Thursday March 10th Lesson # 456: How to fit your life on your back

Tim woke us up with a bottle of vodka, thanks Tim!! - We weren't quite ready to crack that bad boy open but clearly Tim had thought ahead as this was the perfect travel size. Speaking of travel, we have made all of our plans so we are going to tell you about them....

Holy adventure, we have ditched all of our luggage and we are officially backpackers. Not the kind of backpackers we were before with 2 suitcases and a backpack to boot...real legit hostel-hopping backpackers. If you don't believe us, here is the proof:



Today Will Smith (a real man in black, aka British Rail employee) hooked us up with a great train pass that lets us go anywhere we want in France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Switzerland.

Off to Amsterdam for a few night to celebrate Puckett's birthday in style!

Special thanks to Stu the train conductor who we still owe £10 for answering all of our questions...and probably an extra tip for hoisting Jenny's backpack onto her back after she lost her balance while we were getting kicked out of first class...which turned out to be a great thing as we met mark the architect/family man who was on his way out of London to head hone and spend some time with his fam. Mark was a GREAT person to meet upon our reentry into the nomad lifestyle. He was super interesting and insightful. He's going to have some of his crazy Spanish interns tell us where to go in Spain. What a catch that guy. Well, now we are on our third train on or way to our ferry to our other 2 trains to Amsterdam. We are running about an hour behind our intended schedule without much in the way of a planks action. If we manage to post this is means we made our ferry...later gators

P.S. We made it. We were the last 2 people to check onto the ship before it set sail. No waiting in lines :) so far so good. And this is more like a massive cruise ship than a ferry in our opinions but we are no experts.

Wednesday, March 9th - Bourbon biscuit anyone?

Remind us never to be travel agents...that is all. Bye.

Tuesday March, 8th - Please mind the gap birthday girl

HAPPYYYY BIRTHDAYYY TO THE GREAT KELLY PUCKETT!!


(and shout out to Shirley! Thanks for being an absolutely amazing substitute mom, you really went above and beyond and we are so grateful! Kel loved celebrating her birthday at a real home away from home!)



Today was a day to do 2 things:
1) celebrate the birth of one of the most wonderful human beings around
2) finalize our travel plans so that the real party could begin at our next destination


After some Shreddies (boxes bought especially for us-thank you for coming back into our life. yum) we hopped a train to London and then got an underground pass from the day so we could travel around in more of a purposeful way than a wanderer way. We decided to go to The Tower of London for most of the day which was a great idea! We love British history, probably because it is more scandalous and soap opera-ey than any soap opera around today...well except The Tudors which is a soap opera about the English Royals. Love the glam.


We went on a guided tour with Peter the Beefeater. Beefeaters (or Yeoman Warders as they are officially known, they think the Beefeater nickname comes from centuries ago when they were paid in rations of beef...now this sounds like something we might be interested in. Jenny and Kelly...Cakeeaters for the Queen... has a nice ring...) are the guards of the Tower of London and give awesome guided tours. They and their families all live within the walls of the Tower keeping things in order for Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. The Beefeaters are all Royal Army vets who served for at least 22 years and made it to the rank of Sergeant Major...they are surprisingly hilarious! Peter the Beefeater was a real character and he filled us in on all the juicy royal scandals, adultary, beheadings, murders...the usual. Nonetheless, the fact that they live in there still weirds us out.

The Tower of London is essentially a city within a city with buildings that date back to the year 1078. It is surrounded by an inner wall (25 feet thick) with lots of decks to shoot intruders with bows and arrows and and outer wall that had homes, pubs etc. built into it...and still does for the Beefeaters that live there. But they don't shoot peeps anymore... well, we don't think.

It is a very surreal feeling to be somewhere so old and you have to keep constantly reminding yourself that you are walking the same spiral staircases as many kings, queens, prisoners and traitors from history. After seeing a gold punch bowl the size of a jacuzzi tub, we decided we would have never made it down these twisty stairs after a banquet alive (it's hard enough when you're sober, sheesh). You are also walking through pathways where the headless bodies of the 1,500 people executed on the nearby hill were carried to be burried under the chapel...ew. Also glad we weren't in that scenario.

The craziest thing was probably seeing all of the carvings in the walls of the stone rooms...graffiti from prisoners who were kept there while they waited for their public executions. Their last words are clearly visible, some so deeply and ornately carved they obviously had quite a while to await their fate. They cover the walls in some rooms that were obviously used mostly as dungeons - the creepiest ones are from bitter prisoners about betrayal and being able to trust only yourself in life. We guess being chained to the wall of a stone room waiting to die could make anyone pretty bitter and decided these guys were real gentlemen/and ladies of course. Our wall graffiti would have been wayyy ruder if we had been waiting to get our heads chopped off!

We sat in the chapel where under the floor all the remains of the executed prisoners were kept, including Anne Boleyn's, whose lips were apparently still moving in prayer as her eyes darted around for a few seconds after they had cut off her head. Don't know about you, but this really gave us the creeps.


I guess these descriptions are making this bday sound a little morbid, but it was actually awesome and super interesting. And let's not leave out the birthday girl's favorite part: the "bling room" a.k.a. The Crown Jewels (not the pervy kind, pervs). It's probably for the best that we couldn't have our cameras in here or Kel would have pictures to compare all future jewelry to. There were the most perfect dimonds in there the size of a large egg. We befriended one of the jewel guards and he showed us a trick to use the reflections to make it look like you were wearing one of the crazy crowns. They are rimmed with rare weasel fur and one crown that he showed us was worth enough that if broken down it could eliminate over 1/3 of India's poverty in a single day (holy shit this is an expensive hat!)....the irony of this is that the crown was a gift from India who would not accept it back when the UK offered. Needless to say, we would be more than happy to take it off the hands of the Indians or the English - just let us know guys, we don't mind helping out! The guard also told us that the uniforms that each guard is wearing costs about £3,000!!!! And then he gossiped about the royal wedding with us, which seems less like gossip and much more serious after being here learning all of the royal history of these crazy monarchs!

Random fact: If and when Prince Charles takes over the thrown after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, he will have to start going by the name George because Charles is no good - there were 2 kings named Charles and the first was a traitor and so he got executed and the second had 14 children...except none of them were with his wife. He also told us that if soon to be King George, currently Prince Charles takes the throne then it is suuper expensive to change all the money/royal outfits/ ect.


We left around 6:30pm and went and got some necessities for the next leg of our trip, making it home for a pizza and cake party for Kelly at 9pm (thank you so much Shirley and Tim and Louis! You guys are simply the best!). Wine Kelly and wine Jenny decided to attend the celebrations although they are keeping their appearances few and far between for the next few days. The real party will start on Thursday...

Real armor hats on display at the tower- they were super heavy & attatched to chains... hence the awkward pose and crampy necks.


Yet another great possible career path... our options seem to be endless!


Gringas do British history? Check.

23 at the Tower of London? Not too shabby...

The Tower Bridge

Thank you and Goodnight.

Monday, March 7th - Haberdashery and such

Today we walked all over Kingston and then went for a great 3 hour walk in Richmond Park, aaand now we are doing this....naturally making the most of being in England.

Maybe our future quesadilla/fajita rastaurant will leave pancakes off the menu....

We are finalizing our travel plans before celebrating the oh so wonderful Kelly Puckett's 23rd birthday!! Early feliz cumpleaños chica!

Quote of the day: "The best vacations are often measured not by where one wanders, but by the friendships, the relationships, and the family bonds that one forges once there. The landscapes then act as mere vehicles for delightful moments."

"This is a house not a slum"

Alright, alright...we had to show you our amazing room here...to Shirley's horror!
We may have to stay a while longer than we had intended to accomplish all of the decorating we want to do.

Sunday March 7th - Ultimate Cookie Monster

We moseyed around Kingston with Alice (Jenny’s 15 year old cousin) as our tour guide checking out shops and continuing some travel research…which we are keeping on the low down for now. She introduced us to Primark – bargain shoppers heaven! It was Forever 21 meets Wal-Mart but British so better of course. Even though we are poor travelers we are finding that we are freezing cold most of the time. In wise Shirley’s words: “life is too short to be cold” so we splurged on some £3 sweaters and Kelly decided since we are in Europe and all a rain jacket would be a good idea. We really enjoyed hanging out with Alice, who was Jenny’s little cousin…until she became not so little after a crazy growth spurt. When they walk arm in arm now anyone would pick Alice Emily as the oldest of the two. Alice is a total stunner and was extremely patient considering we picked up every item in every store that she took us in. You are a real trooper Allie Ems and we are so happy we got to spend some time with you before you peaced out to go back to school! See you soon, STOP GROWING, and keep smiling!

We made it home for a traditional English roast made by the ever fab Shirley. For those of you who don’t know what an English roast is, you are seriously missing out. It is the best meal ever of roast chicken (or another meat) new potatoes, peas, broccoli, carrots, Yorkshire puddings (the best things eevverr, and not pudding like nasty sugar goo in a cup like in America) gravy, and whatever else all piled onto your plate. The English really know how to do lazy Sunday so naturally we fit right in.

The remainder of our day consisted of chatting, playing cards, doing Louis' homework (just kidding Tim, we promise he did every speck himself) sipping Stella and wine, enjoying hummus, salad, pitas and cheese for dinner, and soaking up every piece of travel advice from the very knowledgeable Shirley. In case you can't tell, we are in heaven being here right now.

We are really grateful to be soaking up some quality family time. The Tim and Shirley Fosters are great company and some of Jenny's favorite English rellies who pay visits to the U.S. In one of their visits we had a serious wine fueled dance party with them at Plat's notorious New Years Eve party. They have ever since dubbed Kelly "wine Kelly" and they are big fans of her party-goer energy and cheer. However, they are not so impressed with "hangover Kelly" who is a woman of few words and doesn't even like bacon and eggs! While on the subject we should mention that we came to a wonderful discovery: Timothy is employed by Absolut Vodka. None of us have seen "vodka Kelly" (the most fun and most unpredictable of them all, well except "tequila Kelly" who only appears under extreme peer pressure from "tequila Jenny") in a while but we are all hopeful that this recent discovery will bring her out from wherever she has been hiding sometime soon.

Anyway...what were we talking about? The alcohol paragraph has made everything a blur...oh yea, we love it here!! Now we are off to bed. Later creeps.

The reason we missed our train