Category: England

We woke up at a normal time and packed everything up. The apartment had become very messy over the last few days so we tried to clean it up and bring it back to an orderly manner. We had a lot of food so we attempted to eat as much as we could seeing as we couldn’t bring any of it on the plane with us. Then we grabbed our suitcases and backpacks, locked the door, and headed towards the subway station. Since this was the day of the London Marathon, it was super crowded outside.We took the underground to a train station, then took the train to the Gatwick airport.

I think the worst airport that I’ve ever been to in my entire life would have to be the Gatwick airport. I know that sounds pretty negative, and maybe it was just because we were both tired or because we weren’t looking forward to an 11-hour flight home… But it was still my least favorite airport. First, as we were checking in the computer wouldn’t read Lee’s passport, so we went to the desk where they wanted to weight both of our carry on’s. They both ended up being a few pounds overweight according to this airport’s standards. At any other airport they don’t even weigh our carry-ons! Anyway, we ended up taking a few things out to put into Lee’s backpack and then we had to check a bag and pay $60, which I thought was ridiculous. Lee had a better attitude about it and reminded me that it was still cheaper to fly through Norwegian air and check a bag than it would be to fly with anyone else. Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 17: Leaving the Green and Pleasant Land”

Since we had gone to bed a bit earlier the night before, it was a bit easier to get up this morning a bit earlier than normal. Our first destination was to check out Lewisham, the first area of my mission (actually called Catford). It was kind of fun getting there because we were on a double-decker bus on the top level at the very front. Once we made it into Lewisham, I was all sorts of backwards. This was for a couple of reasons. First, since I served there, there had been a LOT of new construction, especially high-rise housing complexes, built right between the high street and where we lived as missionaries (which were fairly close in proximity).

Once I got my bearings, we headed from the bus stop to the high street. This was a fun experience because it was a chance for Ang to experience the “true” London that is poorer and has lots of Africans and immigrants. 😛 The high street was just as I remembered; even the German sausage guy was still there. Haha, Ang really enjoyed seeing all the produce and goods that were being sold on the stands (with pretty good prices, I might add). After unsuccessfully finding a pair of shoes that Ang liked at Tk-Maxx (their version of our Tj-Maxx), we headed to my old flat where I lived while serving there. Getting there was interesting, though. They were doing a lot of construction at the large roundabout between the flat and the high street and had shifted around a lot of the pedestrian pathways, so it was really confusing to find out where we needed to go. Eventually, we did and stopped by the flat before we headed to the train station to go to Buckingham palace for the changing of the Guard. Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 16: London’s Awesome Tourist Traps”

All morning we tried to decide if we wanted to go to a play or not and we finally decided we didn’t want to. We walked around for a while and ended up going to the Tate Modern, a modern art museum. Neither of us really liked it all that much because the art was absolutely weird, and we weren’t sure if it was really art. It had a great view of London though!

Then we headed to the Bourough Market which had a bunch of little restaurants that we walked around and looked at. It was fun to see all the different foods and we had a hard time choosing what to eat. We settled for a unique and cool Italian sandwich, and then we bought some cheesecake for dessert. It was delicious! It was hard to choose what kind of cheesecake we wanted because there were so many different kind. We then found a step to step to eat it all on, but it started to rain so we quickly gobbled it all up.

Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 15: The Museums of London”

The day, unlike the day before, was cloudy and cold. Haha, typical England weather. 😛 Anyway, the first item on our agenda for the day was to visit Saint Pauls cathedral. You had to pay for a tour, which we thought was odd, but they did provide some audio tour headsets for walking around. It was cool to listen to the history of the church and to hear how it came to be (it was actually the third cathedral to be built on the site). As part of the tour, we were able to go the galleries above the ground floor of the church so you could see the artwork in church’s dome. You were also able to go outside of the dome to the top to get a really good view of London.

After that, we headed to the Walkie-Talkie building (not sure what the proper name is for it) to the Sky Garden on the top floor. It was just a public space at the top the building that offered some more good views of London. It was pretty cool but we only stayed there for a bit.

Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 14: Checking Out the View”

This morning, we explored the temple grounds one more time and the sisters in the mission office let us take a look around so Lee could reminisce in his memories of the mission. Then we talked to President Irwin who served as a counselor in the presidency of Lee’s mission.

Once we were done walking about, we drove the car to East Grinstead to look around the high street. Of course, we stopped at Gregg’s to get some pastries and also went to see the church there and his old flat. We then topped the car off with gas and drove to Gatwick to drop the car off and catch a train to England. Luckily the drop-off process was fairly quick, and we made it just in time to buy our tickets and catch a train to London. We then took the subway to the area of the Airbnb we are staying at. The owner met us at the station and walked with us to the apartment, which was on the 6th floor of an apartment complex found in the middle of a bunch of construction projects. It had a great view of London, and it was nice to have the whole apartment to ourselves rather than share the space with someone else.

We relaxed for a while then hurried back to the station to travel to the Harry Potter Warner Brother Studios. Sadly the station wasn’t working so we had to walk to a bus stop and we were rushing to get there in time for our tour. We rode the top level of the double-decker Harry Potter studios bus and made it just in time for the tour.

Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 13: The Magical World of Harry Potter”

We slept in and took our time getting ready for the day. Then we picked up the missionaries to visit Jane Wangeshi, but she didn’t answer. Lee wrote her a note on a piece of paper we had in the car, but we weren’t able to wait around because we had a lunch appointment with the Pakynteins. They cooked probably the best Indian curry I have ever had. It was absolutely delicious!!!!! It was also one of the Elder’s birthdays so they baked him a chocolate cake, which we all ate with ice cream and whipped cream. It was great to visit with them and hearing about their lives.

After that, we made a quick stop at the Nicholls’ home to drop off the T-book that Lee was working. We then started to drive to East Grinstead and stopped to visit with Edison Madziwa in Aylesbury. He is a very happy energetic African and it was great to meet him. Lee invited him to an activity in High Wycombe (the ward he was baptized in), and we hope he ends up going.

Continue reading “England Day Tripping’ Day 12: Headed to England’s Other Temple”

In the morning, we woke up slowly and headed out the door to walk to downtown Oxford. Since the place we were staying was in Cowes, it was only a 30 minute walk into town. But it was a cold one, though! Haha, but we are tough. Anyway, when we made it into town, we first went to the Covered Market. It was fairly early that we stopped by so there weren’t too many shops open. They looked like they were mostly food though. We were kind of hoping that we could find a place that would offer some cool unique touristy things that we could buy. Oh well. While we were there, Ang got some strawberry and some jam doughnuts (she really loves those for some reason :P). I went to McDonald’s for breakfast. 🙂

After we ate breakfast, we walked to the shop where the free walking tour started. The walking tour was really good. We had a tour guide that was super enthusiastic and funny. He also had a voice that carried really well too, so that was fun. He took us on a two-hour walking tour around the town, explaining the significance of each site and telling us stories. It was really interesting to hear the storied history behind the place. My favorite factual tidbit was that the reason the Oxford was bombed was that Hitler really liked the town and planned to make it his headquarters when he won the war. Interesting! While on the tour, we took note of a couple places that we wanted to go back to look at. We first got lunch, though, at a yummy sandwich baguette place. We went to McDonald’s to eat because we wanted a place that was warm to sit and eat. After we ate, I got a Mayo Chicken and a double cheeseburger to make a McGangbang. It was good, but just not as good as in the States. 😛 We then looked at a suit at Debanhams that I liked a lot and checked out a few souvenir shops where we got a few things.

Continue reading “England Day Tripping’ Day 11: The Classic Architecture of Oxford”

When we woke up, it was a bright, beautiful, sunny day. We got dressed for church, packed up our stuff, ate some breakfast, and headed off to Newport to visit the high street. My white dress shirt was wrinkled, and I didn’t feel like asking to borrow an iron, so I just put my nice black sweater over it. Problem solved. 🙂 Anyway, it was interesting to check out the high street there as I couldn’t recall a thing about it. I suppose I was only there for one transfer, though. After that, we went to see the flat I live at (the missionaries don’t live there anymore, thank goodness) and headed to church. Once at church, we read our scriptures in the car and headed inside.

Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 10: Onward to Oxford”

Today was our first full day on the Isle of Wight. In the morning, we had a nice, light breakfast provided by the Ellis’. She gave us a lot of bread. Haha. First place we had on our agenda was the Osbourne House. This place was on the north part of the island and was the summer home of Queen Victoria. It is a pretty big property that goes all the way to the coast and has a main mansion and a side playhouse. That was the area that we went to first. Apparently that was where all the royal family would play, so they recreated the area to look just like it did when they were living there. Next we checked out the main house. It was decorated to be just like it was back then. It was really cool to see all the original artwork that was there. They even had the room that Queen Victoria died in, decorated just as it was, but no dead person. 😛

After that, we headed down to Ventnor. The main draw of going down there was that it is a really beautiful coastal town, with a  really windy, narrow road. Haha, I remembered it from my mission and wanted to go down it again. Anyway, when there, we checked out the beach first. The beach was really unique as the sand was actually a bunch of small pebbles, which made the sound of the beach washing up against it really awesome.

Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 9: Exploring the Island”

In the morning, we woke up and got everything ready to head to our next place to visit, the Isle of Wight. In the morning, however, we went the Helston high street to see everything. One of the great things was that the parking was cheap! 60p for an hour. 😛 It was fun to see all the small shops that were on there. Since it is such a smaller town, it seemed like there was more character to the shops. We stopped at a sweet shop and bought a good amount of gummy candy for a pound.

Just before 10 am, we headed over to John and Marlene’s home. I taught them while I was in Helston with Elder Coleman, and Marlene was baptized shortly after I left the area. Previous to this trip, I was told by the Brays that her health had declined quite a bit and she was now bedridden. As a result, she hadn’t been to church in a while, but thankfully her visiting and home teachers were fairly regular in their visits. Her health wasn’t the best when I was teaching her but she was able to move around and, on the odd occasion, make it to church. When we arrived, John answered the door and they were both were just as I remembered. Marlene was in bed though and wasn’t as talkative as I remember but they were both just as friendly. It was a lovely visit and it was fun to catch up (it was kind of me talking mostly).

Continue reading “England Trippin’ Day 8: Deserting the mainland”