All good things come to an end...

Final post, a little bit too late, but I was told that I need to recap the last week of the trip to add closure =)

So we were in the Netherlands and it was great.... the weather was wonderful and we visited most of the country one day, Amsterdam the next, and then Utrecht (the city we were staying in) on the third. Those pictures are in the album that is at the end of this post.

Then on that Monday (May 5) we went to England!! My nephew Christopher met us at the ferry port at 6:30 AM and drove us around the area. The first day was spent hanging out at the Air Force Base and in Cambridge. The Air Force Base is about an hour outside of London, so on Tuesday we went into London and spent the day in there. We hit up all of the highlights... Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, London Eye, Covent Gardens, Green Park, British Museum, Hyde Park, and of course a West End show. We didn't go inside too many of the sights because of the budget issue, but we were sure to ride the London Eye (which was really spectacular!) and we saw a lot of great sites by walking from one place to another.

At the end of this night, we saw Spamalot in the West End theater district. It was such a good show!! Very well produced and the theater was beautiful, too. I had the soundtrack but had never seen the production so that was really exciting and fun to me.

The next day was very low-key. We started out the morning by going to a viewing area to watch the Air Force planes practice taking off and landing. It was interesting... some of the local people make a sport out of this. They are there faithfully every day with their binoculars and paper and they record which planes are used when and for how long and stuff. It was really cool to watch though because they were taking off right over our heads. Then we went to Kelli's apartment and watched movies and TV for the rest of the day. It was very relaxing.

On the next day, we drove out to Stonehenge. It was about 3 hours from the AFB so we had a bit of a drive in the morning, but Stonehenge was worth it! It cost a bit of money to get close to the rock formation, but it was really cool and interesting how the rocks were so big and clearly not naturally from that area, but nobody really knows how and why they were there. People seem to think it was for some type of religious ceremony. Scientists estimate that they were put together 5,000 years ago. Wow!

Then we drove to Windsor to see the Windsor castle. When we got there, we couldn't miss the castle because it was so large and beautiful, but when we got to the entrance we looked at the cost per person to get in and probably would have laughed in the employee's face if it would have been an appropriate reaction. It was way too expensive, so we walked around the outside and then spent a little time walking around the streets of Windsor.

The next day we went to the airport to leave and come back home. Chris drove us two hours to get to Heathrow Airport and our plane was to take off at 2:30. We arrived with plenty of time, said our goodbyes to Chris and then waited in the airport. We took off about 15 minutes late because of a traffic jam on the runway, and we had been told it would take 9 hours. Well, even with our late start, we got to the airport an hour early!! That was wonderful... we got off the plane and had carried all of our luggage with us so we didn't have to wait at baggage claim, which meant we were able to cruise through customs and security because everyone else was still waiting. Funny side story... the customs immigration forms give you two lines for "Countries you have visited prior to US arrival", and Lissie and I didn't have enough room!! It was really funny.

Anyways, my parents and Andy were waiting for me when we came into the main area of the airport. It was great to see my family again, and it was definitely a relief to see familiar faces!! Then Andy came to Duluth for a day and spent time with me and my family.

One piece of bad news was that on the ride back from the London airport, Christopher got into a bad car accident. He is still in the hospital today, over a week later, and is being flown to Texas tomorrow for more surgery. I feel like it is a little tiny bit my fault, and I know I shouldn't feel that way, but I still feel awful that he was driving back from bringing me to the airport. Anywho, if you could pray for him and a quick recovery, that would be great. If you're not already being kept up-to-date and would like to be, just let me know.

But anyways, that was my adventure in a nutshell. Now we have to create a final scrapbook project for one of our classes which will be a huge project that I haven't started but probably should. It has also been insane to think about the trip that I just completed... it has been a little over a week now, so things have started to sink in a little bit and I can't really wrap my mind around all that we did. I would LOVE to share more stories with you if you want to hear them, and I have more than enough pictures to show, so please just let me know!!

But until then, this is my final album of the highlights of the trip. This covers the rest of Paris, Netherlands, and England. I hope you enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000718&l=db6a7&id=1273320032

Photos...

No real blog entry now... not much to say since the last one. We left Paris and are now in the Netherlands with Andy's family's family's friend's family.... ask me sometime.
Anyways, I really like it here, too. They drove us all around today showing us nearly the whole city and tomorrow we are going to Amsterdam.
But I put up pictures from Siena, Pisa, Zurich, and Paris. Enjoy!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000699&l=84f3f&id=1273320032