Travelodge Ashford

... about the same time as I spied Big Ben I saw the banners. As I moved closer, I could see the individual activists and the crowd below.

When I first arrived, there was not much activity on the roof. One or two were asleep, lying across the roof peak. Apparently, I had missed a rally earlier in the day. Most of the crowd took pictures. I admit I took a great many, mostly because I'm not sure ...

It's 4.15 and guess who can't sleep? Woke up at 4 in a bit of a panic after only going to bed at midnight because packing took so long. Ended up taking about half of my stuff out of my rucksack (mainly clothes) but I'm sure I'll get by. It hasn't actually hit me still that we are going, or how much I am going to miss even just hot showers and being in my bed, seeing my parents everyday etc, let alone how much I am going to miss all my people ...

... 19 year old.

New Experience #9: Being asked for directions by "the tourists" and actually being able to help them -- makes me feel O-so-very-superior. In reality, the way I learned my way around was by letting myself wander all over and get lost now and then.

New Experience #10: Walking in the steps of Roman soldiers, medieval knights and Charles Dickens.

today i was left behind with daddy - mummy had a work thing.

The day started off really well - managed a lie-in - first time in 4 months!! the she-devil normally drags me out of bed to force feed me at some ungodly hour - in fact its generally still DARK!!

So after a lazy start i was ready, around 11h00 for boob food. She'd left ...

... home made arcade games, many of which were very amusing and taking the **** out of all sorts of things - old people, artists,the superstitious.

From there we detoured to our very good friends, The Phillips, down in Southend; and played with the greatest kid the world has ever seen. From there it was a quick trip over the QE2 bridge into the land of milk and honey - Kent.

... selection of beers. It is still mind-boggling how expensive things are here. Can't wait to shop when we go back to Michigan for a visit. We need another sea shipment! We just got back from our evening walk and took some pictures of the crazy skies over Ramsgate. We had thunder and lightening (I love this) and hail before we left for the walk.

Hope all is well back in the States. Miss everyone a bunch. Can't wait to see you!

You should probably excuse this entire blog entry, due to the fact I'm writing this in September, three months after the actual trip. I'll forget certain things, probably get others completely wrong, so I'll just chuck a ton of photos in instead and hope that helps pass the time. So let's start off were we ended last time ...

... to Dover so they could catch the ferry over to the mainland. It was nice to get out for a drive. Dover is about 30 minutes south. Once he was on his way we spent most of the day prepping for Thanksgiving. We did drive to Chatham (almost London) to look at a car Wednesday night. Every day is costing us more money with this rental. We had found this car on Gumtree, a website much like Craigslist at home. The car is ...

... same flight over. Reading, Music, and a **** Lindsey Lohan movie kept me occupied while I was awake. Like I mentioned before I had an 8 hour layover awaiting me in London with no idea of what I'd do while there. Let's just say I got really really rediculously lucky meeting a girl named Nicole on my way out of the plane. She was one of the few people on the plane that looked about my age so I decided to find out what her plan was. Turned out she was going to be ...

... went to a small but magnificent castle of Bodiam, then to Dover, Stonehenge, Bath, Brighton and to London (twice). The lessons were in the mornings, so I would spend the entire afternoons strolling in the old town, searching for some old albums about Great Britain, chatting with people and learning. It was a great, totally carefree time. I'm thinking of repeating the same thing with French in France and/or Spanish in Spain.