After many months of detailed planning and preparation, we have finally left the USA, for a 6 month sabbatical! We have left our cozy home and beloved pets, with trusted and able friends in our house, and are headed out for a family adventure. We started with 4 days exploring Paris. We got an Airbnb apartment right in the middle of Paris, about one door from the Seine River, within a short walk of Notre Dame and other sights; a fantastic location! We did all that we could squeeze in and it was great!! Lots of walking, some long lines, even though it is the off season, and some REALLY COLD weather. We were very glad we brought some long underwear! We ate some delicious food, including frog legs, escargot, macarons, and many varied crepes! Yum! Even in the cold, Paris is a beautiful city, full of amazing and interesting things to see.
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Day 2 included exploring Hadrian's Wall, Gretna Green, a tenement house in Glasgow, and a stay in Inverary (See map below). Hadrian's Wall Though Hannah had studied Hadrian's Wall in school right before we left Utah, some of the rest of us (namely, Mark and Heather) did not know much about it. For those who are less informed about it, Wikipedia provides the following: Hadrian's Wall (Latin: Vallum Aelium), also called the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or Vallum Hadriani in Latin, was a defensive fortification in the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the emperor Hadrian. It ran from the banks of the River Tyne near the North Sea to the Solway Firth on the Irish Sea, and was the northern limit of the Roman Empire, immediately north of which were the lands of the northern Ancient Britons, including the Picts. It had a stone base and a stone wall. There were milecastles with two turrets in between. There was a fort about...
With just a couple of days left before we headed home to Utah, we decided to squeeze in two more sightseeing adventures. We were so glad we did! On August 14th we took a day trip to Hathersage Moor and the rocky outcrops of Carl Wark and Higger Tor. On August 16th, since we were going to be spending the night at a hotel at London's Heathrow Airport, we decided to make a stop at Highclere Castle (a.k.a., Downton Abbey) on our way. Also in this post we'll say our final goodbyes to England and our sabbatical experience. Hathersage Moor is beautiful and vast. The pictures don't really do it justice, but we absolutely loved hiking through it and scrambling around on the two main outcrops of Carl Wark and Higger Tor. It made it even more fun to be here because a scene from the movie Princess Bride (Just before Wesley and Buttercup go into the fireswamp) was filmed here. There are many other scene locations from that movie in the surroun...
Haddon Hall Heather really wanted Heidi to see Haddon Hall (See our June 29th post for our first trip to Haddon Hall, back in May), so Heather and Heidi toured the Hall, while Mark and Hannah hung out and studied in the grounds surrounding it. Haddon Hall is a popular place for weddings and receptions. A second visit allows one to notice new details, like those pictured below from Haddon's chapel and Hall. Notice how centuries of foot traffic have worn the floor stones in the picture below. The ground floor of the entire hall undulates and hardly has an even surface, requiring visitors to remember to attend to foot placement while admiring the beautiful sites. The strange hinges on this door makes it self-closing. We loved the wavy glass. We weren't sure if it was intentional in this bay window, or just old age, but looking at the photo now,...
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