UK trip: Stonehenge, Bath, Bristol and Chester.

The famous Stonehenge!

Our first afternoon on the bus was a rainy one.

I loved these posters.

The Roman Baths museum in Bath, England!

Roman ruins 

Bath, England

Traditional England take on turkey dinner at a pub in Bristol, England.

Bristol, England.

Beautiful old architecture in Chester, England!

The yummiest fish and chips that I've ever had!

More of Chester.

Seen on a main street in Chester.

     After a few days in London (read about that here!), it was time to start our bus tour. My parents and I traveled with a tourism company called Trafalgar. Their headquarters are actually in London, so the UK is a great place to do a Trafalgar tour!
 
     We boarded the bus after checking out of our London hotel on a cold and rainy morning, and then we headed for Stonehenge. You might have noticed that I only have one picture in this post from our visit there. That's because that's the only picture that I got on my camera! When we arrived at Stonehenge there were hurricane level winds and a terrible rain (borderline hail) storm, so we spent barely a few minutes actually outside near Stonehenge. It was the wildest weather that I've ever seen in my life!

     That afternoon we stopped in the town of Bath to have lunch and see a museum featuring Roman ruins. The Romans occupied ancient Bath, and they discovered natural hot springs in the town and turned them into public baths. It was an interesting museum but we only had an hour there because we had to get back on the bus! The first night of the bus tour was spent in Bristol, a lovely little coastal city. I wish we had more time there, but we arrived after dark that night and had to leave quite early the next morning.

     After leaving Bristol, our bus spent the majority of the next day on the road before arriving in Chester. Our Chester day was actually Christmas Eve! My parents and I had a few hours to explore the town and the shops. We had our first traditional English fish and chips meal in Chester! I also got some clothes and accessories from a fun store called New Look... hopefully I can include some of these items in fashion posts soon!


     That night there was an optional excursion to have a medieval themed Christmas dinner at a castle in the nearby country of Wales. My parents and most of the tour group people went on it, but I was exhausted so I decided to stay in our hotel and have my own Christmas Eve dinner there. I ate in the hotel restaurant and then watched a Bollywood movie on Netflix. It was an uneventful but relaxing and restful Christmas Eve, which was just what I needed! These first two days on the bus were fun but incredibly exhausting, and I wanted to get rest while I could.



     Stay tuned for more about our two nights in Edinburgh, Scotland!


     xoxo Miss ALK

UK trip 2013: London and Windsor.

     (Be sure to check out my OOTD post from the Scotland portion of our UK trip!)

Big Ben!

Amazing tiramisu.

The town of Windsor.

Windsor Castle.

Parents!

Amazing Thai inspired curry.

BUNNY!

Taken while on a bus tour of London.

Flowers at Nelson Mandela's statue in London.

Outside Buckingham Palace. 

Oxford Street- London's main shopping area.

Christmas decorations in a British department store.

A Harrod's window display.

Such a cute window at Harrod's! It's no secret that I love bunnies. :-)

     Sorry that the first official round of trip pictures has come a few days later then promised! This week has had some wonderful moments (like starting my amazing internship with the Ryan Seacrest Foundation), but also some bad and unexpected moments (like my roommate having to leave school for the semester unexpectedly). Because of all that and starting classes, blogging has been pushed to the back burner a little bit. But I'm happy to finally have this review of the first part of my family's trip to the UK! Our first few days were spent in London, and on one of those days my parents and I took a train out to visit the town of Windsor and Windsor castle.

     London was an amazing city. So much old integrated with so much "new." I was also pleasantly surprised by how European it felt. The architecture on many of the buildings was amazing!! And there is so much history and culture almost everywhere that you go in London as well.

     The only bad thing about our time in the city was that I was hit quite badly by jet lag at the start of our trip. The terrible headaches from it only began to fade on our last full day in the city.
   
     My parents and I traveled to the UK through a Trafalgar bus tour, but that officially began on the day that we left London. There will be much more about our trip to come! :-)


     Hope that y'all are having an amazing week!


     xoxo Miss ALK

January Goals!

     After seeing many of my favorite bloggers start to post monthly goals, I decided that it was time to do my own! Posting a few goals for each month on my blog seems like a great way to be accountable to myself, and a way that I might be more likely to actually accomplish these things! So here are my goals for January 2014:

     1. Keep maintaining my main goals for the year 2014: I blogged here about my two 2014 resolutions. They were to make more quiet time/devotional time each week, and also to get a good workout in at least once a week. If I can successfully maintain these through this month then I am off to a good start!

The wonderful devotional that I have started!! I actually received this book through a blogging opportunity- a review of the book will be coming at the end of the month!

     2. Take a friend from my new school out to see my old school: This is something that I wish I'd had the chance to do last semester, so I'm determined to make it happen this month! Even though I transferred, my former college still means a lot to me. I made some of the best friendships that I've ever had during freshman year there, and I also grew in my faith and learned a lot about myself!! The school itself is beautiful and will always be a special place to me- I'm so happy that it's not a terribly long drive from Charlotte! I think that sometimes my friends and sorority sisters here at my new school think that I talk too much about my former school. That may be true, and it's something that I'm trying to work on. ;-) But I feel that it would be very special for me to bring one of my new friends out to see this place that means to much to me! I might actually be making this goal come true this weekend... I might be taking my Big in ADPi, Jess, out there with me for a Big/Little adventure day!

My first visit back to my former college after transferring! August 2013

     3. Begin my freshman year scrapbook: Scrapbooking was a huge passion of mine in high school! Over this past Christmas break I actually found myself going through some of my old scrapbooks in my room at home, and I was quite sad that it had been so long since I'd made one! So I decided to change that. Since my former college has been on my mind a lot lately, I'm going to make a scrapbook for my year there! Once that is done I hope to jump right into starting on a scrapbook for this year, but I'll take things on month at a time. :-) The good news is that I still had enough supplies so that the only thing that I had to buy were picture prints! 

One of the pictures that will be going in my freshman year scrapbook! These are a few of the lovely ladies that I went to church with last year! 

     I will give y'all an update next month on how I did with accomplishing these goals! I'm excited to make things happen in 2014!

     And lastly, here are a couple other Instagram moments from my life as of late:

My dad always takes me to Panera Bread right before I fly back to school! 

Last night my roommate Mel and I met my best friend C (from my former school) for Winter Jam in Charlotte! Winter Jam is an awesome Christian concert that featured so many great artists. Plumb, Tenth Avenue North and the Newsboys were my favorite acts! 

     

     Stay tuned this week for more pictures from England!!

     

     xoxo Miss ALK