England and Wales

We took a 10 day trip to Liverpool, Cardiff, and Birmingham this month.

It was colder than we were prepared for and Colin was a bit of a nightmare sleeping in unfamiliar places all the time. It was a lot of work traveling with a baby but worth it. We just need a break from vacation...unfortunately. I have come to terms with the fact that it will be a while before I get a vacation from my breastfeeding toddler.

We started in Liverpool and did lots of Beatles sites as well as a very cool museum about them. We wandered the docks and other parts of the city center. All of this was only for a day but sufficient.

We then traveled to Cardiff and stayed with the study abroad program from BYU. We wandered around Cardiff Castle and also visited an open-air museum of Welsh Life. It had a gorgeous manor home that we toured, beautiful gardens, and a little Welsh village. St. Fagans was very fun. We traveled to the Welsh coast at Barry Island and walked along the jagged, rocky coastline. It was too cold to swim, unfortunately. We went to Penarth and checked out the lovely pier and rocky beach in that victorian city.

Birmingham was next and this time we took the much talked about coach bus. It was a gorgeous ride through the English countryside. I prefer it over the French. Crazy, hein? There were so many green hillside farms. I especially loved the way things were divided by green bushes. I almost died just thinking of living out there. It seriously looked like this.

Debbie met us and took us around the city center. We met up with our cousins the Wards at the park. We ate delicious Indian food and just checked out Mom's hood and how she lives. She thrives there and is so happy. Our cousin Martin took us on a bike ride (we had to wear our helmets) in a bit of rain along the canals of B'ham. Colin got to play with the adorable Ward kids. Oliver (6 yrs old) completely adored Colin. They were great buddies. We loved attending church with everyone before our hour flight back home. I love that it was such a quick voyage directly east back home.

We really enjoyed hearing all the great and diverse accents. It reminded me how nice it would be to live somewhere that spoke English but still felt foreign and european. People always told us how they like our accent but we had to tell them how we liked theirs. It was a mutual love. We learned that in B'ham, people say "Ya alright?" to mean "How are ya?." It wasn't until the 4th or 5th time of being asked that that we got the response all straightened out. I would always just reply "yes" thinking they were strangely asking about my health or something. You just say "Alright" back with an upwards intonation. Every area of England has their own dialect and way of talking. We LOVED noticing the little differences in vocabulary or pronunciation, and practicing our English accents. We are total word and language nerds!

It was all so beautiful and I loved that feeling of not knowing what might happen next or what wonderful things might cross our path. Wandering and exploring with my family is one of my favorite things to do.

We will have to come back to England sometime. Here is a slideshow of our trip.