Czech This Out

Back from Britain

I am back! Our trip to England was LONG! I really enjoyed it - most of it, but it was a long trip. It was 50 thirteen/fourteen year olds on a double-decker bus with and emergency-only toilet! We started out at 8 p.m. from Prague. During the whole trip we stopped about every 2-4 hours to use the restroom and let the kids run around a bit. We drove all night and got to Brussels around 8 a.m. We spent the morning in Brussels and Bruges (like a small Amsterdam!). I really liked Belgium. Then we stayed in a funny little hotel near Calais and crossed the channel to the UK the next morning. Our bus was stopeed and checked ("controlled," the Czechs said) by police on the way to the ferry...we sat there for an hour and a half! Then we missed our ferry so we ended up having to skip Canterbury as one of our stops. Bummer. But we did go to Stonehenge! (One of the biggest henges in the world!) It was eerie and cool, although a little smaller than I'd have thought. We arrived in Barnstaple in North Devon that night. My "host family" was a single woman with a nice sized house! She worked nights and pretty much left me to myself, which was fine, but very different to the other girls' accommodations. I really enjoyed that part of England. It was small-town, but not too far from bigger things. The program for the 10 days was something like this: Classes for 3 hours in the morning (for the kids) and then some excursion in the afternoon. One of our excursions was to Clovelly, a privately-owned village on a steep, steep hill in a beautiful harbour. It had been preserved to victorian times...really gorgeous! One outing was to two cites, one almost directly above the other - another steep hill. Actually, this was more like on rocky cliffs, with a railway connecting them. The other days we went to a farm-themed amusement park, the beach, a pier in a village which has the 2nd highest tide in the world! It was relaxing, mostly. THEN, we went to London on our way home. It coincided with a 25th anniversary celebration of the Falklands War. There was a parade, veterans everywhere. Princes Charles and Andrew supposedly made appearances, but we didn't wee them. Anyway, because of that, it was CRAZY in London, and there we were - trying to herd (i do NOT use that word lightly here!) through the most touristy spots in London. It was insane! We saw Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Parliament ("there it is again kids - Ben Ben Parliament!"), Trafalgar Square (where I saw a woman putting a pigeon into her purse!!!), Picadilly Circus, the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, etc.... And then we saw it all again from the London Eye. It was a great day but really stressful! I worried about it all week before that. But we survived and left with the same number of kids we came with! That day the weatehr even cooperated! Shocking. All for now, but it's enough!

posted by Kassidee Kennedy @ 3:11 PM