Bed Bath & Beyond

Yeah, we have visitors! Rachelle and Ira arrived early Friday morning and boy have we had loads of fun. Because our car doesn't have very much leg room, Ira sat in the front passenger side--which gave him a front row seat to the crazy UK driving! Hoping to get them over jetlag as quickly as possible they decided they wanted to keep moving the whole day.

Allyson took them into downtown London Friday to see all the major sites. They started out at Buckingham Palace to see the Queen (and of course, the guards changing...shifts, not clothes ;) ).
The palace grounds are also starting to bloom. Can you believe it? Blooms in Feburary!
They then headed off to see Big Ben, Westmister Abbey, and Parliament Square. I was able to join them in the afternoon at the open air market where we all enjoyed some authentic fish and chips! (Chelle even liked them!) After that we swung by St. Paul's Cathedral and then on to the Tower Bridge where we finished our afternoon of touring.
Ira & I enjoyed messing around with the hands-on demos in the engine room of Tower Bridge.
By this point, Rachelle & Ira were beyond themselves with exhaustion. They finally fell asleep on the train ride back to Staines. (This is the "bed" part of Bath & Beyond--nighty-night!)
Saturday was another great day together! We headed out to Stonehenge which was much better than we thought it would be. We had a lot of fun goofing off there and listening to the audio tours they had there - or the abbreviated version of the audio tour that Jared summarized for those of us with a shorter attention span.
Stonehenge really raised a lot of questions: "What were these stones used for?" "How long have they been here?" "How did they get here?"
Jared & Ira pondered on these questions far too long!

After that we headed on to the town of Bath. We were surprised how large the town was. We swung by the river Avon and snapped a picture there and then we headed off to catch a glimpse of the Roman Baths.
Aren't the scarf and hats that Rachelle made for us so cute! Thanks, Chelle!

We didn't quite make it to the baths before we decided to stop and see a street performer. He was great and so much fun to watch! We're starting to wonder what it is about the way that Jared looks. This is because he got pulled out of the crowd to help out again. (That's twice in one week.) Check out the video I took of him helping out the performer with one of his acts!

After the show and snatching a bite to eat at a local pub we finally stopped by the Roman Baths. Unfortunately, without paying for the full fledged tour, you could only get a little view of the Baths. I guess you get what you pay for, right?
We thought about swinging by one of the little Cotswold towns on our way home, but decided not to for the sake of time. It's a good thing too, because we still got home pretty late.

We've really enjoyed having Rachelle and Ira around! Now they are in Paris for a couple of days and then down to Italy for a day or two before we go down to join them!

Stay tuned . . .