Epic UK Road Trip: Volume 2

On the way back to Cambridge, we stopped at a cute little pub on the side of the motorway, The Turnpike! We had our first pub food and beer and enjoyed being out in the great weather and just getting caught up. Candice and Collin did a really good job of keeping me and Matt from being too jet lagged.

Our first (of many) pub meals.

The President with our first English beers!

We were so excited to be reunited that we took a round robin of pics! Somehow we did not get girl-girl/boy-boy pics, but those would come later.

Upon arriving in Cambs, we toured the town, made some great fajitas, and worked on planning the trip a bit.

The walk around town was especially fun as we toured a number of colleges (well, their gardens) that are a part of Cambridge University, we got to see Collin's desk at Tyndale House, and we saw Isaac Newton's "Mathematical Bridge" (not pictured in this post).

Collin is a part of Darwin College.

The river behind Darwin College - punts and bridges and gardens - so sweet!

Walking along Cambridge at dusk. Beautiful!

Good buddies.

I loved seeing people punt on the river!

The University Library at Cambridge. It is a copyright library which means that it has a copy of EVERY book published in the UK!

The beautiful gardens at one of the colleges. The grounds of the colleges were exquisite.

Trinity College (maybe?) quad.

Where the magic happens!: Collin's desk at Tyndale House

The beautiful view from my room at Collin and Candice's house. Such a sweet little English townscape, I thought!

It was a great start to the trip (even though we were still fighting with American about Matt's missing bag).

Epic UK Road Trip: Volume 1

Recently, as many of you know, I took a trip to the UK to visit my friends, Candice and Collin, with our friend Matt. We are good friends from graduate school and last year had some really fun times together in Waco and St. Louis before C&C moved to Cambridge. These fun times led us to say, "Hey, you know what would be really fun?!?!!? If we all met up in Cambridge and toured around together."

So then we decided we were for serious on this plan.

And then I bought a plane ticket.

And then Matt did too.

And IT. WAS. ON.

So the Monday after finals ended, I grabbed my suitcase, eye mask and travel pants and got into an airplane headed to Chicago Illinois. My original plan was to fly to Chicago, where Matt and I would have shared layovers for a few hours, and then I would follow Matt by about two hours into London, arriving on Tuesday morning.

As my flight to Chicago seemed to be nearing its end, the Pilot came on the PA and informed us that we would be making an unscheduled stop in ST. LOUIS because some type of equipment on the plane wasn't working "that we needed in order to land in Chicago." I wasn't too worried because I had a 6 hour layover in Chicago, so I was feeling good about making my connection. When we landed, at first we weren't sure if they were going to let us off the plane. So I sent a text to Matt (who was flying STL to Chicago) to say "funny story! I'm in your town!" and found out his flight was delayed.

Fast forward about 30 minutes. They took us off our plane and had no idea when we were supposed to get going again. Other people were rebooking onto other flights to Chicago, but I was just standing firm, hoping my connection would still be OK. Meanwhile Matt and I got to visit a bit before finding out that they had CANCELLED his flight to Chicago, which then hosed up his connecting flight to London (on another airline).

While I was fretting over Matt and they were trying to board my plane, Matt was getting the runaround from American Airlines. I added him to standby on my flight, hoping to at least get him to Chicago. Eventually Matt was able to get rebooked to Chicago (on my randon, unscheduled flight) and then rebooked to London. You can read about our frustration with "the man" over on Candice and Collin's blog.

While we were worried about Matt's luggage getting on the flights (with good reasons, it turns out), Matt and I ended up having a really nice time hanging out in Chicago and both enjoyed good red-eye flights to London.

Candice and Collin were there to welcome me when I landed in London and then we waited for Matt.

I took a tiny President Obama with us on the trip - here we are in our unexpected landing in St. Louis. He is as excited to see Matt as I was!

Matt was also excited to see us... 

Finally in Chicago, I was looking a little travel worn, but glad to know that both Matt and I were going to make it all the way to London!

Leaving Chicago - finally - for London.

My first view of the UK from the plane. 

Candice and I waiting for Matt.

More installations of the trip to come.....

New Roommate

On Saturday my new roommate moved in. No, I'm not talking about "The Cloud" as I lovingly call my queen-size sleigh bed, although it moved in on Saturday too.

I'm talking about "Tiny,", an 11-lb Chihuahua mix that my brother adopted a couple years ago.

Tiny is a great little dog. He's house-trained and pretty mellow and only barks whenever he meets a human, sees a large truck or hears someone walking up the stairs outside my apartment. But seriously, mostly he doesn't bark and I'm working on his behavior related to the aforementioned issues. I try to remind myself that if I was only 1-foot tall, I would be really afraid of a lot of stuff too.

I think that perhaps receiving Tiny as I was in the midst of jet lag from my UK trip was maybe for the best, because I have been really sleepy and not that into "doing stuff" and so we have been able to just veg out together in the apartment and explore the neighborhood together on walks.

The biggest obstacle to having Tiny here is that I live on the 2nd floor and Tiny was FREAKED out by the stairs. He wouldn't walk UP them... and he wouldn't walk DOWN them. Seriously, he just stood at the top and shook like a leaf and wimpered. At the bottom he would put his paws on the first step and just look up the stairs and then to me like saying, "Um, I don't think so lady."

The other problem is that Tiny is not real big on dog treats. Even the expensive ones my mom brought with her as part of my "new dog owner birthday present". So I used Cheddar Cheese. Yes, I bribed my dog with cheese and I'm so happy to say that it WORKED!

He is now running up and down the stairs like a champ! And I am experiencing the same thing that parents experience when their kids learn to walk: both joy that he has overcome his fear and figured out how to get up and down the stairs and sadness that he is no longer afraid of walking down the stairs and thus may run away at any moment (before at least I was pretty sure he'd stay upstairs if the door was open. this is no longer the case).

I'm sure there are lots more dog stories to come. This weekend Tiny is meeting the dogs of some of my friends - doggie play dates, if you will - so hopefully that will go well..... at the least it will be entertaining.

In the meantime, here is a picture of my new roommate!