After saying goodbye to Rome, we took a short flight to England, where we discovered the horrors of London traffic. Google’s estimate of 1 1/2 hours was off by an hour.
Luckily, that was made up for by the fact that the pub where we spent the night had the most comfortable beds and pillows we’ve experienced in months. So we woke up on our first morning in England feeling good.
Most of us, anyway. As we sat eating breakfast in the pub, Connor started complaining about not feeling well. He came to sit on my lap and have a cuddle while I ate, when out of nowhere he threw up. All over himself. All over me (and my remaining breakfast). All over the floor. You get the point. 6 times in a row he threw up, at which point I stripped off his shirt and carried him upstairs and proceeded to wash both of us and all of our clothes and sneakers while Ben helped clean up our table. I have no idea what was wrong, because by the time he got out of the shower, Connor was full of life again.
Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about our shoes. For the rest of the day, Sophie wore her flip flops so Connor could wear her sneakers, and I left the hotel in bare feet. Ben lent me his shoes in Salisbury so I could quick run into a store to buy new sneakers.
But you’ll be glad to know the day got better. We started in Salisbury, where we discovered Australian food! The kids inhaled their finger buns, while I bravely resisted the pavlova.
We had a bit of a wander around this cute town, checked out its market, and even found a playground!
We then stopped in to the Church of Saint Thomas Becket, which was founded in 1220. This is my favourite church we’ve visited, not because it’s necessarily the prettiest (although it was lovely), but because it seemed fully focused on creating a community. From the children’s play area to the people’s vestry to the sign declaring their inclusiveness, this is what I believe a church is meant to be – a place where everyone feels welcomed and loved.
But as Sophie will tell you, no day is complete without a visit to some ruins, so we proceeded on to Stonehenge. Actually, we were all pretty excited about this one. I was hoping it was secretly a fairy ring, and we’d see a couple fairies, but it was not to be.
And thus a day that started out rough ended on a positive note. And since I’m writing this post a day late, I can already tell you that the next day was even better.
A side note – for those who are wondering, the cover photo is not Connor’s throw up. It’s cow poo in the field at Stonehenge. Sophie asked me to take a picture of it. We’ve spent a lot of time over the last two days avoiding cow poo.
Family Gap Year 