London With Bridget

Bridget decided to bring me along for their last full day in England. Lucky me it was another daytrip to London! I will tell everyone over and over again—this city has so much to offer, it’s amazing. I, in turn, decided to bring Katya along since it was only an extra dollar or so for her ticket. We had only three big things planned for that day: Houses of Parliament, Portobello Rd. Market and Victoria and Albert Museum.

We had pre-booked our tour to Houses of Parliament for 11:00. We arrived at King’s Cross station at 10:05, and ran straight to Central Line on the tube to get to Westminster station. We thought 55 minutes would be plenty to get there from the train station. Boy, were we wrong…The lines to get subway day passes for my friends were so long (we use Oyster cards which are much more convenient)…then we had to walk and walk and run to where we could actually get on the subway train. And on top of that…although Central Line takes you straight from King’s Cross to Westminster, it’s got to be the S L O W E S T line in London. It was crawling…

We got to Westminster station at 10:55 and just RAN! Up the stairs, down the stairs, straight to the gate of the Houses of Parliament. We were supposed to be at the gate at 10:45 according to their instructions, otherwise “you have to buy another ticket”, we were told. I ran up panting to the guard at the gate as the clock was bonging (is there such a word “bonging”?). He assured me that it is okay and that we can still get into our tour with no extra charge, although we were bumped to the next tour at 11:15. Phew..

After going through security and finding our guide, we were on our way to an hour and fifteen minute tour. We went through The Queen’s Robing Room extravagantly decorated, then the Royal Gallery and Prince’s Chamber, and finally into the Lords Chamber.

From there we went through the voting lobbies and into the Commons Chamber. It is amazing how different those Chambers look! One is very decorated with fancy walls, statues and lighting, and the other one is quite plain and office-like. All carpets and chairs in the Lords Chamber are red, while all the carpeting in the Commons Chamber is green.

We learned so many interesting and quirky facts about how the Parliament is run in this country. So much tradition involved! Sometimes the “rituals” seem very silly, but indeed, they all have very good reason of why they had been established.

One of the weird things I remember is that when the Parliament is ready to vote on an issue, instead of pressing a button like they do in most modern parliaments, members have to go to the voting lobbies.  In the House of Commons, MPs walk over to the “aye” (“yes”) lobby or to “no” lobby and then their names are written down to count the votes as they exit. Member in the House of Lords do the same thing except their lobbies are called “Content Lobby” and “Not Content Lobby”.

Our tour ended in Westminster Hall, a very historically significant place where many important trials have taken place and where renowned world leaders come to address the Parliament.

This was the only place we were allowed to take pictures.

And here is a picture of Big Ben from a bit of an unusual angle.

After a quick lunch at a random sandwich café near Westminster Abbey we headed to Notting Hill area to walk through the famous Portobello Road Market.

The market had different sections—new goods, used goods, antiques and food. We browsed with great interest through the antiques part, but still ended up going home empty handed. Bridget probably did not want to add any more weight to her already heavy luggage and I just did not feel like I was shopping for anything in particular (except a small decorative metal double decker bus-haha). It is definitely not the greatest place to bring kids, especially in strollers.  And I am sure it’s much less crowded to walk through on a weekday.

After the market we took the subway train to Victoria and Albert Museum—the world famous museum of art and design. The museum’s collection was started by Victoria and Albert as they were interested in bringing unique and beautiful things from all over the world into one place. This museum is free and is enormous in size. With six floors to explore, you can wander around all day. You could see exhibits of architecture, ceramics, photography, clothes, furniture, metalwork, glass and lots more. We enjoyed seeing stuff from various periods and styles—baroque, art deco, medieval, gothic, rococo, and modernism. I am not expert at art by any means, so for me, the most interesting parts were the exhibits that were not too “artsy” (that’s my ignorant description of modern style).  We also omitted the Asian section of the museum since we felt like we have seen enough of that during our years in Japan.

Katya was in charge of taking pictures here so this is what I’ve got.

And this is how happy Katya was to hang out with us.

We spent almost a couple of hours inside. It was a very interesting place, a very educational one for kids, but I am not sure how interested Mark would be in ceramic vases or three-legged chairs. I am glad I checked this museum off my list though.

After the museum, we had a lovely meal at the Italian restaurant across the street, took the tube to King’s Cross… and then we had to part ways, unfortunately. We had such a fun time with Bridget, her mom and her family! They are such easy visitors too (I am sure my kids loved them too because they brought them goodies from Harry Potter Studio-haha). So glad they could visit!

So who is next? Please reserve your dates early as rooms are filling up quickly (I am not kidding either).

Good night, friends,

Lyana.

Bridget Comes To England!

You all know we have made some fantastic friends when we were stationed in Misawa. I am not talking about just fun people to hang out with, I am talking about the kind of friends that have become as close as family to us.  One of such friends is Bridget (and her husband, but he is not part of this blog post).  Bridget’s family moved to the states right before we moved to England, but she’s been planning to come visit us here probably from the day she found out we were going to Europe!  It is also wonderful that it was not only empty talk, and that she indeed managed to find people to watch her four children while she, her mom and her sister spent a week in England.

I picked our guests at Heathrow early in the morning, and by 9 am we were already standing by the entrance to Windsor Castle.  These ladies, although they were very tired from jetlag, were full of energy—we were not wasting any time.

This time around, we were prepared—we had bought our tickets online (the ticket that I bought in March with the Farnsworths was still valid as it is good for a year) and we were probably in the first dozen of people who entered the castle.

It was also very NOT busy and we were able to walk around freely, enjoying all the exhibits inside (no pictures allowed).

Here is Lindsey with a VERY tall guardsman. I wonder if he even fits inside that little guard tower.

Of course, I had to have them try some British pasties.

By noon, we were done in Windsor. We headed to Dover area, where we were staying the night. Bridget’s mom and sister took a good nap in the car while Bridget and I chatted away.

And we have arrived—the White Cliffs of Dover.

First, we went straight to Dover Castle area. This is the picture of Dover Castle on a hill.

We wanted to make sure to visit the secret wartime tunnels.

This is the place where, if you want to learn more about WWII, you can take a 45 minute tour that tells you all about Operation Dynamo.  The presentation inside was set up in a very interesting way using a lot of visual effects that helped us understand easily about what was happening during those ten critical days in May of 1940. That was when UK government had to figure out a way to save thousands of soldiers surrounded by Germans in Dunkirk on the other side of the channel. If you like history, you will most definitely enjoy this sight.

After the tour, we quickly walked up to the castle.  I think I have seen too many castles now, I am pretty sure I’ve said this before. I did not find anything unique about this castle except maybe its magnificent position overlooking the sea and the white cliffs. Yes, I do realize that sounds harsh. I think I am craving some cool 16-18th century palaces now:).

Soon after the castle, we checked into our B&B and headed out to dinner. On the way, we turned off the main road in search of the walking path ON TOP of the White Cliffs.

And this is the shot we came here for.

The next morning, Sunday, we left our place quite early and drove 25 minutes to Canterbury.  Our goal was to go to Canterbury Cathedral for their Sunday morning service.  We had some time to kill before it started so we enjoyed wondering around the town’s center for a while. There is the cathedral the background.

Lindsey even met the Queen.

Somehow this is the best picture I’ve got of the cathedral.  It is indeed a gorgeous building inside and

outside.

Wish we had more time to spend in Canterbury. And I especially wish that I knew more about Canterbury Tales and history of this significant town. I think we should go back with the kids.
It was lunchtime when we were finished with the service, so we grabbed some sandwiches and drove up towards our house. We stopped by Cambridge, of course, and I sent the girls on a punting tour on the river Cam. They thoroughly enjoyed it. I know there is much more to see in Cambridge, but when you have only a week to see the highlights of England, you have to go quick even through Cambridge.

The remainder of the week, Bridget, her mom and her sister, spent exploring all over! They went all the way north to the Peak District to see Chatsworth House where Pride and Prejudice was filmed, Nottingham Forest; then southwest to Bath, Stonehenge and Harry Potter Studio. They also spent two days in London during the week, taking the train from the station nearby to London.  On Saturday before they left, I joined them in London for a whole day, but that will have to be another post.

Lyana.

School Has Started!

Apparently moving and changing schools are our hobbies.

Katya. This was a big year of changes once again. Katya started Fifth Grade at the school on base last week of August. She has twenty four students in her class and a teacher she enjoys—Mrs. Forbes. She seems to be very happy back in her domain…her former school just wasn’t her cup of tea…or maybe it was just that particular group of kids that made her miserable. In any case, she is such a happy girl now and I don’t have to drag her out of bed in the mornings convincing her to go to school. She has already made lots of friends, somehow a lot simpler than in the other school. Every morning she gets on the school bus at 7:45, and she is back by 3:30. She is one of twenty twenty or so kids on our street that goes to the school on base.

When Robert and I visited Katya’s classroom during school’s open house, we got to see her desk name tag.

 

I thought it was so sweet—she always seems to be most proud of the fact that she is Ukrainian and American. So glad she is not ashamed of her heritage.

She is already involved in the school play, hoping to run for student council soon, and is being taken out of class for special reading time because of having one of the highest levels in reading in her grade.  Her math needs some work as she is trying to adjust to the new lingo that American schools use. She is always eager to do her homework right away and we feel very blessed that she is so responsible about it and is working hard.

Alex. Because we moved from one village to another and driving every morning to the other school did not appeal to me much, Alex had to change schools this school year as well. Now he is Year 4 at Brampton Primary Village School. The school is twice the size of our first school, it has over 400 students and two classes for each grade. It offers a few extracurricular clubs such as choir and football (Alex is doing those two).

He says he has already made many friends! As a mom, it’s such a pleasure to hear that. He doesn’t complain of being teased here as he was at Bury school, and he tells me all the time how the kids here don’t say bad words nearly as much as they did in the other school. I have never seen him be so excited to do any after school activity as he is before going to choir. He decided he wants to be a pop singer now! (great…) They get to sing modern popular songs every week, and he loves it.  He says he is going to be a pop singer whose hobby is seismology now.

Mark. Finally, this year is a huge year of changes for Mark. My cute little Mark….so grown up and ready for real school (I was not ready for him to go to school full time!). He started Reception, which is kind of like Kindergarten except you have to be four by September 1st, instead of five.  Mark went to preschool every day, except Thursdays last school year, but that was only for three hours each time. Now he is going full time from 9 till 3.  His teacher is Mrs. Coal who is a very sweet and experienced teacher. Mark seems to really enjoy Reception (except last week when he was crying every morning when I was dropping him off…as we were having visitors and days that are not like our normal days).

 

In England, if I were to keep Mark at home with me till he turned five, there would be no preschool available to him once he had his birthday in December. He would be able to go to preschool with all three year olds till then, but after that according to UK rules all kids must be enrolled in reception full time once they turn five. Because Mark turns five pretty soon I don’t feel as horrible as I would have felt if he had a July birthday like Alex or Katya.

In Reception they learn how to read and write. They use Phonics around here…and I am not convinced that’s the best way to teach reading.  Katya and Alex were both early readers but also both are excellent spellers because they had a “non-Phonics” way of learning how to read.  Both Katya and Alex tell me all the time how many kids in their class don’t know how to spell the most basic words. So I might have to work with Mark on his spelling later this year. For now, I am perfectly happy with him being able to read “Mark”, “Dad”, “Mum”, “And” and “My”.

The boys leave for school by 8:30 each morning, so almost an hour after Katya. We walk to school most of the days…well, I walk/jog behind the boys while they bike or ride their scooters. It’s about a 10-15 minute very brisk walk from our house, so pretty close…although it seems that if I lived in the states, I would choose to drive that distance more often-haha. We have two boys on our street that go to the village school, so they ride bikes with us as well in the morning, and it’s fun. We’ll see what we’ll have to do when it gets colder. I pick up Mark at 3:05 and then have to wait till 3:20 pm for Alex to be done. They stagger pick up times like this because it’s a big school and they want to make sure parents find their children (especially the little ones). Most parents walk to school as well, since there is no parking lot designated for school pick ups or anything.

These two have been very happy to be going to the same school. It has really helped Mark to have Alex at school (although he doesn’t see him much) this year.

I feel like we had a very quick busy summer this year and I did not get enough cuddly and lazy days with my kids. I miss them terribly when they are at school, although I must admit my life is much easier (emotionally and physically) when they are at school. One thing I am very happy about is not the fact that they are gone but the fact that they are so happy to be going to school, learning and making new friends. I hope it stays that way (except the pop singer part).
Cheers, Lyana.

English Riviera

Originally, sometime in the spring, my plan was to finish our summer with one last hoorah of a trip to somewhere warm(er) and with a beach.  We had a four day weekend scheduled around Labor Day weekend. The base here combined our weekend with Family Day (day off) and Labor Day (another day off). Anyway, we had Friday-Monday to go somewhere—the last weekend before British kids went back to school.

Well, my initial idea of going down to Cornwall, the most south-western tip of the island, quickly went down the drain after seeing how crazy expensive it was to stay ANYWHERE in the UK in the month of August.  Then I read about how busy the roads can be during that time…and I started reconsidering.

Then, I read about “English Riviera”, and I had to laugh. It just sounded so cheesy, I guess an attempt to make you think of warm sunny days in the south of France. In fact, “English Riviera” is in the south of England, not quite far west as Cornwall. The map shows it better:

 

I found a cute B&B in Paington, right next to Torquay and we decided that we should give it a try.  Nevertheless, when Labor Day weekend rolled around we almost cancelled the whole trip because really we were exhausted from our move, trips and visitors (not that visitors are bad, but life does get out of normal routine with guests).  The weather was going to be fabulous, so we decided to go ahead with our plans, but wanted to make sure this was going to be a trip focused on relaxing and not sightseeing.

After a very easy four drive  and almost no traffic jams, we had arrived to Paignton. It was late afternoon when we arrived, so we checked in into our B&B and walked over to the beach, five minutes away, geared with shovels, nets and buckets.

This area is hilly, look at that.

So we found the first beach—Goodrington Sands. Very different sandy beaches from anywhere else we have been so far. More similar to Japanese beaches than to Florida white sandy beaches.

Those colorful storage units on the picture below are for people to rent out and store their beach gear during holidays. They do look quite festive and sunny. And there was Katya on a donkey with only one ear (the donkey is the one with one ear).

The sun started to set, so we headed back to our place. We ordered take out Chinese (I know…very local) and ate it in the dining area of our B&B. That was one great thing (among others) about the place where we stayed—they had a fantastic common area with a ton of toys, books and movies. We could relax down their and let the kids play. And they let us bring food in and have dinner on their premises or in the back garden.

One thing that Robert was frustrated about was that our room was on the top floor, in the attic, basically. He kept having to walk bent in half, not only in this area where our kids slept, but even where our bed was. He kept wondering why  we were paying the full price for the room if we are only using half of it-hehe.

The next morning, we drove up to Torquay to see the Babbacombe Model Village.

We normally don’t go to kiddie type of places, but this was quite enjoyable nevertheless (and relaxing;).

We even saw Stonehenge!

This was quite funny, I thought:). If you look closely, who do you see exiting the hospital with a new baby?

After about an hour at the model village, we walked over to Babbacome Cliff Railway—a small funicular that takes you down to Oddicombe Beach and back up.

And this is the beach that was waiting for us down by the sea. It was actually very pretty.

The kids just played on the rocks looking for crabs.

Before getting on the funicular to go up the cliff.

I have to point out the red mudslide in the background.  That is the site Oddicombe beach cliff landslide.

 

There is a house, half destroyed, on top of the cliff. Don’t know if you can see it very well, as I had to zoom in.

Alex was fascinated once again with another natural disaster. When we got home we googled “Oddicombe Beach landslide” and found this interesting  article and video clip: 

http://travel.aol.co.uk/2013/04/03/video-house-crumbles-red-sea-landslide-torquay-devon/

The view from the cliff top was very pretty. We walked around till we found a place to eat a very late lunch—the second best Fish and Chips place in England! The name is Hanbury’s Famous Fish And Chips. Although they were already closed, I knocked on their door (as we barely missed their opening hours) and asked with my begging voice if they would have three more pieces of cod for us. They said no problem, and thus we had one of the best Fish and Chips in the last year!

We ate right there, on the benches with a fabulous view of the sea.

See..now I don’t remember in what order we did what because I don’t have dates on my pictures any more.

We drove down to one beach that was supposed to be a very picturesque rocky beach. And it was.

Except there was no place to play in the sand or anything, the kids could just explore around by climbing rocks. It was quite cold too. I had to wear my cardigan the whole time.

But this is the place where I saw a huge seal that came very close to shore! Crazy.

On Sunday we went to the local church, which was quite refreshing, as our kids made up the majority of their Primary. After lunch at the Paignton bay…

We headed to another beach, a little south of Paignton.

The kids actually went into the sea, but were freezing afterwards.

Katya is a pro at building castles now.

Our last morning in the area we decided to go on a train ride to Dartmouth on the Dartmouth Steam Railway and then a ferry.

Apparently, our train car’s name was Shakira.

The train took us from Paignton to Brixham and then to Kingswear.

This is where the river Dart separates Kingswear and Darmouth and we had to get off the train and get on the foot ferry. 

It was a very long ferry ride—a whole five minutes!  We barely had enough time to snap this picture.

Darmouth was…okay. It was a nice little town, a few hilly narrow streets to explore, but nothing out of the ordinary. After eating some sandwiches at a random shop, we headed back to the train station to go back to Paignton. 

My family almost left me behind. Don’t know what their deal was, it’s not like I was grouchy or anything.

After we got back to our B&B, we got our car and started our drive home. The drive back was even easier than on the way there, with no traffic whatsoever (although the motorway in the other direction was packed for miles again).  We made sure we stopped by at Cheltenham again to fill up on our favorite Turkish food for dinner and buy a couple of boxes of their pistachio baklava (YUM!).  This is the second time we stop by at this place on a Monday, the day they have all of their main dishes “buy one get one free”.

As you can see, the trip was really a relaxing one…wish it were warmer though. It was pretty and all, but did not live up to my expectation of “English Riviera”. Oh well, next time we might actually drive to Cornwall.