minimunchkin

Sunday, 26 November 2017

Oxford and the Cotswolds

We went on a little mid-week get-away to Oxford and the Cotswolds, after our magical day at Hogswort 😆. By the time we left Harry Potter WB, we didn’t have time to stop anywhere along the way but head straight to our Airbnb in Winson. Shad had booked a quaint little cottage in this little village. It was so cosy inside with a fire place which was where we spent most of our nights curled up on the sofa watching Fawlty Towers, the kids’ first introduction to one of my favourite sitcoms.

Spring Road cottage

The little creek behind the cottage

Nightly routine... Starting and tending the fire.

We spent a day in Oxford, taking a slow stroll through town, keeping warm as we had a leisurely lunch and visiting King’s College.

Inside the Great Hall at Kings College.

We also stopped at a few small villages, Winson, Cirencester and Burford, for meals and a look around.

Huffkins Bakery and Tearooms in Burford, serving homecakes and scones since 1890.

Yummy homemade chicken pie and spotted prawn toasted sandwiches for lunch.

And of course scones with clotted cream too!

Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studio

Mia became a big Harry Potter fan after she watched her first movie in July. Then she became even more interested when she started reading the books. And once Aunty Ava told her about a Harry Potter World that exists in London, that’s THE place she wanted to go once we told her that we would be going to London. So you can just imagine the panic I felt when I tried to buy the tickets online and saw that tickets were all sold out until 4 January! By some stroke of good luck, 4 tickets became available when I searched again at 2am later that night, or rather early the next morning. Phew, disaster avoided 😓. Don’t think any of these photos need explaining if you are a fan. And if you aren’t, how can you not be?!

Butter beers to quench our thirst.

Which wand picked who??

London Take Two

We’re back in London and this time we won’t be rushing off so quickly. After being in South America for so long, we were all, the kids especially, looking forward to coming back to the comfort of Tania and Graeme’s place. But this time around, we’ll miss having Tania at home everyday doing stuff with us now that she’s started working. Still, we got to spend lots of quality time with both of them.

Ryan has been looking forward to this so much since Tania told him what his birthday present was, a ticket to watch the Barbarians play the All Blacks at Twickenham! After a close and very entertaining game, the All Blacks emerged victorious.

The atmosphere was buzzing.

Spot the serious rugby fan. The one not busy stuffing his face of course!😆

Fantastic view of Guy Fawkes Day fireworks from Greenwich Park. We were the only people there, apart from the group near us who’d sneaked in illegally.

London Chinatown

The three smiley girls definitely look like they belong together, maybe that grumpy boy is with the other woman??

Finally we’re eating at a Chinese restaurant! The dim sum was good too!

Who can say no to egg tarts?

Walking “The Mall”

Little nephew is no longer so little anymore. Both are now the same height.

A visit to the Queen

Or could he be taller now?

Missing Uncle G who was home working.

Good choice Yee Chai! One weekend Tania brought us to this Taiwanese restaurant. All kinds of bao for lunch.

Something different for a change, Mexican for dinner.

Across the continents

South America has been nothing like I imagined. Before we started this journey, we were somewhat worried about our safety, the food, our comfort as we moved through the less developed countries but we didn’t encounter any major problems at all during our entire stay. Of course we have also taken all the necessary precautions as any traveller should. Shad and I are very proud of the kids and how they’ve taken everything in their stride. Of course there was whining and whinging, temper tantrums, tempers lost (by the parents!) and punishments dished out but all in all, these two have travelled extremely well. There were days when things were challenging, extremely early mornings, uncomfortably long car rides, delayed meal times, very long travel days, discomfort from altitude sickness, but they both pulled through with minimal amount of fuss. And they’ve absorbed all these new experiences and really enjoyed themselves. I hope we have shown they enough that they will want to return and discover more of this intriguing place when they are older, and bring us with them 😄. In the two months that we’ve been here, we’ve only touched a small part of this incredible continent. There is still so many places we have not been to and so much we have not seen. I really hope we will come back again very soon.

To get back to London, we flew from Bolivia to Lima...