Cruise and afterward Gwen

My head is healing just fine. We loved visiting Malta. I gave in to the carriage ride around the city just because I know how much Beth wanted to do it. :) We had one more day at sea and enjoyed time to pack and get our things in order. We spent the evening hanging out with Hencel and Stacey from College Station (my Texas buddy). We played probably the craziest scavenger hunt (rivals college days). I won't go into details....its kinda one of those things that "what happens on the cruise boat stays on the cruise boat." ;)

We spent the entire Friday in the Barcelona airport. It was pretty interesting. We took a nap in the lobby area for an hour, then ate lunch at this horribly expensive buffet and sat there for 4 more hours reading our respective "trip" books. We left once Beth finished her book and then waited the last 45 min or so in the lobby before being able to check in for our flight. We then finally got to check in our bags and quickly went through security. We grabbed a quick dinner and coffees at the airport before getting on the plane. We actually were served FOOD for FREE on British Airways. :) We arrived and picked up our bags at the claim and walked right out to the Welcoming arms of Beth's Aunt Claire and cousin Claudia. We walked out to the car park to find that they were driving a Jeep Commander!! :) Makes me feel right at home.

We got to the house and were fed tea. (I'm going to have so much TEA the next two weeks!!) Beth and I each have our OWN rooms to sleep in and stretch out in. The family is AMAZING: so nice, so fun, so caring. We spent the first day sleeping in, doing laundry, and just plain relaxing. We took the dog, Hetty, out for a walk in the country. We drank lots of wine that night with Aunt Claire and had a long girl talk. We had an English breakfast and then headed out to the stables to meet Polly Anna the pony. We might actually go for a "hack" while we are here. :) Uncle Jonny came home from his business trip at dinner.

Today we woke up with the kids and Uncle Jonny and went into London together with Jonny. He paid for all day travel tickets for us. Its really quite interesting to see how much the Obama inaguration is published in the English newspapers. They realllllly like him! We spent 5 hours at the British Museum gawking at the things that the British Museum collected from the places we've seen in the last two weeks. We also had a great time taking goofy pictures with the artifacts. We then jumped on the tube again and made our way down to the Tower of London. We spent a full two hours there before doing our best to make our way back to the train station. We are now fed...and going to an early bed for a LONG sleep before lunch with 1st cousin twice removed, Aunt Margaret, aka Grim. :) Should be fun!