London Part 3

Alright so I am finally getting around to posting more about London.

The next three days that we were there were crazy. Saturday morning we woke up to snow, not uncommon here but very uncommon there. We packed up and headed off to the airport to pick up George. George had to finish finals before he could fly over. What can I say- we sat in that packed airport for over four hours before we finally found out that his plane was diverted to Paris. His was the next plane to land btw. So we left and headed down to Exeter, hoping that George would be able to fly in the next day. The roads were bad, not bad for here, and this was our first experience on England roadways...SCARY!!! Their roads are just wide enough for a car and sometimes not even that. We were in a small mini-van but it was one of the larger cars over there. There is no shoulder to the road, there are hedges or brick walls. One of the shockers was when we discovered that sometimes a two lane road will merge to one lane and both directions of traffic have to share the one lane! There are lots of round-a-bouts and thank goodness for that GPS, but I do still hear that women in my sleep! We spent that first night in Exeter and then in the morning headed to Dawlish (Harriet's house). I will say that one of the things I was really looking forward to was the beautiful green country side...nope it was white just like home. I should also mention that the country pretty much shuts down with a few inches of snow. The main highways were packed with abandoned cars and they were telling people to stay off the roads. The trains ended up icing up and not running, what a mess! Anyway, so we made it to Harriet's and eventually talked to George. Poor George he was stuck in Paris where he couldn't speak the language and couldn't see the Eiffel tower due to the weather. We learned that the planes weren't leaving that day either (Sunday) maybe the next day, and that the earliest we could get him a Euro train ticket was for Tuesday morning the day of the wedding. I did find him an alternate route of taking a train across France to the port of Calais and then ferry across to Dover, but since he didn't speak the language and we didn't want him getting lost in France this was plan B. The plan was to see if he could fly out Monday morning and if not then try to ferry, what a nightmare! After talking to George and getting to know Karen (Harriet's mom) we headed to our next place to unpack, the Cubby Hole. We stayed in the cutest little flat a block from the ocean in Tiegnmouth. Here are the pics from our place.

Views from the windows, the ocean is right around the corner

Our van and more of the town

Oceanside

After checking in we did hit the beach and looked around for a bit before we headed back to Karen's to have dinner with her and Harriet. I should mention that the place we stayed at was awesome! It was so cute and English just like we all wanted. The place had three floors with all the bedrooms and baths on the top floor and we enjoyed our view. I really loved it here is the link for pics of the place. Anyways, we had a wonderful dinner with Harriet and her mom (I really love the accents over there). Her mom was very nice, but everyone was super worried about George. This was also the night I was finally able to Skype with Ky and the girls, up until then we were just emailing thanks Harriet! Funny that I was worried about not making it home for Christmas and it never occurred to me that the groom might not make the wedding!

Our pictures from the beach

Still so cold!

Mar getting seashells
The pier, too bad it was closed.

These next ones are from Monday. Me and Mar went back to the beach and found lots of seashells (and shopped) while everyone else drove to Dover to pick up George. Yep no planes flying out that day either. Luckily he hooked up with a travel agent and his family and they were all able to travel together across France.
The weather was so crappy!

The starfish necklace I brought home. The gal that owned the Cubby Hole where we were staying also had this cute shop right below and we found some awesome stuff in there!

We were also able to walk the area and hit most of the shops there. We even found a bookstore where I got all of Ash's fairy books and Peppa pig books for Kami. There were so many neat souvenirs, lots of stuff done in seashells. We had a fun day, but James said they were miserable. They drove through a horrible blizzard and it took two hours longer to pick up George than they thought. We were expecting them back about 11 and they didn't walk in until almost three in the morning! But George made it to the wedding with 10 hours to spare!
FYI the wedding post is next Missy!