Home Again!

We’re finally back home! Arrived from London a few hours ago.

My apologies for not updating this blog for the past couple of weeks. The reasons were purely technical – the hotel where we stayed after Vegas had no connection (in fact the entire town was offline due to a tree falling on some lines or something). Then we had the most hectic day and a half in LA, into which we tried to squeeze both Disneyland, some LA sightseeing and even some more shopping. Next, in England, I couldn’t log in from my laptop again (and didn’t want to log into the blog admin interface from an internet cafe).

So, a quick recap of what we’ve been up to since the last post:

After a visit to Hoover Dam and Lake Mead near Vegas, we actually managed to have another evening out on the Strip. It was better than the first evening, and the kids enjoyed the fountains at the Bellagio and other such free attractions. They also learned about the sins of this world… as they are now familiar with both drunks and gamblers! Fortunately, there were no awkward questions about the naked women on the cards strewn in the streets of Vegas. Hopefully, they didn’t notice.

Cutting our time in Vegas short by one night, we made a change in plans and headed on towards the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Huge success – and we just kept adding night after night to our stay there! The lower hills area of the park is absolutely gorgeous this time of year – everything green and lush. The kids exceled as hikers too. We did three trails – one of them being the pretty long Marble Falls trail – a total of 7.5 miles, half of which was uphill. They were most interested in the scenery and wildlife and received their Jr. Ranger badges with honors

We hurried back to LA so we’d have an extra day before our flight to England. After much debate, we finally decided to use that day for visiting Disneyland, which turned out to be a success. The park was relatively crowded (last days of the schools’ Spring Break), but we didn’t have to wait for more than a few minutes for any ride. We even repeated some rides more than once. We were in the park from the minute the gates opened to the fireworks at the very end.

The next day, we flew to England, again with United Airlines. The flight went well, but we arrived there tired and quite jet lagged. Driving over to my brother’s home in the countryside was not easy! However, we made it and had some solid family time. We stayed there for three days, and had lots of fun. Nothing fancy, just walks around the country, meeting friends and family and recovering from the jet lag.

On the fourth day, we moved on to London, where we spent three days being tourists, seeing the Tower, and some museums (the British Museum, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum). The weather in England and specifically in London was great – very sunny and warm – so we took some time to visit the parks and just walk around town.

Whew, that’s it, in a nutshell. I have lots to say about the places we’ve seen and the things we’ve done. I think I’ll upload some pictures to Picasa and maybe even some movies to Youtube and post links. First, time to get back to our blissful domestic routine!

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