First Trip to Isle of Skye

Thought the Isle of Skye is one of the most-often visited islands in Scotland, and seen by people who have only been to Scotland for a week, we have never been. It's a looong drive from St. Andrews to Skye on windy roads all the way across the country, and Skye is a very large island and quite built up by Hebridean standards. So, we have always assumed we wouldn't like it, and have gone to the smaller islands like Arran and Iona instead. But, since David's parents are visiting and our kids are on a two-week school break,  we felt that it was probably a good thing to give them all the chance to see the island. So, here we are!

The drive itself was a bit of a slog, and it was raining for most of the day. Still, it did give David's parents a chance to see some of the Highland landscape, along with Ben Nevis and the Great Glen through the car windows. Once we passed the Spean Bridge and turned north, the landscape turned positively eerie-- all the trees were completely coated with a bright green growth that looked like foam. It was so striking that Emma and I read about it online as we drove--it turns out that it's lichen, and folks in the Highland are very serious about preserving it. I assumed it was hurting or killing the trees on which it was growing, so it was a relief to see that it does no damage...it just looks creepy!

Skye is accessible by a bridge, so the end of our drive didn't require a ferry trip. We stopped just before the bridge for some groceries and a toilet break, then crossed to the island. Once you cross the bridge, arrive on the island and pass through an uninspiring port town, the scenery changes dramatically. The road narrows and turns to single-track with passing places located periodically along the side. David was driving but I could tell it feels a bit like driving 50 mph on a golf cart track!

We have rented a small house in Dunvegan, which is on the northwest side of the island. It took about another hour, after crossing the bridge, to get there. It's nicely located near some good hikes and the main town of Portree, but still remote enough. There's a coral beach about 10 minutes north of our house, and we made that our first stop. It involved a wee hike to get there, and the rain made the trail a bit mucky, but by the time we reached the beach the clouds had cleared and the sun came out. This made the water turn aquamarine blue, and it did look a bit like the Caribbean, though it was much colder!

I took these photos with my phone, by the way. I have a much bigger and better collection of photos, but no way to upload them here, so I will have to save those for a "Skye recap."

After playing on the "beach" for a bit, we got back in the car and headed south for a well-known hike called the Fairy Pools. This is a short walk through the moor and along a body of water that falls through the rock and forms a series of clear blue pools. Apparently, it makes for some good "wild swimming" spots in fairer weather, but I can't attest to that first-hand. Way too cold! It was lovely, though. The water runs off the Cuillin ridge, which is what you see in the photo above, which we took from the car park at the trail head. The mountain in the back is Sgùrr nan Gillean and is one of the eleven "Munros" on the Cuillin ridge. 

The hike was a bit rocky, but reasonable enough for Leah. When she got tired, John put her on his shoulders and pretended to be a horse, which caused her to scream with glee! We got quite a few amused nods from passers-by as we walked!

We stopped at an oyster shed on the way home to buy some fresh seafood for dinner. The conversation we had with the woman shucking oysters there was thoroughly confusing, probably due to our opening question about the price per pound, which is a unit of currency to her while a unit of measure to us. We came away with a huge bag of fresh scallops on ice, and stopped at the next "town" for a bit of butter, which we purchased from the smallest "store" I have ever entered. As we drove home, the sun was going down over the hills, and we did stop a few times to let some sheep pass in front of our car and took some photos, so I will share those soon as well!

Edinburgh for David's Birthday

We took a short trip to Edinburgh on Friday for David's birthday, and to give David's parents a chance to see the city for the first time. We arrived by train from St. Andrews, and stayed in the same hotel we used when we took students in January. We arrived mid-afternoon and settled into the hotel, then spent the remainder of the afternoon wandering around the walls of Edinburgh Castle.

John and Leah on the train across the Firth of Forth on the way to Edinburgh.

David with the kids and his parents in front of Edinburgh Castle.

Leah chasing yet another pigeon in the castle. The collective population of Scottish pigeons is going to breathe a huge sign of relief when we board that U.S. bound plane in June!

Couldn't pass up this photo opp!  I wonder how much longer these are going to be a familiar site in the UK?

We spent a few hours at the castle, and were actually one of the last groups to leave. It was a lovely time of day to visit, because the castle along with most other tourist sites in the UK have just switched to their summer hours, meaning they are open until 6:00 pm. The weather isn't yet terribly summery, however, and though it stays light until well past 6:00 pm, those last few hours of the day can get quite chilly, so any tourists who are in town have retreated to a nearby pub on the Royal Mile at this point in the day. Therefore, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. 

It had rained before we arrived, and so the benches along the castle walls were full of fat droplets of water. Leah was passing the time waiting for her Nonni and Emma to emerge from seeing the Crown Jewels by swishing her hands through the droplets, making a complete mess of her coat and her trousers. A wee Spanish boy who was on a leash-like lead held at one end by his mother thought this looked like an excellent past-time, and he came over and joined in. His mother wasn't too enthusiastic about the idea and she tried to dissuade him from getting wet. He was determined, though, and once Leah realized that she had a fan, she really started to smack the droplets with her hand with as much force as possible. This made the little boy laugh with glee, and made his mother tighten her hold on that leash to keep him clear of the flying water. I felt bad for her, and since Leah was now quite soaked, I decided to bring an end to her fun by picking her up. She was not happy at all about this, and had a rare, full-blown, top-of-lungs, boots-flailing, back-arching tantrum as I carried her away. Thankfully, the castle was quite empty at this point, so the witnesses to this display were few in number!

Fortunately, my secret weapon for ending bad behavior was close at hand: John. He can almost always draw Leah out of a tantrum, either by quickly engaging her in some other questionably-appropriate activity, or by out-shouting her until she loses interest in making her voice heard. In this case, he suggested that he take her down into the castle prisons, and when she stopped crying and agreed, we all thankfully followed them. I stepped away for a few minutes to give my nerves a bit of a break, and I headed to one of the whisky shops in the castle. I was in search of a specific kind of whisky for my brother-in-law, but also hoping that they were still giving out free samples. No such luck, alas, as they were closing up the till and had put away all the samples by the time I got there (though I did get there just in time to buy the gift!)

When we were shooed out of the castle at last, we walked down the Royal Mile to the closest Pizza Express, where I had made a reservation for dinner. Pizza Express is a ubiquitous part of modern-day British culture...one can't travel too far in the UK these days without coming upon one. It's a moderately sophisticated chain that serves individual, thin-crust Neapolitan-style pizza along with some Italian foods like antipasto and risotto, but also some menu "innovations" like Hawaiian pizza that would make an Italian shudder. The beauty of Pizza Express is that the restaurants are clean and centrally located and they have both an excellent three-course kids meal and a good wine list, ensuring that the kids are fed over a long enough period of time to keep them occupied while the adults can finish a 150ml glass of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo!

Leah digging into her Bambino meal at Pizza Express. 

Not only do they give kids a gelato at the end of the meal, but they serve it with a wee cup of warm milk dusted with cocoa powder called a bambinoccino! 

The next day, David and John set out to hike Arthur's Seat, and David's parents took Emma to the Palace of Holyroodhouse for a tour. Leah wasn't up for either of these, so after dropping everyone off at their appropriate spot, I walked Leah back up the Royal Mile.

Leah and John just before the boys started their hike up Arthur's Seat (in the background).

 I stopped at the lovely (and free!) Museum of Childhood on the Royal Mile, which is a great place to take kids. It has three floors full of toys from yesteryear, all safely encased in glass curios, and activity centers in the middle of the room for the kids to explore. Leah found a wooden parking garage on one floor and played for a few minutes on her own. After a bit, another boy came over to see what she had, and I nodded my head towards him to indicate to her that she should share with him. She eyed him warily, then extended one of the trucks in his direction. "You want a lorry?" she asked, with a decent British lilt in her voice. The boy said "sure" and took it with a shrug, and I could tell he was American. He played on his own for a bit, and Leah continued with what she was doing, but at one point she started to describe how her "lorries" were going up the "lift." After a bit, she lost interest and moved on to a puppet theatre across the room. She went around the back and spent some time getting the puppets on her hands, and while she was behind the curtain, the American boy came over and sat in front, as if he were waiting for the show to start. A second boy joined him, possibly assuming that something was about to happen, and so I quickly got out my camera. After a bit, Leah opened the curtains, and her face registered immediate shock to see that an audience had gathered. I was really hoping that she was going to muster up a bit of a puppet show in a British accent, but she kind of froze when she saw those two boys sitting there, and just managed a weak smile before running off!

 After the climb and the palace tour, we all met back up again at a little cafe we had found the last time we were in Edinburgh. It's just far enough off the Royal Mile not to be too attractive to tourists, and so it's a pretty quiet place. There are huge couches and big windows inside, and the cafe features something for everyone: baskets full of books for toddlers, filled rolls (John), free wifi (Emma), illy coffee (me), chocolate cake (Nonni and Poppi) and a Christian bookstore next door for David!

We hunkered down in the cafe for an hour, then walked to New Town (as opposed to Old Town Edinburgh, with the Royal Mile). New Town is a Georgian showcase of well-planned streets and elegant gardens...a distinct difference from the narrow, windy, cobbled streets of Old Town. New Town is usually a lovely place to spend an afternoon, but since the afternoon was turning out to be a windy, cold affair, we only made it as far as the first Primark before giving up and ducking inside for a bit of shopping. Poor John has worn through the three pairs of non-school-uniform trousers he brought from the States, so I forced him to pick out a few pairs and try them on in a dressing room. For John, this is akin to having a tooth pulled, and so I was thoroughly thankful to have grandparents along to keep the other two occupied long enough to take care of this unpleasantness. We managed to find three pairs that were suitable in about 10 minutes, and so he and David moved on to the Waterstone's next door while I gathered a new pair of pajamas for Leah (her toes are literally busting through the seams of the footies we brought from home) and paid for the whole lot at the till.

We had just an hour or so before we needed to head towards the train station, so we agreed to yield to Emma's request to have dinner at yet another British chain called Yo Sushi. This is one of those places where pre-made sushi winds its way through the restaurant on a tiny conveyor belt that passes by each table, on colored plates that signify the item's price. There's also a little doorbell-like button on each table that you can press to call over a waiter and order bowls of soup, udon, or tempura. You take what you want, and at the end of the meal, the waiter counts up all the different-colored bowls and brings you a bill. It was a fun concept, and Emma and John were seated next to the conveyor belt so they had a grand time serving the table.

Our "bill" at the end of the meal!

 After dinner, we walked back to the train station and caught our 7:30pm train back to St. Andrews. There weren't many other people making this journey out of Edinburgh just as the weekend began, so we had a train car almost to ourselves. John had bought Leah a little pail of play sand at the Primark while he was suffering the trouser-shopping, so she was quite happy to have a table seat to ourselves to spread out her castle-building equipment!

Fool's Fair at Stirling Castle

This week was quite busy, with the kids back in school and David and I back at work. David's parents are visiting, and they spent some time this week wandering through the St. Andrews castle, the grocery store, the high street, and the various charity shops in town. David's dad spent some time on the golf course on an especially bright and sunny day, and on a less bright and sunny day they took the bus to the nearby town of Dunfermline. On Friday, David drove them to Anstruther for takeaway at the town's famous chippy, but I stayed home to get in some more work (this is a busy time of year for me, alas).

On Saturday, despite a forecast for heavy rain and thick cloud, we ventured to Stirling to visit Stirling Castle. There was a Fool's Fair planned for the afternoon for the Easter weekend, and though the castle is always a busy place, this made it even more highly trafficked. We waited in an impressive queue to get into the car park...so long in fact that about half-way up the hill David's parents gave up and just got out of the car. By the time we had located a loo and suited up in our rain gear, though, David had parked and was waiting for us at the entrance.

We started our tour in the interesting exhibitions in the castle vaults, which give an excellent overview of Scottish history and the part that Stirling Castle played in that history over the centuries, and also gave us a wee bit of shelter from the rain. Like most historic properties in Scotland, there were a number of exhibits geared towards kids, but at Stirling Castle they really go above and beyond in the family friendly category, and there's a whole section of the vault geared towards the 7 and under crowd. Emma and John usually enjoy these areas just as much as Leah does, and I think they sometimes use Leah as a "free pass" to gain access to the various games and hidey holes and dress up stations meant for little ones. In this vault, Emma and Leah were especially taken with a puzzle that matches various natural products that are used to create textile colors (lapis lazuli, cochineal beetles, etc). When the puzzle pieces that depict a certain natural element used to make color were matched to the right region on a world map, that color would light up. When all the puzzle pieces were matched correctly, a spring on the back of the map would release and all the pieces would shoot back into a receptacle at the map's base. Both girls were equally impressed, and played several rounds!

Once we made it through the vaults on textiles, musical instruments, carvings and court jesters, we continued up through the upper parts of the castle, towards the Great Hall, which was built by James IV, and the Chapel Royal. This chapel is where the infant Mary Queen of Scots was crowned in 1543, though probably not in the same building that stands there today. On this day, the chapel had been turned into a puppet theatre, and was stuffed full of damp toddlers in wellies cheering on a sock monk (yes, a puppet monk in full saffron robes) as he decided whether to give his pet bear a sweetie. I'm sure it wasn't what James IV had intended as he went about improving Stirling Castle to create a space fit for a European monarch, but the toddlers and parents inside looked happy enough to be the beneficiaries of his grand design.

After the puppet show, we went back out to the courtyard to partake of the court jesters and magicians doing various magic tricks and shaping balloons into swords. We watched for a bit, and procured two balloon swords for Leah, though John surrendered one of them just a few minutes later to a weepy little boy who was holding the limp remnants of a balloon sword in his hands, having popped his by poking his father repeatedly in the nose.

Next we entered the Royal Palace, and not only were were happy to have another place to dry out a bit, we were excited to see this part of the castle as it was being renovated when we were here in 2011. The palace is now completed, after having been restored to the way it would have looked in the 16th century. We visit a number of castles in Scotland but a good percentage are in ruins, so it's great to have the opportunity to see one with a roof and textiles and furnishings, even if much of it is recreated. Also, the Royal Palace was built by James V for his French wife Mary of Guise in about 1540, and because I find her story especially compelling I was looking forward to the opportunity to see the space as it might have looked during her lifetime. Mary of Guise was actually the second wife of James V (his first wife died soon after their marriage and relocation to Scotland), and she was also the mother of Mary Queen of Scots. James V died just a few days after his daughter Mary was born, so Mary of Guise (as dowager queen) lived in the palace with the infant queen for a number of years on their own. The Palace is a set of six rooms (royal apartments), three for the king and three for the queen. Each set starts with an outer hall, which was a fairly public room, followed by an inner hall where the king or queen would grant audiences, and then finally a bedchamber. Even these rooms were apparently fairly public, however, and so signage in the palace indicated that Mary of Guise actually slept in a very small closet off to the side of her bedchamber. The beds themselves were enrobed in layers of tapestries, but still they didn't look especially cozy so I could imagine that a small, hidden bedroom off to one side was pretty appealing.

These rooms are now full of tapestries, many of which depict unicorns, or St. Cecelia and St. Clare, all of whom are associated with Mary of Guise. There are also a number of replicas of Stirling heads, which are wooden carvings of historic figures that used to adorn the ceilings of the Palace. Originally, 37 heads adorned the ceiling, and 34 of them still exist. Some of them are on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, but others were on display in an exhibit above the Palace, and Emma and I enjoyed going through this section slowly, while David and John were off with Leah, in search of a replacement balloon sword after hers popped with a loud bang that ricocheted through the Outer Hall of the Palace as she was taking part in a Legos activity.

The ceiling of the Queen's Outer Hall.

Leah in the King's Outer Hall, which was playing host to a Lego activity.

Towards the late afternoon, the rain dried up and we took the kids on the outer walls of the castle, which afford a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside. Standing on top of the ramparts, you can really appreciate the oft-used maxim, "Hold Stirling Castle and you control Scotland."

Whirlwind Trip to London

We’re on the train back from London, after several wonderfully busy and exhausting days. We arrived by coach on Tuesday night and settled into a busy youth hostel in the middle of Holland Park on the west side of the city. The hostel was in one wing of the Holland House, which was built in 1605 as Cope Castle for a courtier of King James I. In the late 1700s it was acquired by the family of the Baron Holland, renamed Holland House, and became the social centre of the Whig party in nineteenth century London. The main part of the castle was destroyed by bombing in World War II, and what is left is now a lovely orangery, a café, and the hostel. It’s off to one side of lovely Holland Park, and though it’s a bit inconvenient to walk down a lengthy path through the park to get home at night, having a park at your doorstep is well worth it. On the first evening we were there, David took the students to a pub and then off to a poetry reading at a nearby theatre that is run by the wife of a Colgate alum, so I took the kids through Holland Park for a tour of the daffodils, a walk in the Kyoto Garden, and a bit of time on the adventure playground. There are a number of peacocks wandering through the park, and we were all pretty shocked when we came upon one. Emma said, “Look Leah! A peacock!” Leah stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the peacock slowly walking her way, then shrieked, “That’s a mean guy, and he’s coming to eat me!” We assured her that the peacock meant her no harm, and after a moment he flew away, up into a tree. I had no idea that peacocks could fly, and Leah found this very reassuring since the path to the playground was now clear. This playground ended up being the highlight of the trip for Leah and John, and for the remainder of our visit, they both asked at the end of every museum visit or group meal, “Can we just go back to the playground now?”

Our itinerary for the group trip to London was quite full, and we tried to rearrange our schedule to keep us out of the Underground during rush hour, since it can be difficult to move a large group through the Tube on overcrowded trains. On our first day, we had a guided tour of the Tate Modern and a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral, with a break in the middle for a group lunch. On the second day, we had a tour of the Tower of London, a quick break for everyone to grab some lunch at the Borough Market, and an afternoon visit to the British Museum. I skipped this one because I didn’t want Leah to be a distraction for the group, and instead I took her to a nearby playground called Coram’s Fields. I asked John to come with me to help me find my way and to help keep an eye on Leah. I did feel a little guilty at taking him away from such a wonderful museum, but I assumed he would prefer the playground to the presentation that the tour guide was giving the students. When we first arrived, John took Leah over to a tall climbing structure, and she scrambled right up. John and I stayed on the ground, watching as Leah quickly met a friend who was a bit younger and smaller than she. At one point, the little girl tried to lower herself to a platform below without using the ladder, and she hung for a moment by her fingers. John turned to me and asked if he should go up to help, and I said no…that she would be ok. Just as I said that, she lost her grip and fell down the platform and the one below as well, landing on her head in a heap with a loud scream. The mum scrambled up and rescued the girl, and after about 15 seconds of wailing she recovered and wandered off to play with something else. She was fine, but John was totally traumatized. “I just feel so bad for that little girl,” he kept saying. To make matters worse, Leah later slid into a little boy who was sitting at the bottom of the slide, and the little boy scolded Leah for not waiting until the slide was clear. This bothered John as well for some reason, and for the rest of the playground visit he wanted to talk about whether he should have intervened in either case. When it was time for us to leave and go back to the British Museum to meet the students, John insisted on pushing Leah’s stroller, and taught her that if some little kid on a playground messed with her again, she should say, “Don’t say that to me! I have a big brother and he will fix you if you do!”

That evening, we took the students on a “flight” on the London Eye at sunset, and then to a dim sum restaurant for a group meal. Some of the students were flying out the next day for a week in Paris, and it was wonderful fun to talk with them about their plans. London is a great city, and I love visiting the gardens and navigating the Tube. I find almost everyone who lives in London to be wonderfully friendly and accommodating, and I think it’s a very easy city to visit with kids, though like most other big cities, it’s probably best for those who are rich or young. Since we are neither, we are a bit limited in how much we can do and see, but for the most part we really enjoy London. However, there is simply no city like Paris!

 In the last two days, when most of our students had left, we went with those remaining to the Museum of London and walked through and past some of London’s most notable landmarks: Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square. When we had some free time, we made it to the Marylebone area of London, which I have never seen. John was duly impressed with the line of chauffeured Rolls Royces waiting outside some of the townhouses, and spent most of our walk snapping pictures of the various Bentleys and Jaguars we saw along the way. I intended to take the kids to Regents Park, but it wasn’t terribly warm outside at this point so we spent a few hours in the Marylebone Daunt Bookstore instead. This is a great bookstore, with soaring wooden shelves and stained glass windows. They specialize in travel books, and they organize all of their books by country, so interspersed between the guide books to Italy one can find a number of novels set there. It’s a great concept, and David and I took turns in the kids’ section reading books to Leah to give each other a chance to explore. We hadn’t planned any more group meals since some of the students weren’t there, and instead our family ended up finding dinner in a tiny little café run by an Egyptian family across from the Kensington Gardens that was full of photos and memorabilia about Princess Diana. John didn’t know who she was, and it was interesting to tell him her story while in London, surrounded by these images of her throughout her life.

On our last full day in London, we were fully museumed out. Instead, we did what all London families do on a Saturday and headed to a playground. I had intended to take the kids to the Diana Memorial Playground, but after John’s experience at Coram’s Fields, he was a bit reluctant to try out an unfamiliar playground so we stuck with the known at Holland Park. After a few hours, we followed the crowds to Portobello Market, which is a street market full of antiques, food, vintage clothes and jewelry, and a random collection of all kinds of other stuff. We almost bought a small phrenology bust for David, but we weren’t sure we would be able to get it home without breaking it. Instead, we just bought food: falafel, fruit, and some delicious beans and rice from a guy from Ghana. The market was so crowded that it was a bit of a trick to get Leah’s stroller through the streets, and the crowds and excitement kept her from falling asleep so she started to get a bit squirrely. Emma and I did a bit of shopping while David and John tried to keep Leah buckled in, and once she got too frustrated, we let her out and took her to a nearby toy store. The toy store, like all British toy stores, had a substantial line of stuffed Peppa Pig characters. We told Leah she could choose two of the smallest size, and after a bit of deliberation, she decided she wanted Peppa and Peppa’s brother George. However, the store seemed to have only the larger size of George in stock. We dug through the pile for a bit looking for a smaller one, but couldn’t find it. David said he would find the shopkeeper and ask, and John turned to me and said, “You know what’s great about this? Dad is going to have to say to this guy: (in a British accent) Pardon me, sir, do you have a small George?”

The market took quite a bit out of Leah and the boys, so we swung by the hostel to let them have a nap. Emma and I weren’t interested in wasting a minute of our time remaining in London, so we walked to the Kensington High Street to do some shopping. My criteria: if I had seen a photo of Kate Middleton shopping there, I was going to pop in. So, we stopped at Top Shop, Zara, and Uniqlo. We didn’t find anything, but it was possibly because I had only one eye on the clothing, while the other was busy scanning the crowds for royalty and other famous faces. When the boys called to say that Leah was awake, we returned to the hostel to meet them. We also saw one of the remaining students, and asked him to come with us for dinner. We walked to a pub in Earl’s Court to meet David’s parents, who were in London and had just come back from a day trip to Hampton Court Palace.  The pub was brimming with people and it was quite a squeeze to get our whole party of eight through the crowd of rugby fans there to watch Six Nations and into a table at the dining area in the back of the pub. But we made it and had a lovely pub meal…a great way to celebrate a last night in England.

This morning we had quite the journey to get from our hostel, through the Underground and to the train station with a fair bit of luggage and Leah’s stroller. Some of the Underground lines were suspended for repair, so we had to take an unusual journey to King’s Cross. In addition, we were traveling with David’s parents, who were going to come back to Scotland with us for a few weeks. In all, we made quite the spectacle moving through King’s Cross station with all our luggage! Fortunately, we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there, and made our train, with time to spare, for the five hour trip from London to Leuchars. There will be a fair bit of laundry to do when we return, and the kids will have some catching up to do for school in the next few days, but overall our week-long journey was time (and lots of money!) well spent!

48 Hours in Oxford

After a looooong bus ride from York, we arrived at our youth hostel in Oxford at 6pm on Sunday night. The hostel was hosting a number of other groups, and we were clearly the oldest group there….most of the other guests seemed to be about 13 or 14. I was surprised to see kids that age in a college town, but we kept seeing big packs of them everywhere we went in town over the next two days, so it must have been some kind of half-term in some neighboring country.

David knows Oxford pretty well after having spent a year there as an undergraduate, so I was happy to step back from tour guide for a bit and let him lead. After we all settled in, he led us into the town center to find some dinner. As a college town, Oxford is packed with restaurants and bars, and even though it was a Sunday night and Oxford is between terms, they were all quite busy. David gave us a quick sense of what was where, then we all split up to get our own meals. Our family ended up with takeaway from a food truck, and for about £11 we ended up with falafel, pizza and lamb kebab, and way more food than a family twice our size could reasonably eat.

The next morning, David took the students to meet with a colleague, so the kids and I headed to Christ Church Meadow, in search of some ducks and daffodils. We stopped at a Marks & Spencer on the way for juice and snacks, and that kept the kids sustained enough to last a number of hours in the park. Emma and John taught Leah how to play “Pooh Sticks” under one of the bridges, and we had a look at the Oxford Botanical Garden as well. Not much was in bloom other than spring bulbs, and though it was quite sunny it was still a bit cold. We stopped into a takeaway baguette place for sandwiches and fruit, and though it was a super tiny little place, the owner showed us to a back corner where there were some ottomans and a coffee table. We sat there and warmed up a bit, and then David texted me that the lecture was done. We met him at Blackwell’s bookshop, and he and John read Leah a collection of Peppa Pig books while Emma and I browsed. After a bit, we walked back to Christ Church to meet the students for a tour of the town and campus. I had hired a tour guide from the local visitor’s office, and the woman was wonderful. She took us all through Christ Church, and was good enough to walk through the history of the town and the college, and throw in a few bits about Alice in Wonderland and the filming of Harry Potter. We saw the staircase where Harry first meets Professor McGonnagle and Draco Malfoy, and the dining hall that was sort of the model for the great hall in the film. (The actual filming took place in a studio, where the filmmakers could recreate the Christ Church hall but add a fourth table for the four houses of Hogwarts). I could tell that Emma was very impressed with the school as we walked along, and she started to talk with the tour guide between stops about her interest in studying history. Towards the end of the tour, she whispered to me that she wouldn’t mind going to Oxford. I’m not sure what I think of that, though it may not matter in the end since Oxford has an acceptance rate of about 8% for American students.

We gave the students some free time after the tour, and our family headed to an Indian restaurant was had visited in 2011 that we remember was fabulous. It was closed when we arrived, so we walked to a nearby plaza instead and found a coffee shop that was still open. We got some coffee and hot chocolate and sat in a corner table for a bit of a rest. Leah was playing doll family with the collection of water and juice bottles we had amassed during the day, and David took advantage of the rare WiFi connection in the café to catch up on correspondence with tomorrow’s speaker. That left the three of us to plan our day tomorrow, and more importantly to consider what we were going to order at the restaurant.

Dinner was again fabulous…possibly even better than we remember. Leah was exhausted, but held her own at dinner for the most part. A group of our students were at a neighboring table (after we raved about the place to everyone, they all took our suggestion and ate there at some point over the visit), so Leah started to try to sneak up on them and take them by surprise. Since it was a bit early for most people for dinner the restaurant was still relatively quiet and so the staff was tolerant of her sneaking around among the tables a bit.

The next morning, David headed off with the students again for another lecture, so the kids and I went to the Natural History museum. It was full of primary students on tour groups, so we hit the highlights for Leah (dodo bird, butterflies, the black bear and the dinosaur and whale bones) then went to the Pitt River museum nearby This museum is a crazy collection of cabinetted curiousities, and would really take days to explore correctly. The folks who run the museum have created fabulous trails for the under-five set that involve clues to tiny wooden mice hidden in various display cabinets. Emma and John loved it so much on our last visit that we bought some of the wooden mice as souvenirs, and they still cherish them. So, this time with Leah they served as her tourguides and helped her find the hiding mice. She’s still a bit young to stay interested in such an activity for too long, and since the rooms are so full of tall cabinets packed closely together, it was pretty easy to lose track of her. So, once she got a little wild, we headed for the exit, stopping in the gift shop on the way out for three more wooden mice.

We spent our last hour walking through town, taking pictures and picking up more takeaway food. We walked back to the hostel to eat and have some tea, and to wait for the students to arrive. At 2, the students came back with David, and our coach bus arrived as well to take us to London.