Wandering through the Cotswolds

We got up on a Saturday morning in March (yes, that’s how far behind I am on the blog:)) and rented a car to drive to the Cotswolds. The Cotswolds are a range of hills in southwestern England filled with little villages, breath taking views and thousands of sheep. Our first stop of the day was in the little village of Burford. It’s actually a bigger village according to the areas standards, but was still very small. It had a picture perfect main street that was filled with unique little shops and restaurants. The even have a street called Sheep Street! We browsed up and down the street and did some shopping. After working up an appetite we headed to a little French bistro that was wonderful. After lunch we took a short walk on a nearby nature path before heading to our next stop.

The beauty of the Cotswolds is that you don’t have to know or care where you are going because any little village you stumble upon is filled with its own perfection. We explored Burton-on-the-Water next. Once again, we found a picturesque little village with a river running through the center of town. We browsed the numerous shops and took another walk around the edge of the village that revealed beautiful views of the hills and wildlife.

We drove through several more small, quaint villages before arriving at our B&B for the night. We arrived around 5pm and took a stroll around the area before winding up at the local pub to watch the final game in the Six Nations Rugby Tournament and have dinner. The local atmosphere and the local fare were equally enjoyable and satisfying! We headed back to our B&B (across the street!) and Skyped with some family and friends before falling asleep to the Badger Basketball game…yes, you heard me! Even traveling through the English countryside does not diminish our love and support of the Badgers!

On Sunday we continued our journey through the Cotswolds by starting off at the Broadway Tower. It’s a tower on top of hill in the middle of nowhere. We went to the top of it and found amazing views of the English countryside and sheep. Everywhere we looked there were sheep. There were walking trails all around the tower and we got to walk among tons of sheep; I can’t tell you how much this made my day!

We continued wandering through the countryside exploring the little villages and beautiful views when we stumbled upon a large field full of baby lambs with their mamas. It was even better than walking through all the sheep earlier in the day! We got out of the car and watched them run around and play. If you’ve never seen a baby lamb run, you should! It is really adorable! There are lots of videos on Youtube. There wasn’t much that could top this experience for me so we made our way back to London.

Michael in London

The rest of Michael’s trip to London proved to be adventurous and tons of fun. He explored all of the usual suspects in London…Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, etc. On Thursday we planned to take a tour of Wimbledon Stadium and Stamford Bridge. We would go to Wimbledon first where we would take the train for the first leg of the journey and take a bus the second leg. At this point I’m pretty much an expert on the tube and get anywhere I need to go (as long as I have a tube map). However, I’ve only taken the buses a few times and have not needed to navigate them myself yet. Anyway, I figured out which bus we needed to take and the directions said to get off at Wimbledon…so we were all set. The tube ride went smoothly as expected; we found the bus stop, hopped on the correct bus and got off when the “next stop” sign read Wimbledon Stadium. This seemed like the most obvious choice at this point. We got off the bus and saw a fairly run down looking stadium that reads in orange letters “Wimbledon Stadium”, so we start walking towards it. Michael and I both notice that were not really in the nicest of areas, but this is Wimbledon, right? We walk around one side of the stadium in search of the entrance only to find an old car repair shop and Michael says “Maybe we should try the other side”. We walk around the other side and find a completely deserted parking lot outside the run-down stadium. There were some guys working nearby, so I asked them if they could tell me where the entrance to Wimbledon stadium is. They looked at me like I was a little crazy (but no more than usual) and pointed me towards the far end of the parking lot. Michael and I walked in the direction they pointed in complete confusion. We had a hard time believing this could possibly be THE Wimbledon Stadium. Well, upon further inspection it turns out it was not THE Wimbledon Stadium, it was a dog racing stadium called Wimbledon Stadium. Upon this discovery we headed back to the bus stop to try again. This time I asked the bus driver if this bus went to the Wimbledon Stadium where they play tennis, he said it did and would let me know when to get off the bus. Twenty minutes later and in a much nicer area of town we came upon THE Wimbledon Stadium. I didn’t need the announcement from the bus driver anymore, but it taught me the lesson that most bus drivers are quite friendly and willing to help a traveler in need.

Our tour of Wimbledon was one of my highlights so far. I’m not the biggest tennis fan ever, but have learned to really enjoy watching the game especially those at Wimbledon from my grandmother. We got to go to Center Court, Court No 1, the grass/picnic area, we walked around many of the other courts, the press interview room and the private club courts. The tour was really interesting and the grounds we absolutely beautiful!! We had such a great time. If you would ever like to visit them for yourself, please be sure you get off the bus at Wimbledon Tennis Club NOT Wimbledon Stadium!

After our tour of Wimbledon we took the tube to Chelsea where we stopped at a local café before heading to the Stamford Bridge tour, home of the Chelsea football team. Michael was pretty excited about this, but since I have no allegiance to Chelsea I was not sure how’d I like it. I was pleasantly surprised! It was a really interesting and intriguing tour. I think any sports fan would enjoy it. We got to tour the press room, the visiting and home locker rooms, players’ tunnel, the pitch and dugouts. We had a great day touring around these iconic sporting arenas.

Friday night Michael wanted to go on a Jack the Ripper Pub Crawl. I did some research and the one that got the highest reviews was a self-guided tour with suggested pubs and a history of Jack the Ripper at each of the 4 stops along the way. We met Jon after work and gathered some of his work mates to join us on this excursion. We had a great time touring the pubs and learning the history of Jack the Ripper. One of our friends, Matt, even took us by his primary school where one of the murders actually took place…creepy, yet very entertaining!

We purchased tickets to a Charlton Football match for Saturday (the same team we tried to go to with Ashley and Bryan, but was cancelled due to a frozen pitch). The match was in the afternoon and we headed up a few hours before the match to take in the atmosphere of a proper football match. We had a few pints at a proper pub nearby and then headed to the pitch. The match was great! Although, we were cheering for Charlton and they lost we still managed to have a wonderful time. It was a beautiful day and the atmosphere was roaring!

We spent the rest of our time with Michael touring some of our favorite spots such as The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, SoHo, Chinatown and of course Borough Market. We had such a great time with Michael and have felt so lucky to have some many visitors make the long trek over here!

Amsterdam

Another friend of ours, Michael, arrived just a few days after Tesch left us. He flew in on a Thursday and we started his European adventure with a bang. After Jon finished work on Friday we headed to the airport to catch a flight to Amsterdam! We got into Amsterdam and took the train and tram and then walked a few blocks to our hotel. We got settled in, but it was late and we were hungry so we headed out in search of a good restaurant for dinner. We found that this really wasn’t a hard task as most of the food we tried in Amsterdam was quite good! At dinner we saw something on the menu called Bitterballen (a local favorite) and we had to try it. Our server described them as a “fried meatball”…this was not the case, at least not the way you and I think of a meatball. The best way for me to describe them is this…fried beef stroganoff without the noodles. If you ever come across it, you should try it and decide for yourself. It definitely was not the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted, but not bad either…let’s say interesting:) We were all glad we tried it and plus it was fun to say! Our hotel was in a great location right on one of the many canals around Amsterdam and surrounded by little restaurants and pubs.

Saturday morning we stopped at a little cafe for breakfast and fueled up for our 2.5 hour walking tour of Amsterdam. On our tour we visited The Oude Kerk or The Old Church (The oldest parish church in the city dating back to 1306. Another interesting thing to note is that is it right in the heart of The Red Light District. Apparently, the church made money from this, as people would come to confession and give the church money after visiting the Red Light District.), The Red Light District, The Jodenbuurt or The Jewish Quarter, The Royal Palace (in the center of the city), The Jordaan District (a very high end part of town), The Dutch East India Company, The Begijnhof Convent, Masterpieces of Dutch Art, the Widest Bridge in the city and Narrowest Bridge in the city. After the walking tour we were in the need of a rest and some sustenance. We had a great leisurely lunch at a wonderful little outdoor café. Michael tried one of the best sandwiches he’d ever had! We spent the next hour or so wandering around the various shops and picking out some souvenirs from our trip. Next, we took a canal cruise tour in the afternoon. Traveling through the cities many canals was a great way to see the city.

It was early evening by this point and we headed back to our hotel to freshen up and pick a spot for dinner. We decided on a highly recommended restaurant in little neighborhood just north of our hotel. The restaurant was perfect! It was in a cute little neighborhood, was filled with locals and had great food and drink. We really enjoyed ourselves. After dinner we headed to the downtown area to see the Red Light District at full tilt. It was lively and full of people taking in the atmosphere. After a quick walk-a-bout we headed to a local watering hole closer to our hotel and had an excellent time just hanging out together.

Sunday morning we started our day off with a tour of the Anne Frank House. This was unbelievable! Such an amazing piece of history. I have to say reading her diary as a kid it seemed like it happened such a long time ago. As an adult with a better perspective on time, it amazes me what happened just a “short time” ago. We really enjoyed refreshing our knowledge and being reminded of the strength of the human spirit.

Amsterdam is known for having great pancakes and we wanted to see for ourselves what the fuss was all about and went in search of a place for breakfast. We settled into what looked like a small little diner with good food…it was not…well, diner it was and the food may have been good had it not been ice cold. We waited for such a long time to get the food in the first place; we feared a complaint might just delay us longer. Well, you can’t have it good all the time and with that we got over it and moved on to our next stop on the tour of Amsterdam…The Van Gough museum. This museum was HUGE and filled with original works of Van Gough. We had so much fun looking at all the work, picking our favorites and recognizing ones we’ve seen before. Before we headed home, we stopped at a café for a toasted cheese sandwich that our guide recommended the day before. It was a great way to finish off our tour of Amsterdam.