It’s been almost 8 weeks since we left home on July 23rd for our Epic European Adventure, and what an adventure it’s been!
In the 56 days we’ve been in the UK we visited 3 countries (England, Scotland and Wales)…
Played golf at the most famous Links Club in the world…
Walked in the steps of royalty…
We visited a non-royal palace…
Saw big bridges…
And little bridges…
There were royal jewels….
And Viking silver bracelets.
We saw 12 castles that were intact and/or still had families living in them…
And 11 castles that were in pretty bad shape (do the math….that’s 23 castles!)
There were 8 big Cathedrals…
Little churches…
And churches in ruins…
We ate a lot of pizza, lasagna, burgers, fish & chips, meat pies, gelato and ham/cheese sandwiches. We’re looking forward to switching from pies and fish/chips to gallates, quiche and crepes in France. I’m sure, though, that there are more pizzas, burgers, lasagnas and gelato in our future.
We had our last pub lunch at the Black Rose Tavern in Edinburgh.
We had a couple of misadventures, one that landed us in the ER for 10 hours…
And by the road for 5….
We stayed in 10 Airbnb flats, 5 hotels, 2 inns, 1 resort and a bed & breakfast, all absolutely lovely. We covered, I don’t even know how many miles, in our 2 cars as we made two giant loops around the UK. I managed to stay on the correct side of the road the entire time, at least until today, when I turned too soon and ended up looking at a big car. The good news is that it was stopped and I had room to very quickly scoot around it….oops. We spent a fortune on gas at about $7.00-$8.00/gallon and it wasn’t unusual to pay $70 for a half tank of gas.
We met some incredible people. Everyone we spoke with was as friendly as could be and we feel we found new friends in Mary & Simon in Canterbury.
But the best part of all, was experiencing all of this together.
We’re especially grateful that you joined us on our UK journey and hope you hang around with us for the next part of our adventure. We leave tomorrow (Saturday 9/17) for Paris. And we’ll spend about 5 weeks in France before heading to Belgium and the Netherlands for another two weeks. It should be fun. We’ll see you when we get to Paris.
Wow! Not sure about the two of you, but I’m exhausted! Can’t wait to see which of those castles you purchased. 😉
I am ready to see less cathedrals and more pictures of French pastry so be sure to include some…….just for me…..
I’m totally over castles. Time to move on to chateaus. Yes, I believe there will be much more countryside and few buildings. We’re not big pastry eaters but I’m sure I can find a few good pastry windows for you. I’ll see what I can do.