I promised a few pictures from our trip to southern England in late July. I took about 450 photos, so I'll spare you a photo dump, but I'll just share a handful of nice ones.
We started out in Arundel, which is situated on the River Arun and features a medieval castle that is the seat of the Duke of Norfolk. The history geek in me was in heaven. The castle also happened to be hosting a medieval jousting tournament with historical reenactors that week, so the boys and I were in heaven.
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| Arundel Castle |
We next went to Colchester, which is the oldest city in Britain, predating the Romans by some time. It is the site of an Iron Age fort, upon which is built a Roman fortress, upon which is built a Norman keep.
The castle is not inhabitable at this point, but there is a rather nice museum there, and the park grounds of the castle were lovely. There was a fantastic children's playground there.
We also attended a Vespers service at a Saxon-era church that has recently been returned to the Orthodox Church. My husband took the boys to visit the Essex monastery for Sunday liturgy, but the girls were too ill to travel, so I just took them to Liturgy at St. Helen's as well.
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| St. Helen's Antiochian Orthodox Church |
Next we spent a week in London and saw a number of different things. We also had some sickness while in London, so we had to adjust our plans a bit to accommodate that.
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| London, near the Thames |
We took a double decker bus tour to see the sights and tried to see what we could in the few days we had in the city. The tour included a ferry tour, so we got to cruise down the Thames for an hour as well. Given that our group had 10 people with six children under age 9, I think we did pretty well.
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| Houses of Parliament |
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| London Eye, on the Thames |
One of the changes we made included going on the H.M.S. Belfast, a WW2 era battleship that has been restored into a museum and is now sitting in the Thames opposite the Tower of London. The kids really loved it.
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| Aboard the HMS Belfast. |
There was a lot to see on the ship, and we spent the morning crawling all over it. So many ladders and steps!
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| Bridge on the River Thames |
Our last weekend was spent in Oxford, where my husband attended graduate school at University College. We were able to see his old digs as well as poke around the campus a bit.
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| The chapel at University College |
There were so many nice things to see around Oxford. We got to see some of my husband's cousins and some old friends of his as well. It was a nice weekend.
Overall, the trip went very well, and we had a great time! The weather was great, our accommodations worked out extremely well (Airbnb, mostly) and we were able to get by on public transit. I'm already plotting our next UK vacation, although it will probably not be for another few years.
