My European Vacation

June 28, 2015

Despite the title, I did not get stuck driving in a roundabout or any of the other zany things that befell the Griswold family. My European vacation went much more smoothly, if you ignore two broken down trains, a delayed flight, and being flirted with by the old French man at the passport station. Why does that always happen to me? And it's never young, attractive foreign men. It's always weird Italian waiters and old border patrolmen.

Anyway, I digress. For those who may or may not know, I have spent a good chunk of the past month in various locales that are not in the Central Time Zone. My first few days of June after the end of school were spent chaperoning a Washington, D.C., field trip for the 8th grade class (which I will blog about later). And from June 10 through the 24th, I was gallivanting across Europe with my sister. Now, as many of you know, this was not my first time in Europe. During college, I did part of my student teaching at a small school near the coast in England (for more information, check out my blog from that time here). I stayed with a lovely lady, my "host mum", and was able to travel all about Europe thanks to the university and my roommate, Emily.

I've wanted to go back since then, but the timing never quite seemed right. I was either working or taking violin lessons or regaling the masses with my fangirling skills (in Bye Bye Birdie, of course). Either way, my return to England and the greater part of the European continent didn't seem to be in the cards.

Until this summer. My sister and I finally sat down and made our decision. We were going, come hell or high water. Well, home definitely got the latter while we were gone, and thankfully, the former stayed very far away. So we flew to England, stayed in Eastbourne (my English hometown) for a few days, took the train from London to Paris, stayed in Paris for a few days, took the train from Paris to Munich, stayed in Munich for a few days, flew from Munich to London, traveled from our base camp in Eastbourne to London for a few days, and then flew from London to Detroit to Midway. That's a lot of travelling in a very short time, a lot to see and do and soak up in a very short time. I think we managed to do just that, and I think you'll agree with me as we go through my two-week voyage.

In all honesty, I don't know quite where to start. As a former Maria Rainer-Von Trapp, I do know that starting at the beginning is a very good place to start. So let's take a photo tour of 61 Whitley Road, my home during my student teaching days, and my base camp during this trip. Darling Pam was gracious enough to let us stay with her and to leave our things at her home while we made our way to France and Germany. Perhaps the first question I always get, especially from family members, pertains to Pam's home. They all want to know how big it is and what it was like and so on and so forth. Well, I'm a terrible judge of space--I always buy way too much fabric to make curtains--and so this time, I thought I would take some pictures.

Here we see the front of 61 Whitley Road, leading up to the door. Once inside the entry way (after removing your shoes), one would be standing in the downstairs hallway, which looks like this:

Then, turning, one would be facing the stairs.

Staying on the ground floor, one might find a formal dining room, an informal dining room, a kitchen, and a sitting room.

In the past year, Pam added on a gazebo, seen from the inside and outside below, followed by pictures of her lovely garden.

Now, if one had chosen to go upstairs, this would have been your view:

That first door on the right side was my bedroom when I came to Eastbourne the first time (the purple room). Here are some pictures I took then:

However, this time, that room was occupied first by Paola from Columbia and then by Zenka from the Czech Republic, so my sister and I shared the other bedroom, the one with the open door (also known as the Yellow Room, which belonged to Emily back then).