We woke up pretty early on Thursday so we could hurry and catch the first train out of Moreton-in Marsh and get to Oxford early enough to check the town out before our movie. We made it with 2 minutes to spare! Success! Even though it was expensive, I do recommend taking a train through the English countryside because it is lovely and feels so British. When we got to Oxford we didn't really have a plan so we just walked. We walked over and saw the castle, the outside of some of the colleges, saw the pub where CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien frequented, and had a quick sushi lunch before going to the movie theater to see Star Wars! Greg was so concerned that we wouldn't be able to get tickets for the movie on opening day that when tickets went on sale weeks before our trip, we woke up at 2 in the morning to buy tickets as soon as they went on sale in England. Haha he's so cute and nerdy, I love it! The best part was... There were like 4 other people in the theater with us haha we could have bought tickets at the door! But the movie was amazing and we got two free posters as we left so I won't complain about waking up in the middle of the night and then not being able to fall back asleep. Back to Oxford though, we seriously loved Oxford! It was so charming and full of history. We were so glad we took the detour to the country. As much fun as London was, it was great to check out other parts of England too.
From Oxford we wanted to go check out Windsor Castle. Something we know for future trips, if Google shows the closing time at 5, that doesn't necessarily mean you can get in anytime before 5. The last time you can go into Windsor was like 3 and we did not get there in time for that so we missed that this trip... It was disappointing, but given all the things we did get to see in our short trip, we couldn't be too upset about it. We stopped and had a small snack of scones, clotted cream and hot chocolate because it was vacation and clotted cream is the new love of my life, sorry Greg.
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| The one picture we took in Windsor |
My mom's cousin, Spencer and his family live in England, not too far from Windsor, and they had invited us over for dinner Thursday night. We took an Uber over to their house and our driver was great! He was from the north of England and had a very thick accent. The third thing he asked us after where we were from and how long we were in England for, was why Americans elected crazy Trump. We had a very entertaining conversation with him about Trump. It's always fascinating to get an outsider's opinion on things. Our Uber driver ended by saying Greg should run and that he would have his vote if he did haha so #Fetzer2032 or something like that. Spencer and Brittany's house was amazing! It was on a huge plot of land and we loved it. And we just love their family! We had a great night catching up with them and Brittany fed us a lovely dinner, complete with cookies and ice cream for my birthday.
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| From L-R: Greg, Anne, Me, Ike is the tall one, Josh and then Ty, Brittany and Spencer |
We took another Uber back to the city because no one wants to deal with trains when you're tired and ready to crash. We stayed our last night in Notting Hill and I am so happy with that choice! The streets are absolutely darling with all the different coloured houses. And our B&B was amzing! It was called Juliette's Bed & Breakfast. It was an old house and just perfect! We had the pink room, complete with a pink bathroom. And plus they brought us breakfast the next morning to our room and it was an amazing spread. Croissants, bread, cheeses, ham, cereal, juice, and some fruits and veggies, but basically we felt very fancy eating a fancy breakfast in our fancy English room.
Then we checked out Portobello Market and that was so fun! I was hoping to find a teapot for my birthday present from Greg, but unfortunately I couldn't find one I loved. There were some nice patterned ones but then they would be the wrong shape, or be the right shape but be ugly colours. Fortunately as we were walking we stumbled across a home goods store called Tyler's, how perfect is that? And I found a great teapot! I guess it was meant to be! We were able to leave our luggage at the B&B after checking out while we went to check out more of the city before heading to the airport which was really nice. We went to the Victoria & Albert Museum for our last stop in the city. At this point we were pretty wiped so we went pretty slowly and ended up only spending about an hour there which is not nearly enough time in such a full museum, guess we'll just have to go back! After that we headed across the street to a sushi restaurant (who knew London had such great sushi at pretty decent prices too? We both ate sushi for less than $30!). Have you ever seen the sushi restaurants where you just sit down and take the sushi you want off a conveyor belt? That's what this place was! It was really fun! Except we didn't see the sign that showed what the prices were so at first we were stressing about the prices but decided to just enjoy it so we ate until we were full and then took our plates up front and were shocked to see it was only 20 something pounds. Score! Before heading to the airport we stopped at a little cafe and grabbed a big sandwich and some pastries to share on the plane for our dinner. This was such an amazing trip. We did miss out on a couple of things we wanted to see and do, and the trains were more expensive than we realized, but all the things we did get to see were so fun, we ate lots of great food, and we crossed another place off of our bucket list. Who knew there would be a city in my heart in competition with Paris?
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