Linny and Tiki: Euro Trip 2011

Well folks, I gotta tell you I. am. blessed. This is clearly something I'm aware of on a daily basis, but in situations such as these, I just feel extra blessed. A few weeks ago I returned from one amazing vacation! Last year while we were on our Nauvoo Church History tour with the wonderful Alan McKay, he talked about a upcoming church history tour in England. Well obviously it sounded great, but we didn't think much of it. But then a few months later just out of curiosity we checked his website to see what he had going on (we're kindof Alan stalkers) and the England tour was posted and SOLD OUT. I think the fact it was sold out made us want it more, so we decided we had to be on it no matter what. So we batted our eyelashes and sucked up to the boss and begged him to let us go....and obviously, who could say no to that? So we were booked and we immediately decided that if we were going to England, we had to go back to Scotland. (In 2006, we crammed Germany, Scotland and England into a 10 day adventure. We were in Scotland for 2 days and LOVED it, but were very limited to what we saw and were rushed in what we did....plus it was March, and it was freezing and somewhat hard to really enjoy.)

Here's my game plan: I am going to post one day at a time. I took 1,320 pictures. I'm obviously going to condense that, but not in one post. So bear with me my faithful 7 viewers, this is going to be a 12-13 post series.

AND WITHOUT FURTHER ADIEU (is that the word I'm thinking of? And if so, is that how you spell it?? ) - DAY ONE!

Day one is actually day one and two, but we'll just call it day one. We spent the most of the first day in an airplane. We flew from SLC to Los Angeles (that was after a LOT of drama and a few canceled flights) and then from LA to LONDON, a 10 hour flight. Then we had a layover in London where we met BAZZLE, who had flown on a different flight from LA and beat us there (all part of the flight drama). Then from LONDON, we flew to ABERDEEN, Scotland. So it was Thursday afternoon when we left and it was late Friday afternoon when we arrived at our destination.

When we got in, we got our rental car. Dad was the lucky winner to get to drive the car - on the wrong side and on the wrong side of the road. That was an experience. TURN LEFT, STAY LEFT.

Here we are in London waiting for the last flight. This is our sad faces because someone who shall remain nameless (my younger brother who is taking the picture) had somehow managed to fly BUSINESS CLASS ELITE - translation, FIRST CLASS on his 10 hour flight to England while the rest of us road over in uncomfortable coach.

It's a touchy subject, let's not talk about it anymore.

These were the chips (or crisps as they are referred to in England) we had on the plane over to Scotland. They were savagely salted and basically they had a funny bag, so I took pics.

Dad driving on the passenger side of the car.

Speed limit sign in Aberdeen

ABERDEEN - often referred to as the Granite City. All of the buildings are this gray color and made of granite. We were only here one night, but we really liked it!

The Noose and Monkey, our choice for dinner!

After dinner it was back to the hotel and time for bed. We had been up a REALLY long time and needed our sleep. Of course with the time difference, Bazz and I were all screwed up and WIDE AWAKE in the middle of the night. He finally went for a run at 4 am - I opted to try and go back asleep....and I succeeded. I'll take sleep over running any day!