The Americans are coming, the Americans are coming!!

The next few posts (probably 3, spread over the next few days) are about my sister and her hubby's trip here to visit us. It was hilarious and awesome and she is a much better/funnier writer (English major) so I will just copy and paste her blog posts. You all know if the blogging of this occasion were left up to me it would take weeks, so I warned her of the impending plagiarism and she agreed (thanks, Cam!). I won't edit her much except to take out the beginning part about their travel to the UK and I'll skip her Paris post since I wasn't there. Just remember the "I" and "me" reference Cami, not myself. But we were together the whole time so we had the same experience. I will post my own pictures though, in collage form.

So without further ado:

"This is a day by day trip account for my own personal journaling records. If you are brave enough to read through to the end, props to you!

June 6: We woke up pretty early. Emily lives in a suburb called Twickenham about 30 minutes outside of London so we took public transportation to the city. I am now in love with public transportation, btw, and hate the idea of having to drive myself places. Sick. That day we wandered around the center of town and ate lunch at a pub in the insurance district with Brent (Luis had fish and chips, I had a beef & Yorkshire pudding wrap, and we all ate DELICIOUS puddings and cakes for dessert). We also toured the Tower of London, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, toured the Winston Churchill War Rooms museum (SO cool), caught a glimpse of Westminster and Big Ben, and walked around the Tower Bridge for a while. We clocked in on my pedometer at around 7 or 8 miles walked. My back was killing me and my feet were hurting, and I was jet-lagged and a little sick to my stomach. It was drizzling rain and kind of chilly, but all in all it was an incredible day. Highlights included trying real English cuisine (which is WAY better than people make it out to be), seeing the crown jewels of England at the Tower of London as well as a really cool exhibit about Henry VIII, who is hands down my favorite European monarch. Everything in London looks like a movie set.

June 7th: We all woke up pretty early and took a train out to Windsor. We spent the day at Windsor castle, which was the bomb dot com. It was POURING rain and my pants got so soaking wet I just rolled them up and walked around like a doofus. Good thing I was in England where no one notices or cares what you're wearing most of the time anyway. The castle was super cool and I LOVED seeing the St. George Chapel, which is the HQ of the Order of the Garter and the burial place of several memorably famous people including but not limited to Henry VIII! Afterward we ate Indian food, which was one of Luis's requirements for our visit to England since we've heard it's better there. Afterward I dried my shoes off in a hand dryer at a train station because they were sloshing wet from all the rain. That sounds gross and weird, but it was truly hilarious at the time and saved me from being blistery and miserable for the rest of the day. We went back to London and visited a tiny, privately owned war museum then climbed the Tower Bridge, which was INSANELY tall (I'm guessing 300 + steps to the top). It has the best views of the city, though, and I recommend you try it if you ever go. Afterward we went and saw Romeo and Juliet at the Globe, which has literally been a dream of mine since I was like 9 years old. We were groundlings, which was also hilarious and awesome and fun. It did not disappoint, and I swear during the 3rd curtain call at the end I could feel the great Bard smiling down upon us. We probably walked close to 9 or 10 miles that day, and by the time we got home I literally could barely stand up. It was AWESOME!

June 7th we went to Emily and Brent's ward for Stake Conference. President Uchtdorf and Elder Anderson spoke which was pretty cool. The rest of the day we just napped and chilled, which was a nice break. It was also good to rest up for the insanity of the following 6 days."

Cami has already posted about our 3 day road trip to Scotland but I'll wait until tomorrow to do that. Don't want to overload us all.

**For those of you who read both the Farias and Gray blogs, I apologize that I don't have any new information for you. Hopefully a different set of pictures will do. Just think of it this way, you only have to pick one to read and then just look at the pictures on the other.**