Giant's Causeway, Day 3

On Tuesday, we drove to Giant's Causeway.  What another fantastic day.  It was pretty cool and rainy, but we did it anyway.  Ben took this picture of a bunch of us together.

Ben loved climbing all over the rocks.  He's as agile as a goat.

Tom and Rhian

Marie and John

Sam and me

The rocks, a result of volcanic activity a VERY long time ago....

Ben and Maggie rarely get to see the sea and they are as fascinated with it as the rest of us are.  I love just to sit by the sea and listen to the waves.  It is very soothing.

Of course, they got caught by a large wave and their shoes got soaked

Sam and I hiked up the cliff and walked back along the headland.  It was lovely.

I took a bunch of flower photos of course.  There was heather growing everywhere and it was in full bloom.  Why can it grow wild somewhere and I can't get it to do anything in the garden.  Oh, hang on, I live in St. Louis!!!!

First few days in Ireland

Could the kids be any more excited that the day of the big trip has arrived??? Well, Ben couldn't be.

Maggie, on the other hand, was just happy that she got to play on the Kindle!!!  That being said, they did so well on the plane.  We flew to Newark and then had a 5 hour layover before flying to Belfast.  The kids sat together on the International flight and did so well together.  Ben helped Maggie with getting food, drinks etc.  Ben and I slept for a short while on the plane, but Maggie never slept a wink, she just watched movies the whole way!!!

We arrived in Belfast early on Sunday morning.  It took us ages to get through passport control-not because there were a lot of people, but because they spent ages chatting with everyone that went through.  I have never seen a bunch of immigration people that were so friendly and relaxed.  We picked up the rental car and drove to Derry, it was a nice quiet journey through sleepy town and a great opportunity for me to get used to driving on the left again.

During the whole drive and the rest of the day, it was raining.  Light rain, but still wet.  My first thought was "this is going to be a disaster, the kids will be so bored and drive everyone crazy"  Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.  We had to wait until later in the day for everyone else to arrive from Loughborough, but Rich and Jude came over to see us for a short while before they went off to do wedding arrangements.

We decided to go out for a walk despite the rain, the kids loved it.  We were in the middle of nowhere at the hotel, but we did manage to find a Starbucks!!!!!  

We got pretty wet at one point, but we were laughing the whole time.  It was a lot of fun

We went out to dinner with the whole family, plus Jude's family, on Sunday night.  We had a great time and managed to get through the day without falling asleep, although it was hard to keep Maggie awake at times.  Maggie and Ben got on really well with Tom and Rhian and they kept each other entertained.

The next day, we went to walk around the city walls in Derry.  The walls were built at the beginning on the 17th Century and are one of the most complete in Europe.  Driving and navigating around Derry was challenging and so we missed the start of the tour.  We just joined in at the end and walked around ourselves.

This is St. Columb's Cathedral, built in 1633, right after the walls were constructed

Nice family picture of Sam and the kiddos standing on the walls, they are really thick (the walls, not the family!!)

Ben and Maggie standing by one of the canons, there are 24 of them around the walls

This is a good picture of the walls (and John looking over them)

St. Augustine's church inside the City walls

First Derry Presbyterian Church, just inside City walls

Picture of the canons lined along the wall

Found this when we were walking around the walls.  Ben wanted me to take this to send to Jan and Julie.  They watched the movie together a while ago.

The Guildhall in Derry.

One of the City gates

Hands Across the Divide statue was unveiled 20 years after Bloody Sunday.

Ben was very excited to find this number plate in the Starbucks parking lot!!!!

In the afternoon, we went over to the church for the wedding rehearsal because I was doing one of the readings.  We had a barbecue at Jude's parents house on Monday night.  Ben entertained everyone by doing backflips in the back yard.  Great first full day in Northern Ireland.  I had absolutely no idea how great a City Derry is. There is so much history there and we learned a lot on the City wall tour.

Back for a week

We have been back from our UK trip for a week now and it (almost) feels like we have never been away.  We have done all the laundry, cleaned the house, got back to the regular cooking/eating schedule and are back to school/work.
Maggie has done really well with going back to school this year.  Usually, it really throws her off and she has a difficult few weeks, but she has taken the whole thing in her stride and seems like she has figured it all out.  She has a great teacher this year, so we are hoping for a good 5th grade.  Ben is back in 8th grade, so they are both the seniors of their respective schools!!!
We had THE BEST vacation, everyone enjoyed it so much and the kids did so well with all the traveling we did.  I have so many pictures (1000 of them) to go through, I will be posting and writing when I can get organized.  I figure I may have to do a day at a time!!!!

Cakes #40-45

When I picked Maggie up from Adventure Club today, we cruised around some of the STL250 cakes that are in our zip code area.  We were looking for the Webster University cake and ran across the cake at Opera Theater St. Louis

Then we walked across to get the cake at Webster University.  Not sure of the significance of the shoes though....This was hard to get to because they are doing a lot of construction around it

Serendipity-the cake was inside the shop, so we went in to get a picture of the front of the cake.  Then we "had" to get their ice cream.  I asked if it was an evil plot to get people to eat more ice cream

The College School.  I have been driving by this for years and had no idea it was there!!!

Kenrick-Glennon Seminary.  Wow, what a nice campus.  I had no idea we had such wonderful seminaries in St. Louis.  This is the Catholic one founded in 1818, same year as SLU

Last one of the day, Shrewsbury MetroLink station.  Now we have most of Webster done and we are up to 45

STL 250 cake at City Museum

Finally we got to the City Museum. We haven't been there in months and last Sunday was the perfect day.  The kids went out on the roof first, thank goodness they are now old enough that they don't fall in the water any more!!!!

Interesting art with black eyed susans underneath

They have changed things around a little (of course) and now they have these things you can rool around in-no idea what they were in a past life, they are like giant bobbins

We walked through to the caves and the kids went down the 10 storey slide, while I walked down.  I had major vertigo, my hands were shaking when I took this!!!!

But I made it to the bottom!!!

The cake at the City Museum was the first one we had found that was inside

Of course, it's my favourite so far!!!

A large number of cakes!!!!

Maggie and I went on a huge cake hunt on Wednesday night. We were at Kohl's looking for shoes and stopped by the Sappington House cake

Then we did a trek to The Loop.  They have a lot of cakes!!!  We parked by COCA.  I was expecting their cake to be very artistic, but it was incredibly plain.  Maybe they were going for the "less is more" look

This was by the Lions Gates.  We didn't have any chalk, so we couldn't add anything new to it

Outside Vintage Vinyl-the sun was setting at the end of Delmar, so some of these pictures didn't come out very well.  We may have to take them again at some point

Outside Blueberry Hill-of course Chuck Berry is on there....

This one is outside the Tivoli-I really like it.  However, for some reason they thought it was a good idea to turn the 250 round so you have to stand in the road to take the picture!!!  I'm still alive....

This is the Regional Arts Commission

The Moonrise Hotel in The Loop

The Walk  of Fame cake, celebrating all the stars in The Loop

Francis Field at Washington University.  It was the site of the 1904 Olympic Games

More cakes

Since I have a print out of the cake list in zip code order, I always check when we got anywhere to see what cakes are around. We went to get Ben's saxophone from south city today, so we did the cakes in 63125. 

 First one was Mississippi River Greenway Trailhead 

The next was Jefferson Barracks Visitor's Center

Then the Missouri Civil War Museum

Finally, Gateway Harley-Davidson store