Cheerio!

Just for the record, before you mock the title of this post, the flight attendant actually said "Cheerio!" as I left my plane in London. Hence the title.

So, England is AWESOME!!!

I'm staying at a bed & breakfast in Kew, which is a suburb of London.

My facilitator, Liz, and her husband, Bob, in front of our B&B.

My bedroom. Isn't it cute?

(Warning: If you don't like the words "cute" and "quaint," you can stop following my England posts right now. They will be used a lot. There's just no other way to describe England.

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This is the wardrobe/dresser/whatever in our bedroom. If you look closely, each shelf is labeled (Shirts, pyjamas, underwear, socks, collars, etc.) I know I'm American, but do I really need a label's help to know where to put my underwear?

I apologize for the poor lighting, but I wanted you to see our bedroom door. The doorknob comes up nearly to eye level (my eye level, that is). It also has old-fashioned keys and keyholes that remind me of the Disney movie, Cinderella.

The view from my bedroom window (our backyard).

The National Archives-- my home away from home

At the National Archives, we visited their museum. They had some really cool things on display, including:

A "fireball" recipee. This was concocted by some spy who wanted blow up something-or other (can you tell I read the plaque really carefully?)

The Magna Carta. Yes, the original.

Feet of fines.

These documents were some of the earliest ways of keeping land deeds. The deed would be writen on a paper and the paper would be ripped three ways (as pictured). One piece went to the buyer, one went to the seller, and one went to the government.

A mummified rat.

From the plaque next to it:

"This skeleton of a rat was found amongst fragments of parchment solidified into a lump. Henry Cole, who worked . . . where many records were housed, was summoned to the Select Committee of the Record Commission in 1836. He produced this skeleton of the rat together with that of a cat as evidence of the poor conditions in which the records were then stored."



The Thames

Time To Say Goodbye

La hit ra ote

Until we meet again

Galilee Part II

The bungalows we stayed at in Galilee (yes, that is the Sea of Galilee directly behind it.)

Sunset on the Sea of Galilee

These feathered friends decided to nest directly above Mom and Dad's door in Galilee.

Cute, except that they proceeded to dive-bomb at me every time I came over!

That's Christmas card material if I ever saw one!

The view from a hike we took in the Golan.

The waterfall we hiked to.

A little cold there, Dad?

Mt. of Beatitudes-- one of my all-time favorite places in Galilee and the Holy Land.

Supposedly this is the hill where Christ cast the devils out of the man, and they entered the swine.

The market in Nazareth. The Old City market iin Jerusalem looks a lot like this, but with WAY more people bustling around.

The synagogue in Nazareth, probably where Christ went to proclaim himself the Messiah.