Old Sarum and Salisbury

We took a tour with Lehmannfest to Old Sarum and Salisbury on our second day in Camberley. Old Sarum is an old village that dates back before Stonehenge (3000 B.C.). All that is left is just small portions of the rock walls throughout the city since it was pretty much forgotten once everything was moved to Salisbury. Jack and Theo loved running around and climbing up on the wall remnants. We got some fun trinkets for them at the gift shop, hence Theo's crown! Jack got a catapult pencil sharpener that really works and catapulted pebbles around the grounds :)

We found an old well and saw coins at the bottom so we let the boys toss in some pence and make wishes! Who knows what they wished for, probably toys. Ha. We packed back in the tour bus and headed to near by Salisbury. That's the modern day Old Sarum and is where Salisbury Cathedral is located. It's most recently known from The Pillars of the Earth book series. The cathedral was massive and really impressive to walk through. Jack enjoyed taking the tour with Dave but Theo was a little more of a challenge ;) We hurried through and wrote the name of a neighbor fighting cancer in the prayer book before venturing out to the grounds outside. Theo was much happier there and ran around. We saw a wedding party arrive and walk in to the cathedral. Imagine getting married there!!

We ate lunch at The Lazy Cow and had an English version of clam chowder. Very different but good. English food tends to be so bland and starchy!! I swear I didn't see any vegetables on this leg of the trip that weren't starches, minus one salad at our hotel. *sigh*. The boys loved eating sugar cubes as a treat since we had tea with nearly every meal. We also had "chips" with nearly every meal. Makes me laugh at how we had to hunt down ketchup for our chips :)

Salisbury itself was a beautiful town. I loved the flowers hung all around and several painted doors that I saw on our walk. We had some delay with our bus so most of the Hadskey family rested tired feet on a bench while we waited. I love having so many cousins-in-law that are close in age to me :)

Legoland Windsor

Our last day in the UK came quickly. We discovered that Windsor is only a mere 11 miles from Legoland Windsor so we hired a taxi (vs. hopping trains) and arrived around 11 am. The lines to get in were staggering. I joked that they were typing blood or something (lines just weren't moving at all). It was the one and only time we stood in line like blokes ;) I had purchased all of our tickets online before leaving for all of our other excursions and whizzed through the queues. We were spoiled! We did score two free tickets while in line so Gigi and Dada got in for free.

Legoland Windsor sits up on rolling terrain. That's a nice way to say that we walked a lot and most of it was at an incline. There was a spectacular view of Windsor Castle though! Dave and I split up and I took Jack on a water ride since he was tall enough for the fun rides. We got soaking wet but he loved it! Dada and Dave did some slower paced rides with Theo over in Duplo Land (named after the bigger Legos for little kids). Jack and I met them by chance while Dada and Theo were in line and I pulled a French move by sending Jack in to line to join them. We only did that once though.

There were so many things to do at Legoland and we had done zero research since it was a last minute decision to go there. It all worked out though! We spent time walking around all of the Lego exhibits in Mini Land. The detail was just astounding. We could have stayed there all day just looking at everything! We rode some rides (a slow roller coaster, a Viking ship that terrified Theo, the water ride (once with Dave and once with me), a little kid roller coaster for Theo and a full-fledged roller coaster for Jack), saw a 3-D show, built Lego kits (the boys could have stayed there ALL DAY) and ate ice cream! We stayed 7 hours and were beat when we left. Everyone there seemed and sounded British, unlike Disney which was a total mix of Europeans. I loved listening to the accents and people watching :)

Legoland was definitely little boy heaven. We bought the boys souvenier cups and let them assemble tiny Lego people. No kits were fitting in our luggage!

Lehmannfest 2011

We attended our third Lehmannfest reunion this past week, the main reason for our trip to Europe! Cousins (Dave's father's side of the family- from his mother's side of the family)from around the world gathered in Camberley. We stayed at Frimley Hall and the boys loved roaming the grounds. Theo played in the gravel rocks and made a rock family. I loved all of the lush flowers around and really wanted to clip off one of the huge rose blossoms :)

We had met some of the cousins before from previous reunions (in Berlin 7 years ago and New Orleans 4 years ago) but there were new faces as well. There are German, English, Japanese and Canadian branches of Lehmanns and every branch was represented in Camberley. I tried to snap pictures of each group on the last night in Camberley. There are some pictures from our tours in to London and Sarum/Salisbury as well. Toby and Susie Lehmann were our hosts for Lehmannfest and doubled as tour guides. They live in the general London area (I think) and Toby is a Lt. Col in the British Army. I learned so much about Parliament and the monarchy from Toby during our walk throughout London. He used the word "brilliant" a lot and I loved that!! I want to make it catch on here :)

The large group photo was taken at the banquet at The Military Academy at Sandhurst. Princes William and Harry attended Sandhurst and I'm told it was an elegant evening. Gigi and I stayed back with the boys since the banquet was scheduled to last until around midnight. It was a wise choice :)

Jack and Theo met scores of new relatives and just relished in the new experiences! Thank you to Toby and Susie for organizing this reunion. We will treasure the memories for all time :)