BenDover and I'll show ya.

[Pardon my obscene play on words in the title. Inside family joke.]

As I've said in the last few posts, we spent the bank holiday weekend in Dover. You may be familiar with the White Cliffs of Dover via that song on guitar hero. This is that place. I was trying to find somewhere to go near the ocean that was within driving distance so I just randomly picked a place on the map, found a decently priced hotel. and then we were off.

Instead of giving you the play by play of the entire trip,  I will just go through some holiday highlights and post some pictures.

HIGHLIGHTS:  

Taylor runs into a parked car.
Saw an Indian guy peeing in a bush right in plain view.
The guy in the store on the ferry who sprayed 13 sprays of the cologne tester on his face .
Getting in an argument whilst playing Monopoly on my kindle in front of everyone on the ferry.
Spending 6 hours Touring the Dover Castle.
Hunter.
Meeting the Scottish women who loved and mocked Taylor's southern accent. "MA'AM", they said (heavy on the A) and then laughed. Tayl loved this.
Staying up until 3AM watching Barbarella on TV thinking "Wow, this is incredibly entertaining and super easy to follow and so predictable" the entire time.
The scenery.
Going to France for a minute.
(This all furthers the evidence of our extremely mediocre life together. We love it.)

I recommend visiting Dover, if you ever are in England with some free time. It's quiet and the white cliffs are beautiful. I dunno, maybe we just tend to like the vacation spots that old people like. Places with more history and less partying. But such is the life of a young Mormon couple living outside of the bubble of Provo.

Here are some pictures. Enjoy.

Our hotel, Best Western.

White Cliff Country

Meadows and whatnot. ("That bird next to the bus must be huge" That's not a bus)

Sup.

Dover Castle

Ferry port to France

White cliff

Heading to Calais

Poop alert

Here's me overseas, cross the pond, by the dover peaks

"I love ocean travel" face

2000 year old Roman tower, 1000 year old church

In the Dover Castle keep

Window

Dover

View from the top of the keep towards France

View of our hotel

King Henry II the Gingerbeard

King's bed is not king size?

Party Central

Pirate lashing

Underground tunnel to France

Dang Girl

Hunter style

Still married

Secret wartime tunnels under Dover Castle. Hitler had Dover Castle on a list of sites not to bomb, so he was unwittingly protecting some of the British headquarters.

Minivan tour of UK

White boy, white cliffs

View from hotel room

Windsurfer!

*sorry that you mostly only ever see my mug on the pictures. 

sometimes you go to France for a sec.

Due to last minute planning and utter lack of motivation on my part, we spent a mere 1.5 hours in France. Hence, the lone photo.

We spent last weekend in Dover [which is a wonderful little gem of a town.] We later discovered that we could take a ferry out of the port of Dover into France. Well, turns out it's a 90 minute boat ride over to the port of Calais. I had never heard of the place, but I thought, we might as well go to say we went to France. So we bought the tickets to leave as early as possible [5:00pm], and return as late as possible [9:45pm]. I didn't do any research about the city of Calais other than a brief skimming of the wikipedia page. I learned there is almost nothing left pre-WWII, [as it was all destroyed with bombs.] So, the ferry got into Calais at about 6:30pm. Perfect, enough time to wander on foot and get back to the port to check in at 9:30 pm. 

WRONG.

We did not take into account the time change. It was actually 7:30pm.

Crap.

So, we book it in the direction which we hope is the direction to the town center, to find somewhere to eat. We had no map, and Taylor was trying to remember some French from high school. But his efforts were futile.

SIDE NOTE:

On the ferry ride over he tried to distract me from my sea sickness by teaching me what little french he could remember. It went a little something exactly like this:

[click me.]

So, after a 20 minute walk,  we end up finding this Cafe called "Cafe de Paris" which sounded pretty glam as most French things do, but I quickly learned that it was pretty much the French version of Denny's. Maybe a little classier. But Taylor ordered steak, and it came with bone marrow.

DISGUSTING. 

He could barely gag it down. I don't know why he felt he had to eat it, but he did. And he didn't shut up about how gross it was the whole rest of the trip. Poor thing. Poor me.

SO after dinner we had just enough time to get back to the port to check in for the ferry.  I put away my complaining skills and put my power walking skills to work. 

We made it.

So that's the story of when we went to France for a second.

Everyone, meet Hunter.

There will soon be a post about our lovely bank holiday weekend. BUT FIRST, I wanted to make a special post about my new hero.

We spent the day exploring the Dover Castle, which was pretty, dope. But I'll get to that in the next post.

While we were there, we saw this little boy there with his mum. He had on a bomber jacket, aviation goggles, carried around an automatic rifle toy, and a toy airplane that I leanred through observation,  he affectionately called, Sheila. He was truly inspiring.

His name is Hunter.

FIRST, he inspired me to laugh. His mother was in front of us in line to get ice cream, he busted through the line by way of pushing through everyone in the line to reach her as though it was a life or death emergency to choose his ice cream flavor, his outfit was AWESOME, and he had no shame.

SECOND, he inspired me to get a double scoop ice cream cone because his looked so delicious.

THIRD, we were waiting in line to go through the wartime tunnels, and it was about a 50 minute wait. Hunter, party of two, were in front of us again.  Instead of  being a typical 7-9 year old and whining about the wait, texting on his phone, or doing drugs, Hunter walked away to play, by himself.

I watched him shoot at strangers, yell things about security coming, roll around on the ground to take cover from enemy fire, take a break a few times to scratch his butt cheek, and tell his mum to "piss off" once (she shut that down pretty fast though), for about 45  minutes.

When we FINALLY got inside, I was lucky enough to be in his tour group. The tour was about England during WWII, and Hunter had on a jacket that had an American flag, and I heard his mum say something about the wrong country, and then all I heard was Hunter yell "AT LEAST I'M NOT GERMAN!"

They shuffled us into a room where we got to hear the actual broadcast of the Prime Minister announcing to the English people that they were at war with Germany. While the broadcast was playing Hunter was getting really into it, they announced that public places like cinemas would be closed until further notice, Hunter was disgruntled. They announced that school would be closed until further notice, and Hunter cheered loudly. I wasn't convinced that he didn't time travel from 1939.

When we got to the projection videos about the war he even shot at the German planes that soared by on the screen. He was serious.

At some point during the tour, we got separated from Hunter. It wasn't until I heard a little fat girl complaining about how boring the exhibit was that I realized I had taken him for granted. He inspired me to find a sense of wonderment in the little things, and have an imagination again. I want my kids to be like Hunter, (except for the telling me to piss off part) I want them to be interested in history, and be able to entertain themselves for an hour without technology. I want them to be fearless and play pretend war and scratch their butts like no one is watching. I want them to go outside and get dirty, and wear a costume out in public if they feel like it. Then it dawned on me, that not only did I want this for my future children, I want it for myself now. I am constantly working on having a childlike faith, and Hunter was a really great example of that for me.

I am really glad I got to be around this small person with big personality today. Not only was he inspiring, but he was also really entertaining. Unfortunately, I will probably never see him again, but I hope he never loses what I saw today.

monkey nuts. and other shenanigans..

Typically the week days are filled with monotony and Taylor working and me thinking seriously about showering and/or blogging. But in the evenings we usually find ourselves meandering into various shenanigans, like going to the cinema, or the grocery store. Before I get into this, let me give you a little background.

ME: Thinks plays are lame. Thinks symphonies are boring. HATES HATES HATES musicals. I guess you could say, I am a typical 23 year old teenager.

TAYLOR: Thinks plays are cool, especially Shakespeare. Thinks symphonies are entertaining. Doesn't really mind musicals. Reads textbooks for leisure. Nerd.

So last week, Taylor begged me to go with him to some Shakespeare play. And I was like, FINE. The play was Antony and Cleopatra. So we go and it's outside on a rooftop amphitheater, which I admit is kinda cool. It was rainy and I was hungry. And I was surprising not as miserable as I thought I would be considering all circumstances. So I was sitting there, completely content in my poncho when the music started and all of these people came out yelling wearing masks and dancing, and I was like, am I at a The Sound of Animals Fighting concert? Then this guy (Antony) stands up and I notice he's wearing high heels. So the entire time first 20 minutes of the play, I am like, "WHAT'S WITH THE HIGH HEELS?" That's all I could focus on. It just didn't seem relevant to the play. It still doesn't. And the guy was dancing in them. I can't even dance in heels. I was confused and impressed. Anyway, it started raining really hard and the play was stopped mid scene to relocate inside. LONG story short, the play ended up being pretty good. But the end seemed to drag on forever. Nobody tell Shakespeare I critiqued his play. Here's a promo video I found:





Antony and Cleopatra Trailer from Creation Theatre on Vimeo.




In other news, so far we have created a ritual of traveling around the country on the weekends.

WEEKEND 1: Oxford
WEEKEND 2: London
WEEKEND 3: BATH
WEEKEND 4: Cardiff, Wales

Going to Wales was completely spontaneous and we left at about 5:45 PM on Saturday.

"Let's go get dinner in another country!"

What I like most, surprisingly, are the car rides. I think it's really great to spend time with my husband in the car. We always find something to talk and laugh about. We agree on lots of music, so there's never much of a fuss about that. Taylor tells me to look at how cool the sky is about 100 times. I yell something unintelligible in my southern accent and he laughs. It's fun. But I've always felt that way about riding in the car with him.

ANYWAY, so we drive over the bridge into Wales, and I start to notice a strange language and I am like, "What? They speak another language here?" Which in itself just makes me cringe at how stupid it sounds. But Taylor informed me that they speak Welsh, in Wales. Good to know.

So we're driving around for what seems like forever, following signs to Cardiff Bay, not really knowing what Cardiff Bay will hold but when we get there we see lights and hear music, and we even see a carousel. So Taylor immediately names this place PARTY CENTRAL, obviously.

We went and had burgers for dinner, my first time eating beef since we've been here. Then had ice cream. And then some how Taylor talked me into riding the merry-go-round. So we did that. Stopped at the grocery store. And then we went home, like no big deal. We just went to Wales for a couple of hours. Since our stay was so short, we didn't get very many pictures. Except with our phones. So here's some pictures I tried to make look decent.

                                                     
homeless looking girl.

                                              
This is too obscene to talk about.

                                             
I was pretty amused about this ketchup bottle.

 

 

                                              
Typical Taylor face at dinner.

                                          
Lay off me I'm eating ice cream.

                                                       
MONKEY NUTZ!!