Kids' Drawings

 Grace has become quite the artist recently. Think she likes princesses?

 Ruby has also started drawing more recently. Here is her first drawing of our family :)

Leeds Castle

No Saturday Left Behind is our motto. So after a week of recovery from our Wales trip, we were off again down to Kent to visit Leeds Castle, about a 2 hour train ride South of London. And happily, we were back touring with the Petts.

We had an exciting time getting there. In peak season there is a shuttle that takes tourists there, but this being January and not peak season, we had to find our own way. So we hopped on the bus. But really, hopped sounds too easy. We're used to London buses, you see, and this was not a London bus. We couldn't fit two buggies on, so Rob folded ours up and wrangled all of the mess in the basket underneath whilst trying to get the girls to sit still on the high front seats they chose to sit on (they're about an extra foot up from the other seats with a little step). I was a few rows back with Ben since the bus was quite full. We were the day's American Circus act. After getting the girls situated and on our way, Rob realized that we were close to the castle, but that there were no signs notifying us of the upcoming stop (not London, remember?) so he was fiddling with his phone trying to figure out where we need to get off and the driver took a big turn and little Ruby wasn't holding on like she was supposed to and WHAM! She face planted. There was a collective gasp from everyone in the bus and the driver pulled over to see if she was ok all the while we missed our stop. So we got off at the next stop and hoofed it back to the castle, with no sidewalks since apparently most people drive. It was quite eventful, but we made it and it was worth it!

Leeds Castle has had many owners through the years and also has the double moat system like Caerphilly, but on a much smaller scale. The castle is on 2 islands in the middle of the moat with a bridge connecting them. Most recently the castle was owed by Lady Bailie (pronounced Bailey) who had a large inheritance from her American family. She completely restored the castle and decorated it in the highest style of  the time (early 1900's?) and that's the way it still is today. Lady Bailie loved birds and had the extensive property made especially hospitable to birds. She even had some black swans imported from Australia (the first of their kind in Europe). There are swans of all sorts and geese and ducks and hunting birds, pretty much, you name it, they've got it.

 Grace had her camera at the ready and took about a thousand pictures all day :)

The swans were fearless and pecked at everything and Benji was fascinated and kept sticking out his delicious little morsels of fingers towards the swans. Rob had quite the job of making sure Ben came home with all his fingers in tact :)

A barn owl from the falconry display - it was so beautiful and so close!

Brent had some swan food and wanted to feed them out of his hands, but got a little nervous at the last minute :)

I thought that their feathers were incredible when the wind ruffled them. Can you say sewing inspiration?

The castle was really cool inside, but the kids were bored so we had to go too quickly to read the plaques and take pictures

You can't really see, but this staircase is beautiful and intricately carved. Rob said he wants to have one like this our house someday...dream big, buddy :)

They host weddings at the castle, and fortuitously the bride and groom had the best initials.

On the way home we decided to skip the bus fiasco and walk to the nearest train station through the quaint village of Hollingbourne.

What a way to welcome visitors to your town..."hey welcome, don't do anything that will get you thrown in our town stocks!" :)

The girls on the ride home. I love iPads!

It was a long day, but so fun!

The next day these cute kids were pretty tired on the train to church!

Cardiff, Wales {Days 2 & 3} Happy Brithday to Me!

 Saturday morning we were up and at 'em early thanks to the kiddos waking up and not allowing anyone within earshot to sleep. :) We took the train 30 minutes to the town of Caerphilly to see Caerphilly Castle, the second largest castle in Britain, if not in all of Europe, but I'm not so sure on my facts there... Anyway, it is was built in the 13th Century and has an amazing fortification system which includes an inner and outer moat each with an impenetrable wall and drawbridge system to keep invaders out.

The weather was absolutely perfect, which apparently was a birthday miracle for Welch weather in January! And the castle and surrounding countryside was spectacular! Most of the castle is ruined (Parliament had it destroyed to reduce the likelihood of their power being overthrown), but in the 1930's during the Great Depression, the Marquess of Bute (same one who owned Cardiff Castle - he was a super wealthy coal mine owner) paid local workers to re-do it as sort of a public service.

 

This is a model of the castle and surrounding moats and land. You can see how difficult it would have been to get across both lakes and over all the walls all the while having arrows and whatnot shot at you as you were trying to invade.

View of the Caerphilly village from the main tower

Medieval toilet

The partially destroyed tower in the left of this picture leans more than the leaning tower of Pisa!

We had an amazing morning wandering around the castle, but soon got hungry and had pasties from Glanmoor's (see pic below).

We had a short window to catch the train back to Cardiff, then a bus that comes once an hour to take us to St. Fagan's Living Museum of Welsh life. Sadly, there was something wrong with the train signals so they were really delayed and we missed our window of opportunity to St. Fagan's, but it sounded so neat that we decided to take a taxi out there. It was our first time in a taxi and it was really interesting! They're big enough that you just wheel your buggy right on and leave your child in it with the brake on. You can see the handle of the buggy in the pic below. We all fit nicely in the taxi and it didn't even cost us an arm or a leg!

St. Fagan's is a working museum with buildings from all over Wales that were going to be torn down that were instead taken carefully down and put back together here to show what life has been like in Wales through the years.

The pictures below are of the Cock Pit - a place where the villagers would gather to watch cock fights. Here are Grace, Ruby and Rob re-enacting what it must have looked like back in the day (sans chickens...)

I think it's hilarious. The girls didn't really get what to do, but it was funny watching them do what we told them to :)

 These 4 cottages (above and below - back and front respectively) show life through time in Merthyr Tydfil. Each one skips 50 years so you can see life getting a little more comfortable until in the 1950's you have a large porcelain tub right in your kitchen. How's that for convenience?! No flash was allowed inside and it wasn't light enough to get decent pictures, so you'll have to imagine. On a side note, I have Welsh coal miner ancestors who lived in Merthyr Tydfil!

The four pictures below are from a church. It was so neat to see inside. The preacher stood up on the pulpit and the families each had their own pew with a door to close the kids in. Brilliant I say! Plus, the pew walls were high enough so only the preacher could see into each one, not your nosy neighbor.

The outside was nothing spectacular, but this was one of my favorite buildings we went in there

The girls on the church balcony

There was another part of St. Fagan's with a castle, but we couldn't see it from the entrance and were skeptical about a  "castle" (such travel-worn attidues, no?!), so we didn't leave much time to see it before closing. We did hurry over in our last few minutes and were blown away by the gardens leading up to the house. They were beautiful! Probably the most beautiful gardens we've seen in Europe yet. I can't imagine what it'd be like in the Spring! The castle was originally owned by the family that owned the land St. Fagan's was on and it all was eventually donated to the museum, so the gardens and house weren't transplanted like everything else.

This picture just does not do it justice. The house is up on the hill on the right and the terraces were beautiful!

We headed back to Cardiff and had the best pizza I have ever tasted at Pizza Express, then found a chocolate cake and milk to take back to our hotel room for a birthday treat which we ate with the kids, then ate more of with a little Netflix after the kids had fallen asleep :)

 It was a very happy birthday indeed!

 

 Sunday morning we packed up and checked out, all ready to hike the 30 minutes to church. Except, Google Maps is in beta for walking directions, so we had to re-direct a couple of times, but we walked really fast (which is hard pushing a fully-loaded buggy with 3 kids on it (see above)! And in a pencil skirt.) (Thank you for that pat on the back). We made it to the address only 5 minutes late to find that there was no church there. Anywhere to be seen. Whomp, whomp. So we headed back to the hotel to change in their restrooms and headed out to Cardiff Bay to check it out. It wasn't until then that we realized that the weather Saturday had truly been a birthday miracle - it was so biting cold and windy that all we could even think about was getting inside. We saw the bay visitors center and watched a video about how lovely it is when it's warm, then found some lunch and headed for the train home.

Ruby didn't want to share the buggy board with Grace, and all of our adult hands were full, so Rob got creative :)

 

   

Our trains were late and delayed and cancelled so it took a bit longer to get home than we planned. (Plus a run up and down and up and down a flight of stairs with the suitcase and buggy because they changed platforms on us at the last second!) But when we got back to Richmond we headed over to the Petts for our usual Sunday night dinner and they surprised me with cake and a present. I just love them. Having such wonderful friends here with us has made this adventure even awesomer than it would have been otherwise! It was the best 30th birthday I ever could have imagined. I'm looking forward to a new decade of adventures!