How is this okay?

It's so hot here our candles are melting.

Heading to London.

After York, we left for London and had to turn in our car. We took the tube (London's underground system) to our hotel. There was a central tube station right across the street from the hotel.

We stayed in this hotel during our last trip and it was a Holiday Inn, but they upgraded in April to a Crowne Plaza. We still got the same rate for a better room! It was so fun!

We went to some of our favorite stores.

Marks & Spencer

Laura Ashley

Cath Kidston

We discovered Cath Kidston in York and found that they have more stores in London. We couldn't quit visiting this store! It's adorable! We thought we loved Laura Ashley, but we love Cath Kidston just as much (and we'd hate to say we might love it more!)

York Minster.

After Edinburgh, we traveled back to England to stay in Leeds. Leeds is about 15 minutes away from York. We wanted to stay in York, but we couldn't find a place to stay because they had the York horse races on May 13 and 14 . . . which happened to be the exact dates we were there. So, it was easier to stay in Leeds and just drive over to York.

Our British Heritage Passes were going to expire on the 13th, so we got to Leeds early enough to visit Leeds Castle. When we got our hotel room all situated, we got back in the car and entered "Leeds Castle" in our navigation system. The route showed it would take 4 hours to get there. What?!?!?! We then looked at the detailed directions and they lead to London. Apparently Leeds Castle is in London, not Leeds. How ridiculous! So our passes expired and we couldn't use them anymore. We just explored Leeds the first day and decided to drive to York the next day.

York Minster was absolutely amazing! It reminded us so much on Notre Dame (but on a smaller scale.) We have so many awesome pictures, it was so hard to just pick a few!

Dirleton Castle.

The next day we went to find more castles. The roads in Scotland were so beautiful! We drove along the eastern coast to find Dirleton Castle. They had such a pretty garden and an even prettier castle!

You could totally imagine where things were in this castle. We walked down into the dungeon and walked through the Great Hall. You could just imagine the tables set up and a roaring fire in the fireplace!

Emily decided she didn't want to walk up the stairs provided by modern day technology. She wanted to take the "stone stairs."

On the way out, Mom had to use the restroom in this little park by the parking lot. There was a jungle gym and what looked to be like a giant swing. While Mom was away, I climbed into the swinging disk and Emily grabbed the camera. We were laughing so hard when Mom came out! Mom took the camera so Emily could join me. It was a two person swing! They need to build some of those close to home!

The drive back to the hotel was yet another gorgeous ride. It was so interesting to see the different landscapes across all of Great Britain.

Back to England.

After Wales, we headed up to Scotland. We had to take a stop in the Lake District to see Beatrix Potter's house. It was the actual house she lived in. She gave her house and all her belongings to the National Trust and they have kept everything in her house the same as how she left it. A lot of the furniture is still arranged how she had it. It was so cool. (But we couldn't take pictures inside.)




They even kept "Mr. MacGregor's" garden the same! It was so cool!




On our way out, we got kind of lost, but luckily we did because we got this awesome picture!



When we got into Edinburgh, Scotland we had kind of a panic attack. The navigation system took us right through downtown. Imagine the traffic to be similar to Times Square in New York. CRAZY!!! Plus, there was construction, and the road the navigation system wanted us to turn on was closed! We had to figure it out on our own, and the directions we had weren't much help. The fact that the architecture was COMPLETELY different than in England didn't help much either. It made you feel like you were in a different country. Oh wait . . . we were!




We had dinner that evening and went to bed. We were absolutely exhausted from the drive. In the morning, I went down to ask the concierge how long it would take to walk to the castle. He said about 25 minutes, so we thought we could take it. Yeah right. How about more like a 50 minute walk. Our feet were ready to fall off by the time we got to the castle. Then we realized the castle was on a GIANT hill! How rude! Could they have at least thought of future generations that would come to visit their castle? We aren't as physically fit I guess! It was horrible! But it was good training for the half marathon!



There wasn't much to do at Edinburgh Castle, but there were many beautiful views.



And how could you end a day in Scotland without seeing these guys?

Totally awesome!

Helvetia Half Marathon.

Way back in April, Ashley asked if I'd like to participate in the Helvetia Half Marathon with her. I thought, 'Hey, why not.' I started speed walking every morning and kept increasing the distance every week. I felt like I kept training even while we were in England because we walked so much while we were there.

So, the night before the race, which was held June 13, Ashley took me around the course so I could see what we got ourselves into. I pretty much started hyperventilating when I realized how many hills there were. Especially this one GIANT hill around mile 4.

Well, we headed to the stadium around 6:30 a.m. There were so many people, it was kind of stressing me out. It started raining while we were waiting for the race to start, but it soon passed. The weather ended up being perfect. It was cloudy so I never needed to wear my sunglasses and it never got too hot.

It was a frenzy going across the start line, so we started running with everybody at first to try to get out of the pack. We found a good pace and kept at it. I started stressing out the second we turned the corner and saw the giant hill. At that moment, we both turned on our i-pods so we could concentrate.

By mile 7 I thought the race was never going to end. My hips went out at about mile 8, and I felt like mile 10 was much longer than the rest. By mile 12, I was thinking, 'I want to call mom and tell her where I am!' I didn't have my cell phone, so I couldn't call her.

In the mean time, I didn't realize that mom and Emily were driving down Hwy 26 trying to find me on the side of the road. The course runs on a country road parallel to the highway. They went back and forth and back and forth until they finally saw me!

I thought I had heard honking while I was on that stretch of the race, but I never thought it was for me. Mom said later that they were honking and yelling out the window at me. They are so surprised they didn't get in a car accident. They were going 40 miles per hour on the highway trying to get my attention. . .I'm sure there were many annoyed drivers! :)

When I got to mile 12, I decided I was going to run the last 1.1 miles. I started running and saw some very familiar people turning the corner. Mom and Emily found me on the road behind the stadium and were walking on the sidewalk. I was so excited to see them. They took lots of pictures.

Over the next few days my hips were killing me. I had a blister next to my big toe, but I got over that pretty quick. Before the race, I thought I would only do this once, but after the race (besides the pain) I realized it was fun! I would totally do it again. There is a 5K coming up in August that I'll do and I'm going to run the whole thing. Running 3.1 miles is so easy now! Over the next couple of years, I'll work my way up to running an entire 13.1 mile half marathon . . .but that's going to take a while. :)

4th of July -- a little late.

We're going to try to catch up on several things that have happened this summer. Then we will resume with our England posts.

We stayed home for the 4th of July. This year, it was just us girls, so we decided to do our favorite fireworks -- SPARKLERS! We could entertain ourselves for hours with these awesome things!

Here's Emily trying to hold as many sparklers as she could at one time.


We always try to write our names with the sparklers. You have to slow your camera's shutter speed WAY down to catch the entire name, but sometimes it still doesn't work out because the person holding the sparkler cannot figure out how write their name correctly!