based on it's close proximity to our favorite weekly breakfast date, the incredible coffee shop Chocolate Soup. We went there every morning, ordered our favorite old drinks and pastries, read the free paper and just soaked it all up. It was a perfect start.

We both realized pretty quickly (when planning the trip, and had this affirmed when we arrived), that all that we really wanted from our trip was to re-live some of the small pieces of our old life that we really missed. So after breakfast we wandered around the city. We headed up to New College, where Chris had studied, because we wanted to see some of his friends who were up there working, and because we wanted to walk back through a building that had been an important part of our time there.

So that's what we did.

I had conflicted feelings about taking pictures while we were out everywhere.

We have a better camera than when we lived there before so a part of me wanted to document some of the places that we loved so much in a higher quality.

Also, since we'd been away for a while I wanted to get a few shots of things that I had never thought to take pictures of while we still lived there.

However, having my camera out all the time and snapping pictures on the streets made me feel like a tourist even though I still felt like a local. Honestly, as soon as we started walking around we both felt like we had been transported back in time and did still live there. So having my camera out and being in awe of everything was kind of strange and I didn't like it.

I ended up taking pictures on the first walk on our first day, and once on the second day, and other than that left it tucked safely away in the hotel room.

For lunch we made our way down one of our favorite streets to the best pizza shop in town and another one of our weekly loves,

Mamma's Pizzeria.

We have lots of fun memories of this restaurant and brought everyone who came to visit us to Mammas, so it was a necessary stop.

Again, we got our usual, ate it happily, and once again discussed how strange it was to feel as though nothing had changed.

After lunch we headed up to the City Center,

past our first flat,

and down to Princes Street Gardens to soak up the beautiful weather and scenery.

We stopped in a few of our favorite shops across the street, and then headed back to our hotel. On our way, we passed one of my favorite hair salons that had a sign out saying they had openings right then, so I decided to run in for a haircut and Chris went back to the hotel for a nap.

If you're thinking "you went and got a haircut?" I know, it may seem a little odd. But one of the great things about Edinburgh was that there were so many students in the city and so many places that wanted their business, that you could often find incredible deals like the one. Basically, if this salon had some openings right then (I can't remember what they were called now, standby, I think?), then you could get a haircut for half off. But it was a really upscale salon, where they started you off with a scalp massage and pads over your eyes, served you cappuccino or wine while you were getting a trim, and HALF OFF of your appointment meant you still paid less than at a cheap place!! So even with the exchange rate, I still paid less for this upscale hair cut than I would have at home. Score!! It also kind of made me feel like, "Oh it's just a normal day in Edinburgh, we went for a walk this morning and then I'm getting a haircut this afternoon." :)

That night we had reservations at this incredible restaurant that we always wanted to go to, but were saving for a very special occasion and never made it, the Witchery.

The Witchery is located right beside the Edinburgh castle, and it has a beautiful gothic/romantic atmosphere, and incredible food. It was wonderful. In light of us having a day doing things that felt pleasantly normal and common, it was a nice reminder that this was a special occasion for us. Chris' Templeton Award was a result of the research and writing that he had done in Edinburgh, so it felt just right to celebrate this honor at the best restaurant in Edinburgh.

It was a great day.

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