Nifty Fifty

Last month, the boys and I headed to Utah for a week to celebrate my mom's 50th birthday. Everyone not on a mission managed to be there, so it was a lot of fun.

I've talked before about how awesome my mom is, and my sister did a fun tribute to her as well, so this post will be more of a recap of what we did while we were together.

Here are some highlights:

• Not being on an airplane anymore.
  

  

  This was such a lovely, welcome sight . . . for the last 20 minutes.
• Sitting on soft Kentucky bluegrass. Seriously the stuff feels like velvet compared to the poky grass in the Midwest.
  

  

  
  

• Joseph surviving this slide.

  

  
  

• Meeting my 9-day-old nephew G., who is pictured here, but only sort of.

  

  
  

• Enjoying the lovely Logan River trail at its loveliest.

  

  
  

• Hanging with my niece (and soul sista) K., who mistook me for her mom enough to not be scared of me.

  

  
  

• Seeing Kaylie laugh at this sign.

  

  
  

• Going to a splash pad and running into our friends the Tanners there! (not pictured. oops.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Taking pictures of beautiful baby G.
  
  
  
  

  

  There are about 40 other pictures but I figured you couldn't handle the cuteness overload.

• Heading up to Utah State with my dad and sons. Kevin's train is still in safe hands.

  

  
  

• Watching my talented brother-in-law Matt win a few matches of tennis. He's pretty much famous.
• Sending Joseph to the backyard to go camping for two nights. (The other nights he slept diagonally in my bed, so this was really nice!)

  

  
  

• Dealing with Joseph going to bed at 10 pm Mountain Time and waking up . . . too early. (Actually, this was not a highlight . . . it was part of most every day. My poor child.)
• Seeing all my family members sleep-deprived, stressed, not feeling well, etc. and still trying oh so hard to be polite and patient with each other. And mostly succeeding.
• Attending the temple when my brother received his endowment. Spain is going to get an awesome missionary!
  

  

  
  

• Vacuuming a lot.
• Reaping the blessings of having a sister on the mission such as being able to borrow her swimsuit. (And lots of her other clothes made it home with me.)

  

  
  

• Enjoying a beautiful day at Bear Lake, complete with some sugar-coma shakes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  This girl had no fear.

  
  
  
• Having my mom give my boys haircuts because it always looks better when she does it.
• Driving very fast on I-15 down to Orem and still getting tailed. It was crazy land! (But I was never scared, which was a blessing.)
• Getting to see most of Kevin's family!!! They were so kind to all meet up with us, even for just a few hours. I don't think I have enough good things to say about them.
• Watching Matthew love on Craig's shirt.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Watching Joseph play with his cousins.
• Watching Joseph play with second cousins.

  

  At one point, the three big boys all had their legs out and Matthew crawled through, but by the time I grabbed my camera they were just doing this.

• Seeing my grandma. She even fed us dinner!
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Attending my sister's stake play. I think this was one of my favorite versions of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Just the right amount of silliness. And it is the perfect musical to take a toddler to, even when it's way past his/her bedtime. (Especially with a child named Joseph.) And of course, Leslie was the most fun to watch of all the cast members.
• Talking with Spencer on the ride home about dating and whatnot.
• Not getting the gum and sunglasses stolen from my car.
• Not hiking the Wind Caves.
• Still vacuuming a lot.
• Not brushing my teeth with tap water from Mexico.
• Not buying my mom a tree because it was a rainy day. (We really did consider, it Mom!)
• Hanging out with Leslie.



The rain hadn't started by the time this picture was taken, but it started pretty soon after.

• Eating at Elements for my mom's birthday meal. (It wasn't actually her birthday, but we counted it.)
• Playing the "Person Game" with my family. We are hilarious.

  

  And cute.

• Celebrating K.'s first birthday with cherry chip cake. She ate a lot of it, and what she didn't Matthew ate off the floor for her.

  

  Happy cousin story time.

• Only being in the room for the cool parts of "Independence Day" when my dad was watching it.
• Being introduced multiple times at my parents' ward as Kyra Moon Moon (never by my parents, I might add). This never happens when I go to Duchesne.
• Losing a wipes box I had just found/claimed as my own/received as a gift from a friend who said she didn't need it anymore even though it probably wasn't the one I had lost. (I had been pretty excited to have it back, so it was funny that I lost it so fast.)
  

  

  Bright side is, I got to see him that day, too. He's cuter than a wipes box.

• Watching people make boats to sail down a nearby irrigation ditch.

  

  

  Joseph might have been cheating.

• Watching people extricate the boats from a long tunnel in the ditch using sticks and poles of all varieties.

  

  I think the milk jug was the main culprit, but there were others.

• Going on a walk with my parents again on the Logan River Trail, and having a picture taken by the Logan City mayor who was walking by.

  

  
  

  
  
  
  

• Watching the end of a really cool lightning storm.
  .
• Going through TSA Pre Check. It's been a while!
• Not being on an airplane anymore, and most importantly . . . seeing Kevin again!

It was a great trip, and at least 70% of the time it made me want to live in Cache Valley. (The other 30% of the time was probably when I was sleep-deprived and grumpy and trying to get Joseph to eat foods he didn't want to, so those probably shouldn't be factored into the statistics that much.)

Happy birthday mom! Thanks for letting us celebrate with you!

Traveling abroad with a 1-year-old

It was intense. It was crazy. And yet we did it and loved it.

And a lot of my inspiration came from this blog post: http://lovetaza.com/2012/12/traveling-abroad-with-littles/

If you are thinking of traveling abroad with a little one, I recommend reading that post and its comments carefully. However, there were a few things we did differently. Some of them worked, and some of them didn't.

0. First off, recognize you are not the Rockstar Diaries family. Once I realized that, I was able to relax a bit. We didn't have to do things the exact same. We weren't as well-dressed or stylin' and our camera isn't as fancy. And that's okay. We still had fun.

With that out of the way, here's my two cents on their advice.

1. stay flexible with your itinerary, pace yourself -- Yes. When you have a 1-year-old, you simply cannot see all the things that you could with just two adults. It's not fair to your baby. So prioritize what you want to see, and let other things slide a little. We even just had a few days where we spent most of the time home playing with the Seamons -- and those were great days.

When it came down to it, we only needed to see one castle, one palace, one abbey, one major art museum, etc. to feel satisfied. This might not be true for everyone, but it's how we felt. All the architecture can become overwhelming if you see too much too fast. On the other hand, parks never got tiresome for us. Joseph loved it when he had a chance to stretch his legs.

1 1/2. As a side note, we didn't end up getting the London Pass or Museum pass. It ended up being cheaper to do things ala carte since we didn't end up doing as much. In retrospect, we probably would have used the Paris Museum pass, but we didn't think ahead enough.

One thing to keep in mind is that babies can throw off your pacing. For example, one museum we were both interested in cost a little more than we had planned, but we would have been game had we not had Joseph with us. We realized that since he had been kind of fussy that day, we would have rushed through the museum and not gotten to fully enjoy it. If we'd had a pass, we probably would have gone through the museum regardless of Joseph's mood since we'd already paid for it. Oh well.

2. pack light Yep. It's possible. We packed a diaper bag along with two backpacks, but that was it. Although we didn't travel a ton, it made it a lot easier for the few times we found ourselves on and off trains a lot (such as the first night in Paris). We packed diapers with us and enjoyed watching our load get lighter and lighter. We didn't take many clothes, went light on the toiletries, and wore a lot layers, especially when we flew from England to Paris.

3. take a stroller --and have your kids nap on the go -- We decided to take an umbrella stroller. We were able to use a normal stroller in most of England that we had borrowed from the Seamons, but we only had the umbrella stroller in London and Paris. It sure was nice to have something compact when we were getting on and off trains and around on narrow sidewalks, but it was harder for Joseph to fall asleep in, made for a bumpier ride, and didn't have storage space like a normal stroller. I'd still recommend it though.

Oh, and the whole "have your kids nap on the go" thing might be easier if your kids are used to it. We probably should have practiced before going.

Always a miracle

4. travel at off season for better prices and to avoid crowds of tourists -- oops. June is not the off-season. Although I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with how short the lines were, particularly at the Louvre and the Eiffel tower. And if you see the grounds of Versailles in the morning and the palace in the afternoon, the line is much shorter.

Somewhat related is to choose your airport carefully. We only live 4 hours from the Toronto airport, and international flights are much cheaper there compared to other nearby airports (even Chicago). We ended up paying just about $700 a ticket (plus $50 for Joseph, plus $80 to pick our seats [okay that probably was a racket, but I didn't know what to do otherwise and it sounded like we had to with a baby]) when we bought our tickets in March. Meanwhile, tickets from Detroit were like $1200 back in March. Yikes. So, shop around.

5. stay in the center of it all. splurge for a room with a view if you can. We did this in Paris, and boy was it nice to be within walking distance of most everything we wanted to see. Transportation can add so much time and expense and inconvenience to a trip, and it was nice to not worry about it too much in Paris. I'm glad we stayed with friends while in England, even if it meant we had to commute some, but I think it's worth it to try and get a place in the heart of a city.

Also, we had very good luck with Airbnb. We had a nice king-sized bed, ample space, beautiful bathroom, washer and dryer, all for $109 a night. In the middle of Paris. It was a miracle. If you ever try out Airbnb, I would recommend reading reviews of potential hosts and booking early (we failed there) so you can be confident in your decision.

Where we stayed. Actually, just kidding -- this is at Versailles. But our room was still really nice.

Now for other pieces of advice, here they are:

• If you have to choose between the Louvre and the d'Orsay, probably go with the d'Orsay if you're going for aesthetics. The sculptures in the Louvre were incredible, but most of the art was too academic for me. The d'Orsay had all of the beautiful Impressionistic art that makes my soul sing. Plus, since we got there after 5, it was free. We only had 45 minutes to roam before closing, but that was enough for me. Note that no pictures are allowed.
• If you want to take the Chunnel, book tickets about the same time you would buy plane tickets. Turns out high-speed rail just gets more expensive as you get closer to the date. We kept waiting and waiting because we weren't sure which day we wanted to go to Paris. Then when we had everything else scheduled, we sort of forgot about the Chunnel. And then we tried to book it and it became crazy expensive. So we ended up using easyJet, which is like RyanAir, which is cheap flights throughout Europe, as long as you only have one personal item each. It ended up working out just fine, but I felt pretty sheepish about letting that one slide.
• Don't wean your baby before you go. It was so nice not having to worry too much about feeding Joseph grownup food or getting milk for him. As the trip progressed I became increasingly bold about nursing in public, and no one minded. It took us a long time to get back into normal schedules and habits again once we were home, but I think it was worth it.
• Dress nicely. People take you more seriously, and you feel more comfortable. Scarves are a good idea.
• Don't go for longer than you can handle. I remember thinking after we'd just been in Europe for 5 days, "We can't go home for another week and a half???" Turns out that Kevin and I get tired of vacations faster than we realized. Switching things up by going to Paris helped with that, but in the future we'll probably only take week-long vacations. (oh wait. we're going to Utah for two weeks next month.)
• Don't get sick. We didn't, and it made the trip much more enjoyable.

And the biggest piece of advice I can offer to you who travel with infants:

• Don't. Lose. Your. Baby's. Pacifier!!!! And for the love of all that's good, if you do lose it, bring a spare that your baby will accept.
  
  So, we have actually been really good at keeping tabs on Joseph's pacifier. The first one we lost was when he was more than 10 months old. We were on our way home from a fireside in Livonia and he got hungry. So we pulled into a parking lot and I nursed him. Then I guess when I was moving him back from my seat to his car seat, his pacifier must have slid off my lap into the parking lot because we haven't seen it since.
  
  But that had been the only time we had lost a pacifier. So I felt pretty confident that we could keep tabs on one for two more weeks. Then at the end of our visit to Cambridge, I nursed Joseph in the car in the parking lot. And I guess when I was moving him from my seat to his car seat, his pacifier must have slid off my lap into the parking lot because we haven't seen it since. (Sound familiar?)
  
  And, surprise, none of the local stores carried the Soothie type of pacifier that are given out in US hospitals. So we went through like 4 pacifiers and he refused them all day after day after day. This made jet lag even harder. It made teething even harder (yes, he chose the best time to cut 3 teeth). It made car rides even harder. If Joseph wasn't just naturally a happy guy, I don't know how we could have made it (and luckily, he didn't miss it as much as he could have, so he was still very pleasant most of the time). So, just don't lose your baby's pacifier. Chances are you all already have clips and whatnot to keep pacifiers attached, so I'm preaching to the choir. And I'm the one who's singing out of tune.
  
  On the bright side, hey, he's weaned from his pacifier now! He can even go to sleep without it now!

If you're still reading this, I'm very impressed. I hope I haven't scared you off too much. Travel is definitely possible, though it does take some adjustments. But people will be so kind and accommodating. You will appreciate the sights in a way you never could without a bright-eyed baby. It will be one of the best adventures of your life. Bon voyage!

Learning to love Paris, part 3

The key to loving the culture was also to look up. And look up. And look up.

It wasn't that everyone fit the snooty stereotype. Far from it. Everyone was exceptionally kind to Joseph, from the old French men also visiting Versailles to the security guards at the museums. Most of the people at restaurants and grocery stores were also friendly to us all.

But I still felt a disconnect from Paris which bothered me. Each aloof or grumpy baker, each phrase at the train station that I couldn't decipher with my 10 days of studying French in May was yet another sign that we didn't belong here. And after being gone from home for more than a week, I wasn't sure I wanted to be here anyway.

And still, I tried to fit in. I memorized several phrases and tried the best I could to pronounce things correctly. Kevin and I would say "Bonjour" the moment we walked into a store and "Au revoir" as we left, hoping that we were polite enough. On the way back from Versailles, I sat next to a French teacher from Florida on a cultural exchange with her students and asked her what we could do to not rub people the wrong way.

For the most part, it worked. When it didn't, I felt confused and disappointed. I would wonder why on earth we had chosen to come here in the first place. I had never really cared about seeing things like the Eiffel tower. What I had been excited to see -- Versailles and the Louvre -- had not lived up to my dreams. Versailles felt so artificial and self-centered compared to all the cathedrals I had been to that I just couldn't love it as much as I had dreamed. The Louvre had been, well, rather fleshy. Although I wasn't bothered by all the voluptuous and nude women (and found some of the paintings even comical, like the one of a woman squirting milk at her baby), it became tiresome to go through room after room of it, especially with hardly any landscapes to add variety. For me, looking at portraits was about as interesting as looking at my cousin's yearbook. I didn't know who any of the people were, and I didn't really care about looking at pictures of them. And I would wonder again why we came.

When these moments would hit, when I was discouraged and affronted and disillusioned, I would think, "There must be a reason people love Paris." I racked my brain for reasons Paris mattered to me. The food, yes, most of the food had been good, especially the bread and crepes. Ummm, the Enlightenment. Yes, I was a fan of Pascal. And Claude Shannon! The father of information theory! Who shared my birthday! He had a French-sounding name, so he must have been from Paris! Spurred on by thoughts of these heroes, I realized that Paris did in fact matter to me.*

And things started to look up. On Sunday, we went to church and were surrounded by familiarity, playing the "put two Mormons in a room and see who they both know" game. Finding a community we belonged to in Paris itself helped bridge a gap between the two cultures. After all, if we belonged to the church, and the church belonged in Paris, maybe we could belong there, too. Later that afternoon, when we were finally able to get to know our hosts better, I felt joy as we were able to connect. Even though logically I knew all along that the city was full of real, live, intelligent, wonderful people, it was remarkable how my perception changed as I actually got to talk with these real, live, intelligent, wonderful people.

So the next day, I was ready to love Paris. Torrential downpours and fears of long lines at the Eiffel Tower couldn't dissuade me. Once the rains stopped, we walked right into the local bakery for the last time with smiles on our faces. We had gone in with friendly touristy smiles before, but now our smiles came more naturally.

And, miracle of miracles, our smiles were returned! The beautiful blond baker, who had always seemed impatient and busy as she had taken our orders, seemed genuinely happy to see us. She smiled at Joseph and even gave him a free pastry. Spurred on by her friendliness and the delicious macaron we had bought, we walked through the city looking up and enjoying the beauty. Everything seemed to be going right. The weather was perfect. Parc Monceau was beautiful, and it even had drinking fountains. We found beautiful flower gardens. Joseph was content. The line at the Eiffel Tower was short.

As we stood there, gazing at the beautiful city, I realized that I sort of did love Paris. It wasn't what I was used to, and I didn't like everything about it, but there was still a great deal of good to be admired. Parisians could be proud to belong to such a beautiful, cultured city.

And I was glad I could visit.

*Actually, Claude Shannon is from Michigan, of all places. So we didn't need to go to Paris. We needed to walk up the road. Ha. At least my delusion helped me enjoy Paris more.

Learning to love Paris, part 2

The key, I found, was to keep looking up, both figuratively and literally.

After a few days in Paris, I felt like I could describe it in three words -- dirty, smelly, and beautiful. If I looked at the ground at all, all I could think of was "dirty." Cigarette butts everywhere. Sidewalks which were rarely swept. The occasional piece of trash. Of course, it's not fair to judge a city by its worst traits, so I tried to avoid looking down.

If I kept my eyes at eye level, though, the overwhelming sensation was not sight but rather smell. Nearly everyone smoked, and my lungs burned with the smell. Many of the streets just had a vague scent of the sewers and dirty rain water. And of course, there were the positive smells, too -- the baguettes, pastries, and fruit all smelled divine. Although this may have been the most comprehensive and realistic representation of the city, I still didn't want it to be my final impression of it.

So I looked up. And there I would see beautiful white buildings, with intricate railings and bright, cheery flowerboxes. I loved how the buildings took whichever shape best fit with the many intersecting streets of Paris. As I took time to notice the beauty around (or at least above) me, I was able to marvel rather than grumble. Learning to love the style and charm of Paris turned out to be relatively easy.

Learning to love the culture itself, though . . . now that took some work. :)

Learning to love Paris, part 1

France was not easy to love, initially. Oh, I suppose that my first glimpse was positive, seeing the vibrant countryside as we flew in from the dusty Luton airport. Unlike the small, oddly shaped fields in England which reminded me of a speckled paint-by-numbers or mosaic, these fields were vast and golden-green, reminding me of fields in America. Our plane touched down early, and it seemed we had an auspicious start to our stay.

But fate had other plans. We were welcomed in true French style at the end of a strike. The airport as a whole seemed undermanned, and those there seemed sour and unhappy to be there. We were rushed through customs, and the official didn't even bother stamping our passports. Then we waited for our lone checked item -- a small umbrella stroller. Minutes passed, and we watched the other passengers grab their luggage and leave. And still no sign of our stroller. Just when we were beginning to worry, we noticed that the only other passengers left were those with young children -- they were waiting for their strollers too. Finally, after several minutes, once the sky was nearly dark, our stroller was finally brought in from the plane. We quickly grabbed it and hurried to an ATM to exchange some euros and purchase train tickets.

Of course, these simple tasks took several attempts. Credit cards were denied. Confusing instructions were given. We were able to get cash from the ATM but were never able to get the ticket machine to work. We panicked and joined everyone else in the Information line. After a few minutes, they informed us that due to a strike, we didn't need tickets to ride the train into Paris. So we hurried to catch the train. On our way down the escalator, we saw the second-to-last train leave without us.

And then we waited. And waited. And waited. And another train did come. We got on and continued to wait. And wait. And wait. Finally, at 10:43, the train departed, stopping at every little station between the airport and the depot. Once we were at the depot, we scurried on and off stops at the metro. I imagined myself as sort of a refugee -- hungry, thirsty, ashen, carrying a sleeping baby in my arms, with a heavy backpack on my back. My mind was numb and all I could do was follow Kevin on and off the trains.

But then we finally reached a stop we deemed close enough to where we were staying, so we exited the Metro and entered Paris. It was close to midnight by this time, and the city was full of glittering lights and pedestrian-disregarding automobiles. The streets were moderately full of people enjoying the nightlife. My brain couldn't comprehend how anyone could be having fun at the time. We wandered up and down a few streets, increasingly weighed down by our backpacks and baby. And then we finally found it -- our Airbnb reservation. My brain perked up enough for me to remember to smile and say hello and then apologize for being late. Our hostess seemed tired but was kind. She showed us our room. A big, comfortable bed. A private bathroom. A washer and dryer.  A clean, beautiful room. When we were alone, Kevin and I melted onto the bed in relief.

Paris could yet redeem itself.

I see London, I see France

. . . only, you won't find them here. I've decided to do the attack of the travelogue on Facebook, not on the blog. I'll talk about what stuff we learned and tips here and maybe describe France more in words since our picture taking experienced exponential decay there. But in terms of actual pictures on the blog, probably won't post too many more. (You know me. I like to ramble more than to take pictures. Not such a visual learner.)

I dunno. I just feel like it would be boring to say "And then we saw this, and the weather was like this, and here's a picture" when I already have them up somewhere else.

But never fear. If you aren't already my Facebook friend (or don't even have facebook, Dad), here are the links to the albums (this will be edited as I add more):

Flowers at the London Temple
Cambridge, Bath, Stourhead, Stonehenge
Warwick, etc
London
Paris part 1
Paris part 2

hmm. Come to think of it, maybe I should have been doing this with all my Facebook albums of Joseph all along.

And since this has been kind of a nothing post, I'll at least favor you with a video we took at Warwick Castle.

The end.

Driving in England

We were very lucky to be able to borrow one of the Seamons' cars while we were there. Although England has an excellent train system, we didn't want to use it all that much because
a) It's expensive! I don't understand why, but things like going to London cost 50 pounds each. (We ended up driving up to London and then taking the Underground in, which was still a bit pricey but not as bad.)
b) It could be kind of slow. We took the train from Bicester to Oxford and it took closer to an hour than I would have liked for a 14 mile trip. And even the trains that were faster for longer trips would have stopped in London first, so going from Oxford to Cambridge would have still taken much longer than driving.
c) Joseph didn't really like the train because we wouldn't let him leave each time the doors opened.

So, we drove. We even lucked out enough to get an automatic instead of a manual. The only downside was that the steering wheel was on the left like it is in the states rather than the right like the rest of the cars in Britain. So visibility was a little limited. But easier that than trying to learn how to drive stick backwards in two days.

And, you know, it wasn't too bad really. I mean, Kevin did all the driving, so I can't really talk. But it seems like drivers were generally courteous, speed limits were reasonable often enough, and traffic wasn't horrendous.

However, we did run into a few quirks.

1. While everyone in the US was freaking out about the government spying on us (I sure hope the NSA appreciates the work I put into my Facebook statuses, by the way), we got to enjoy the British government spying on us all the time, too. Via cameras. Everywhere. For speeding. For going into bus lanes. For any reckless behavior they might catch on one of the multitudinous cameras along the road. And if they didn't have a camera tracking your speed at a specific location, never fear -- they also used cameras to track average speed. That is, if you traveled too fast between two speed cameras, then they could tell you were speeding, so they'd mail you a ticket. Lovely. (Eric and Becca, if you are reading this, we promise to pay any tickets we may have accidentally acquired.)

2. Not, of course, that you had to worry too much about speeding. You see, our understanding was that if the speed limit wasn't posted, then it was 60 mph or 70 mph depending on the road. But that wasn't everybody's understanding. No, it was a truth universally acknowledged by truck drivers that a good speed limit was 40 mph, particularly where there were no passing lanes. Oh well. At least we got to see the beautiful English countryside for longer.

3. There are so many roundabouts. So many. When my parents visited England 13 years ago, it sounds like roundabouts were really scary with everyone zipping through them. But since everyone has been subdued by all the cameras, they actually were pretty user friendly. With a few exceptions.

Milton Keynes: What happens when you cross Milton Friedman with John Maynard Keynes? You get a lot of roundabouts. Apparently, this town was built in the 1950s in a more American style. That is, the town had a grid system rather than the typical curvy English roads. But with a grid system, you get more intersections. And since intersections in England are riddled with roundabouts, you get
a
whole
lot
of
roundabouts.

Oh my word. On our way to Cambridge (our second day there) we hit like 32 roundabouts. And it was kind of silly because you'd have a 70 mph section for like a mile, and then you'd have to slow down to go through a roundabout. Talk about wasting gas. And then once we got to Milton Keynes, we had like 25 in a row. Every half mile, the GPS would say in her cool British accent, "enter roundabout. Take 2nd exit." Over and over and over and over again. At least by the end of the day, Kevin was very confident in roundabouts. And only got honked at once.

Swindon: The next day, as we were driving back from Stonehenge and Avebury, the GPS in its infinite wisdom decided to first take us on the skinniest roads it could, and then take us through the middle of Swindon instead of finding a route outside the city. And it just seemed kind of crazy. Some of the roundabouts seemed to not follow any rules. One in particular just seemed like it was a mess. Since by this point I had joined Joseph in the back, I couldn't really see what was going on, but it looked like chaos. Sheer chaos. We stayed there for a few seconds and then Kevin just followed the car in front of him, who happened to be going to the same street we wanted to go on. "I have no idea what I just did," he said. But we lived. And maybe didn't even get a ticket.

That night, at dinner, we mentioned to the Seamons that we had driven on some crazy roundabouts in Swindon. "Wait. Did you go through the Magic Roundabout???" Eric asked excitedly. He then began describing this crazy intersection which had some people going one way, others going the other, with no one really knowing what they were doing. Sounded a little different from what we had encountered, but when we looked at the map, sure enough . . .

Image from the Wikipedia article.

On just his second day of driving in England, Kevin survived the Magic Roundabout. They have T-shirts for that, you know.

4. The roads were so narrow there. After we saw Stonehenge, we decided to go up to Avebury to see similar rocks, just not in a circle. The drive there was insane, though. We had to go on some back roads to get there. Now, in Utah, you can often go for a few miles without seeing anyone else on back roads. But in England, the population is so much denser that there wasn't a single road we went on that was ever empty. And these roads were no exception.

Only problem was, these roads couldn't really fit two cars.

Believe it or not, sometimes there were cars parked on the side of the road even. I don't even remember how we got around them because I think there were cars coming the opposite direction. Probably magic.

At one point, we got stuck behind a tour bus going about 20 mph under whatever was posted. Normally we might have been a little annoyed, but instead we considered ourselves lucky because the tour bus would lead the way and plow down any opposition from the other side of the road. Between that and the Magic Roundabout and Joseph's fussing, we were very happy to get home that evening.

Oh, and speaking of narrow roads . . . sometimes they made the roads narrow on purpose. When we were driving to church in Banbury, we came across an area which was too narrow for both lanes of traffic to make it through. So, there were signs instructing one side of the road to give way to the other lane of traffic for that brief stretch.

Only problem was, those signs were the reason the road was too narrow. Were it not for the concrete slabs in the middle of the road, you wouldn't need to give way at all! Those tricky Brits.

See what I mean?

5. The street signs are a bit different. Instead of stop signs, there are yield signs gently asking the driver to "give way." The speed limit signs don't actually say "speed limit" on them, just a number. (I think we might have missed some of those signs the first day.)

And (my favorite), when you go into a town, they don't tell you to reduce your speed. No, they say to

taken from here

No gentle language here. We want that speed dead. Kevin laughed because it reminded him of Engrish signs he would see in China.

Other than these quirks, driving in England was great!