Trip to London ~ Part II

We had a couple more days to spend with family.  It's been great so far as I've had a chance to meet my cousins and Charlie has had a chance to meet his cousins too!

Today, we headed out to Litchfield.  Started the day with some street performers:

And then, heading over to the cathedral:

And wow, what a cathedral is it!

Beautiful!!

And by chance, the bells were ringing when we were there:

Photo op with my aunt.  It was a windy day with our hair flying all over the place!

The inside of the Cathedral was just as impressive.  Check out how HUGE this door is!

And look at the amazing patterns on this floor.  Woah!

And of course, every cathedral has amazing stained glass:

On the way out, I noticed that one of the houses - the white one to the right - has slanted walls on the 2nd floor. How odd is that!

In the town square or marketplace, I learned that there has been locals that were burnt on the stake or had their guts cut out. These were dated like back in the 16th century. Yikes!

My cousin Simon takes Charlie to McDonalds.  Charlie seems to like their chicken nuggets better??!

Nearby, we visit the book store of Samuel Johnson:

He was the first person to create the dictionary in 1755!!

And I'm not sure if you can see it, but to the left is the tiniest dictionary:

I guess I should have held something else up as a reference point.  But if my memory serves me right, it was probably only about an inch tall!

The use of timber in this house is amazing. It's used here to create the slant on the wall/ceiling:

Off to dinner and of course, there's a boba place right next door to the restaurant.  There's so many choices!

The next day, my late uncle Tony's son and his family comes by the house for a quick visit. He brings us some typical English treats to try out. Not too bad! 

Although, I always thought that mince pies had meat in it, but it's really just fruits and stuff.

We take off that afternoon with my other aunt and we pick up my cousin's little kid.  Indigo is the cutest thing!

We decided to take him to a fair not too far away on train:

Isn't he the cutest?!

It's starting to drizzle.  The weather overall hasn't actually been too bad considering we've already been here a few days with mostly sunny days:

Indi playing a fishing game:

And then we have Charlie take him on a little train ride:

Charlie will never let me forget this as Indi continues to pull the bell in the train car the entire time while the train is moving. Ha ha!

Finally on the bus back to drop Indi off:

Once we're at my (youngest) aunt's home...

Woah... we've never seen a bathroom in a bedroom like this before!

And meet "Aga" - the stove that's always on, and heats up the entire house all day:

And so obviously, the kitchen is where everyone hangs out in:

A puzzle to keep Charlie off his phone - at least for a little while:

After spending the night, we take a walk with my cousin to a pub to look for lunch.  It's mostly farmland here and hence, the quiet streets:

Okay, this was a little weird.  Not because there's a telephone booth here but the booth has been transformed inside to hold a defibrillator!

I totally forgot to take a photo during lunch!  Charlie actually ended up having a burger and I went with a pizza. I guess we missed "American" food. LOL!!  Although, we should have tried those mushy peas the other day at the Celebration of Life.  It definitely looked "interesting".  LOL!!

Time to get on the bus to head back towards Heathrow airport:

More phone time while we wait:

And actually, we were suppose to get on our bus which only would have taken 2 hours - but the driver wouldn't let us on because there was no luggage space under the bus.  Sheesh!!  And so we had to wait almost another hour before the next bus arrived. And thankfully he took care of us (and another lady and another older couple), but this bus ride was going to take almost 4 hours instead of just 2. YIKES!!

I'm not sure why I'm smiling but I guess at this rate, I'm just happy to be on any bus heading towards Heathrow!  Thankfully, our flight is not until the next day.

We drive by the Carlsberg distillery, which immediately made me think of my late dad. He drank that all the time:

So, okay... I was obviously very tired.  Cheeky Charlie!!!

We get to the train station and now we have to find our way to the airport, as we need to get a shuttle from there to our overnight hotel.  This was a cute installation - the screen is tracking how fast you are walking. Clever!

Charlie has discovered his favorite hot chocolate!

And of course, we've discovered M & S (Marks & Spenser) supermarket and we buy some goodies for dinner AND lots of other goodies to bring home :-)

We get a good night's rest and the next morning... yup, another cup of hot chocolate. Ha ha!

It was weird but Charlie has some sort of rash on his cheeks.  Still not sure what caused it?!

Thankfully it didn't flare up too much more.  

Okay, on the airplane, ready to head home!

Charlie was a great travel companion XOX

8 hours later (or less actually)... we walk through the doors after picking up our luggage and within minutes of seeing Bobby, it was a quick purchase at McDonald's before the ride home. Talk about spoiling Charlie!

Okay, I was hungry too :-)  I've been doing mostly the filet-o-fish though.  I just can't eat those burgers!

Again, I'm so glad we made this trip to pay tribute to my late uncle Tony.  We didn't get to see London at all but it was actually really nice to spend all that time with family.  Hopefully we'll get a chance to see everyone again with Graham and Bobby.  In time!