Friday, April 17, 2020

Europe 2019 - Edinburgh


 Now that we are all sequestered at home because of the coronavirus, I realized I never wrote up our Europe trip from last summer, 2019.  And now I have time to do that!  So I will do a post for each place, since there's a lot to share, including photos.

Griffin and I headed out in mid-July to visit Edinburgh, Paris, and London in two and a half weeks.  Our first stop was technically Amsterdam, as we changed planes to Edinburgh.  Griffin was thrilled about this, as he has been studying Dutch using Duolingo, a language app on his phone.  He also has Dutch heritage through Doug's family and wants to visit the Netherlands someday, beyond Schiphol airport!  He had a lot of fun trying to read signs in the airport as we hurried to make our flight.  We made it with a few minutes to spare.

Griffin in the Amsterdam airport wearing his SC Heerenveen jersey (Dutch football team)

Once we arrived in Edinburgh, we had some time before we could move into our AirBnb, so we put our suitcases in lockers at the bus station (which took us a while to find, since there was a lot of construction).  We wandered around Princes Street, which is a main shopping street, bought new SIM cards for our phones so we could use them without it costing a fortune (5GB for £15 each, not bad!), and found a bookstore (of course).

Edinburgh Castle from below

Agatha Christie is still popular!

Our AirBnb was an apartment just a few minutes by bus or taxi outside of the downtown area, a cute place where the bedroom Griffin used was almost exactly the same size as the bed in it.  I wish I had a photo.  We learned how to use the bus system well, and had fun being on the top of the double decker buses.

We visited Edinburgh Castle, walked down the Royal Mile, St. Giles Cathedral, Victoria Street, visited some Harry Potter inspirations (J.K. Rowling wrote the first book in Edinburgh), and saw how people lived in the 17th century in tight, dark, miserable quarters in a place called Mary King's Close.  Then we took a bus to the Royal Yacht Britannia and took a tour of this HUGE ship!

The Royal Mile

I loved all the little alleys and walkways

St. Giles Cathedral - we heard the organist rehearsing and it was magnificent!

Victoria Street

We visited a cemetery with some familiar names, this one is for "Thomas Riddle" and there was another for a McGonagall 

Edinburgh Castle front

View from Edinburgh Castle - down to Princes Street


I learned that the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn!
Inside Edinburgh Castle, right before we visited the Scottish Honours or the Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny
Of course we visited the National Library of Scotland

Royal Yacht Britannica

Living room in the Royal Yacht Britannica (probably bigger than our whole house!)

Royal Yacht and Griffin

Dolly the Sheep in the National Museum of Scotland

After four days of exploring, we took a train from Edinburgh to London, with beautiful views along the coast.

Edinburgh train station - I just love seeing all the places the trains are going

Tea cart on the train - I love tea so being in the UK is perfect!

View from the train between Edinburgh and London

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Los Angeles - Spring Break 2019

Hi!  Griffin and I had an adventure during Spring Break this past week, we went to L.A. for five days.  We flew out of Paine Field in Everett, which is only 15 minutes from our house and a small airport, so getting in and out was really fast and easy.  It's my new favorite way to fly out of Seattle!

We flew to LAX, the opposite of Paine Field, a huge busy airport, rented a car, and drove to In N Out Burgers first for lunch.  Love that place!  Then we went to the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, where they had an interesting exhibit on the history of Los Angeles. 




Then we walked across the street to USC, where I went to school.  We walked around the campus, it looks a bit different these days, visited the bookstore and Tommy Trojan.  Griffin is thinking about colleges in the future, but I'm not sure we can afford USC!


Then we drove around Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and the Sunset Strip, so Griffin could see some other parts of L.A.  We had a fun car to drive around in, a Ford Mustang!

We stayed at an historic hotel in North Hollywood and visited Universal Studios Hollywood the next day.  We did the studio tour and loved all the different areas in the park, including The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and we bought wands at Ollivander's!










Then we visited Disneyland and California Adventure, two of my favorite places in the world!  Griffin was adventurous this time, going on some of the rides he wouldn't ride last time, like Space Mountain.  He willingly put up with his mom's love of Disneyland and I think we both had a great time!  Can't wait to go back again soon!












Friday, October 26, 2018

Griffin's school photos

So Griffin somehow got it in his head that this shirt was the shirt to wear for school photos.  And the one year he couldn't find it, he found one very similar.  The office manager at Ridgecrest puts these cards together so we have photos of students, and she noticed this in 3rd grade and thought it was amazing and shared it with me.  I think it's amazing, too!


Saturday, October 13, 2018

Road Trip 2018

It's been a while, but here's a recap of our Summer Road Trip 2018.  Hope you enjoy (hi, Patty!).

We left July 3rd and drove through Washington to the northeast corner of Oregon and spent the night in a fancy old hotel in Baker City, and visited the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center.  We saw covered wagons, learned about how hard it was, and saw tracks still left by the wagons as they traveled west.





Next we visited Craters of the Moon National Monument, which was fascinating!   The landscape really looks otherworldly and it seems surprising that anything can live there, but both plants and animals survive.




I was really looking forward to visiting the Idaho Potato Museum the next day, but unfortunately the hotel I booked was sketchy and we decided to move on and not take any chances.  Next time!

So we headed to Yellowstone National Park, which we had visited when Griffin was 7, six years ago.  It was fun to see some of the same places in the park, but also some new things.  We saw some new animals this trip, including a pronghorn and a grizzly bear!





The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was so gorgeous.  I wanted to spend all day just looking at it, along with the thousands of other people there.



This guy is in charge of the park.



Grizzly bear!  With lots of people pulled over to the side of the road to see him (or her).



We left Yellowstone via a road out of the northeast corner, taking a highway that the map showed would take us through part of Montana to North Dakota.  What I didn't know was that it was called the Beartooth Highway, and is a famous road that is closed for the winter, as it goes up to 10,000 feet!  So we went from hot springs to snow in a few hours.  It was a lot of fun, the road didn't seem unsafe at all, I just hadn't realized we would be going up so high!




The difference between 2012 and 2018!

We stopped at Pompey's Pillar in Montana, because it has the only physical evidence still around of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Clark's signature carved into the rock.





We also stopped at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and listened to a ranger presentation, because we may never be out this way again, so why not see all the sites?  It was really really hot, and we didn't look around much more than the cemetery and the Indian Memorial.  It was interested to learn how the monument has changed its presentations and displays over the past hundred years, from being focused entirely on Custer and the white man's point of view, to looking at it from everyone's point of view, especially the causes of the battle.



The plant identification was interesting, too, giving multiple names, including the native names, and their uses.


In North Dakota we visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park, mostly because Jake and Jen recommended it, and it was worth it!  There are two units, the North Unit is in a different time zone (Central, an hour ahead) and the South Unit is an hour behind in the Mountain Time Zone.





Theodore Roosevelt's cabin




Another one of those places we may never see again, so we needed to stop, Mt. Rushmore!  Very touristy but interesting, and I kept thinking about the movie "North by Northwest" and the chase over Mt. Rushmore the whole time.




We also stopped to see the Crazy Horse monument in progress, probably forever at this rate.



At this point, we had been through North and South Dakota, with lots of driving, lots of straight roads, lots of parks and monuments.  We ended up in Denver, Colorado, visiting with a teacher friend, and decided we needed to go home.  We had been thinking we would drive further south and visit Mesa Verde National Park, but we were done.  And, it turns out, Denver is STILL a three day drive home to Seattle!  So we called it quits. But before we did that, we visited Red Rocks, because of all the famous concerts there.  Griffin ran down and stood on the stage, I stayed near the top and just soaked it in.  Then we headed west again through the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake City.



I couldn't resist one more stop in Idaho, the Minidoka Relocation Camp, where thousands of Japanese-Americans were sent during World War II, many of them from the Seattle/Bainbridge Island area.  It was a way off the highway, down narrow farm roads, and then there was not a lot left.  The remains of some buildings, a reconstructed guard tower, a trailer with some exhibits and rangers, and a couple of huts where people lived, and a baseball diamond.

What we found out from talking to the rangers and reading signs was that after the war the government sold off the land to farmers, so much of it is privately owned farmland now.  Sadly, some of the Japanese-Americans who had been sent to live in the camps had decided they liked it in Idaho and wanted to buy the land, but the government wouldn't let them.

Griffin had read "The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" in 5th grade with his teacher, so he had the background knowledge to start to understand the situation.




Reconstructed barbed wire fences lined the canal.



Huts where people lived


After this we really were ready to go home, so headed to Richland, Washington, and then home.  It was a fantastic trip, lots packed into about two weeks' travel time, and I think we will be ready to do it again in a couple of years!  Maybe further east next time, or going south and into Arizona and New Mexico, I think that's Griffin's vote right now.  Traveling with him is so much fun, I can't wait for the next trip!