The Story Of Us

I have a few more cities left to post about from our United Kingdom summer vacation but before summer is completely gone and fall approaches I want to recap some of our summer fun. We went for a little weekend getaway with family to Upstate New York to celebrate the 4th of July. We stayed in Corning and went to Watkins Glen to hike through the gorge.. which was simply stunning.. and then went a little further up to the Robert Treman State Park near Ithaca for some swimming.. We did some crafts.. we bought these model planes last summer and never got around to making them.. until now.  Both of their planes are now hanging in their bedrooms..  We also made crystals with borax and pipe cleaners   We sailed on the Hudson with friends..  We read a lot.. our town library runs a great reading program and the boys get so many goodies after completing certain goals. We hit a nearby book sale as well as spent some birthday money at Barnes and No

After the Railway Museum in York  we drove to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The four hour drive was thankfully uneventful. Now a little detail that we missed when planning our visit to Edinburgh was that it was smack dab in the middle of the Fringe Festival. Unknown to us but the Fringe Festival is the world's largest festivals. It spans over a month with thousands of events and performances and an attendance of over 30,000 people!! Our hotel was in the Grassmarket area, which is a busy busy area.. we had to drive around in circles multiple times because of road closures until M was able to find a spot to stop while D and I unloaded our luggage and walked to the hotel while M went further to park the car.  We stayed at the Grassmarket Hotel which was terrific. I'd highly recommend it. We started a little later than planned.. but oh well.  We walked up W Bow St where we found more Harry Potter stuff.. Along Victoria Street, right behind us

On the 5th day we left London .. we rented a car for the rest of our trip.. the United Kingdom has a great public transport system and while we did take trains all through out our  spring break  trip we  M opted to drive this time around. It was a rough start with driving on the other side of the road.. and figuring out the road signs etc.. I must say that I think the roads in America are marked so much more clearly.. and the roads are also so much wider and smoother. But very soon our rough start got a little rougher.. H threw up before we even got out of London. We had over three and a half more hours of driving left before we got to York. The drive itself was fine.. but when we were just about twenty minutes away from the hotel D threw up! Thankfully he was able to alert us beforehand and we were able to stop and he was able to get out of the car. Phew. We suspect it was the dinner form the night before. York is a walled city in northeast England that was founded by the anci