My trip to London, Bath, Wales, Ireland and Paris

London
I started my journey with a cancelled flight. I was booked on another flight that was delayed by2 hours because of mechanical difficulties. Final, I was on the plane; we were rerouted to Oklahoma for two hours because of thunder and lightning in Dallas. I was happy to be on the final flight to London; however, I wasn’t able to sleep on the 8 ½ flight because I was so frazzled from the day I couldn’t relax. Well, let’s just say I made it to London about four hours later than expected.
Mary was waiting on at the airport with a bag of London treats and a big smile. I was so happy to see her. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to make it. We took a boat ride to see Big Ben, London Eye, and Tower of London where we saw the crown jewels. I had been awake for 30 hours before I went to be bed to rise early the next morning to travel to Stourhead and Bath.


Stourhead
Stourhead a Palladian mansion with 2,650 acres was home to Henry (the Magnificent) Hoare in 1740. In the movie Pride and Prejudge, Liz runs across the Palladian Bridge to the Temple of Apollo. The landscape is breathtaking with deep colors of flowers, plants, and shrubs surrounding the lake. This is the place Pride and Prejudge was filmed…Liz runs out of church to the “Temple of Apollo” and Mr. Darcy say he loves her…so romantic. It truly is a paradise.

Bath
“The Roman Baths is the finest Roman spa north of the Alps, still flowing with natural hot water, the only hot springs in the UK.” The Roman Baths included, the sacred spring, Roman Temple, the Roman bath house and remains of the baths.

We toured a Georgian home in Bath, Royal Crescent Museum. The home was decorated for a wedding feast in celebration of William and Kate marriage in England. I think the kitchen was the most interesting part of the home. The large stove was heated by a wheel that would turn the meat so it wouldn’t burn. A dog would be placed in the wheel to walk to turn the wheel. The kitchen had several unique tools for specific function in the kitchen and several of our kitchen tools today started from these tools.

Of course, we can’t forget that Bath was where high society would vacation. The most eligible bachelor and ladies would walk the streets to be notice…hilarious! We also ate buns and a delicious chocolate cake the famous Sally Lunn House. I would highly recommend her place for dinner.

We traveled on the train from Bath to the Holiday Inn in Cardiff.

Cardiff, Wales
Mary arranged for a tour of Wales, but what we didn’t realize that it was going to be a private tour. It was the best tour. Our tour guide was originally from Ireland but he moved to Wales several years ago. The signs in Wales are in both Welsh and English, even though a small percentage speaks Welsh. We travel the coast of Wales to see the beautiful coastal area. We walked to Worm Head to see the breathtaking view of the Irish Sea.
“Worms Head, off the westernmost tip of Gower, is a breeding site for a variety of sea birds including razorbills, guillemots, kittiwakes and, occasionally, puffins.
We also had a missionary opportunity..it was pretty neat. Our tour guide asked questions about the Mormons and at the end of the tour he asked where he could learn more about our religion. We were shocked. Mary gave him the lds.org website and I asked him if he would like the missionaries to come his home and tell him more. Mary got his contact information and we sent the information to the church.

Galway, Ireland
We fly from Cardiff to Dublin, then we drove…yes we drove on the left side of the road to our first Bed & Breakfast home in Galway. Galway is the “wild west” of Ireland. It looks like Southern Utah.
Kylemore Abbey Castle was constructed in 1867 and after Mitchell Henry and his wife Margaret purchased the 15,000 acre estate. Henry employed about 300 people to work on the estate. They were paid 19 to 20 cents per day, which was a lot of money back then.

Killarney, Ireland
We toured the Iveragh Peninsula, better known as the Ring of Kerry. We went to see a Bog Village to experience an Irish Village. The houses are made of bog, which is peat a soil made up of partially rotten remains of dead plants on top of waterlogged places for thousands of years. It reminded me of Nauvoo and the small house with a community of shops, blacksmith, and farms. We also watched a Sheppard demonstrate the power of his dogs to herd sheep. It was amazing. We had dinner at a Irish Pub…not really what I expected.

Dublin, Ireland
We went on a FREE tour around Dublin with an Irish student of history and political science. He was very passionate about the Irish people and he had very strong opinions about the current government situation. He told us a story of a young Irish boy, age 15, who started a rebellion against England. He was caught and put in prison. He was the only prisoner to escape and he was later caught and put in the prison again. We walked around Trinity College, Temple Bar.

We went on a ghost tour. We learned about body snatching in St. Kevin’s Graveyard and visited the haunted steps by the lady in Green. I was a spooked out about the lady in Green. It was a little creepy standing on the steps of the cathedral listening to a story about a crazy devilish woman. Mary and I had a discussion about orbs. We tried to take pictures to see if we could capture any “orbs”. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Paris, France
We walked from our hotel to Invalides Place de la Concorde, Arce De Triomphe, Musee Du Louvere , Eiffel Tower. We walked down St. German to see the beautiful shops.

My favorite part of my trip was the Fat Tire Tour. Mary made reservations to go all day to Versailles, but we didn’t change our clock an hour ahead so we missed the tour. We decide to tour Versallies on our own and go on the night fat tire tour. We road on California Beach Cruisers to the Latin Quarters, Notre Dame and we finished the Eiffel Tower for a night cruise along the Seine.

Back to London
The next day we toured the Kensington Palace and learned about the different princesses that lived there. We looked at all the windows at Harrods. They were decorated celebrating the royal wedding of William and Kate.
We returned to London for a final walkabout Piccadilly Circus and Chinatown to eat. Mary took me to the airport the next day and I was back in Utah 10 hours later. I was sad to leave Mary and London. I wanted to travel all over…Italy, Greece, Austria, Germany, Sweden …I could go on and on- too many places to see and not enough time or money.
Back home to the USA!