A Weekend with Jo!

Joanne is absolutely amazing! I love her to death and she was the best hostess. She made England so much fun and I can't wait to go back and visit her in Southampton!

So Caroline and I got our flight from Sevilla to London Thursday night and arrived in England around midnight. Joanne was waiting for us as we came out of baggage claim and we started on our first European adventure. She is the best because she rented a car for the weekend and drove 2 hours to pick us up from the airport and then another 2 back to Southampton, and she still had to work the next day. I don't know how she did it, but I was very impressed. We talked the whole way back in the car about life in England and Spain and how much we love it, and when we arrived back at her flat, she gave up her bed (which is the most comfortable thing in the world!) and we all passed out for the night.

The next day, Caroline and I woke up after Jo had already left for work, and we had a leisurely breakfast with her French press, which I 'm definitely getting one of when I get back to the states, after which we took to the streets of Southampton to explore life in England. We walked around the Marina and down to Mayflower Park. It was a lot colder than we expected, but the sun was out by 2 o'clock so it was perfect! (That's me in front of the Marina, fyi) Jo gave us her extra cell and called us so that we could go to the National Oceanography Center and she would give us a tour. The place that she works at is really cool and we learned a lot about how the center does a lot of work for other countries and private corporations to make sure that our oceans stay clean and even monitoring state borders.

That night she took us out for cocktails and dinner. She took us to her favorite bar, the White Star, right in Southampton and we all got to try out a fun little cocktail and we talked some more about what our lives are like right now. Then dinner was right next door at this cute little restaurant. We got a bottle of wine and talked some more about all sorts of things. Dinner was amazing, especially because I had steak and its been over a month since I've had red meat. We probably could have sat at that restaurant for several more hours just talking about life, but it was pretty late when we realized that it was time to leave. After dinner it probably would have been fun to stay out and explore the nightlife of Southampton, but we were all just so tired that we went back to the flat, changed into our pj's and watched some British television, which is actually pretty funny once you get past the thick accents, and planned out our day for Saturday.

We woke up bright and early, 8:30 am, and all had a nice breakfast and got ready for a blustery day in the English countryside. We took the rental to the city of Salisbury and went to the Cathedral which is celebrating its 750 year. The spire is the tallest in London, but we were told that it is a little wobbly and every now and again it needs to be corrected. After the Cathedral we made our way to the market that was happening on High Street. There were all these people selling all sorts of things, from jewelry to food to batteries. At this point we were pretty hungry and decided to head on up to Shrewton and get some good ole pub food. We stopped at some cutsy little pub and got some burgers and chips and ale to warm us up and stop the stomaches from rumbling too much as we made our way to Stonehenge.

We were freezing when we got to Stonehenge, but it was totally worth it. Joanne told us some interesting stories about the last time that she was here, and I learned a ton about the history of this gigantic stone circle. My favorite part was learning about the myths about how the stones got to be in the middle of a huge field. One of them says that Merlin called on the Devil to get the stones from the yard of an old woman in Ireland. The Devil came to the woman in the form of a man and said that he would pay her whatever she could count while he collected the stones. But he tricked her and as soon as she started counting, he had taking the stones and the money and disappeared from Ireland to where the stones now stand today. After freezing completely, we decided that we would defrost on the car ride to Bath, the home of Jane Austen and where many of her novels are set.

We didn't get there until about 5 pm when everything was starting to close up, but it was totally worth is to be in one of the most architecturally beautiful cities that I have ever been in. We walked around, got some coffee and when everything had closed down and we were starting to get cold again, we made the 2 hour trip back to Southampton to have a girls night in. Joanne made pasta and we had champagne and red wine while watching movies and some more British comedy shows before hitting the hay early that night. London and the trip home would be happening on Sunday.

The next morning we woke up even earlier than Saturday so that way we could make sure that all of our things were packed and that we could get to London with enough time to do a quick tour of the city and still make our flight back to Spain. We took a 2 hour train ride to the city, but we got to see some more beautiful landscapes of Southern England. After arriving at Waterloo we made our way to the London Eye and to look at the scenery of the river and Parliament. We walked along the river, crossed over the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's and then made our way on one of the infamous red double-decker buses to Buckingham Palace. After our rapid tour of London, we sat down at a pub for lunch, where I got my traditional fish and chips. We talked some more about life and what we'll be doing for the next few months (and hopefully planning for Jo to come and visit us in Spain). After we said our goodbyes, Caroline and I had a real adventure in the airport...

So we made our way on the Tube to Liverpool St. to catch the Stansted express train to the airport. Joanne had warned us before we left that we would only be allowed one carry on, but they let us through in Sevilla, so why not in London? Needless to say, we got through check-in and several security points before anyone said anything to us about our bags. This was at 5pm and our flight was at 6. We had to go all the way back to the check-in area where the told us we had to go to ticketing to pay for our check-ins (which ended up costing us $24 each), go back to check in our backpacks, bring out backpacks to a different area so that they could go onto the plane, get through security and then make it to our gate. Once we got to the gate they told us in check-in (#42) we were all relaxed because the flight attendants said that they would be calling our flight as soon as the people for Dublin were all loaded on. Well, needless to say, our gate was moved and the women didn't tell us and we had to book it to another gate. We made our flight, but were pretty perturbed, as you can tell by Caroline's face in this picture. But we made our flight and we are now safely back in Sevilla, waiting for our next trip to Lisbon, Portugal this weekend.

Even though we had a few bumps in the road, we had a great weekend with Joanne...and I still got my English tea. =]