Derby Weekend

This past weekend we decided to stay in Derby. On Saturday we were invited over to Sarah and Dave's house for dinner with a couple other families that are all here from Indy. Dave made us an AMAZING dinner and Sarah made some wonderful desserts. I am pretty sure Andrew's favorite part were the cupcake ice cream cones. We are so fortunate to have met a few people from Indy. They are all so nice and helpful!! They definitely help us feel more at home here in the UK!!

Sarah and Dave have an adorable four month old named Anna. Andrew loves to be around Anna. He decided he wanted to try out her activity mat. His eyes just happend to be closed in this picture. It made me think back to when he was small enough to play with an activity mat. He had a great time playing with Nicole and Kalle too. They are much older than Andrew, but they kept him busy.

After dinner the guys decided to play a little euchre. Sorry guys, I had to put this picture in :) That is Jay, Dave, Steve, and Mark. Dave and Steve both work at Rolls-Royce. Jay's wife works for Rolls-Royce and I get to see him during the week for lunch occasionally along with Dave's wife, Sarah.

 

Sunday was Derby day. We decided to head downtown to see if we could get a closer look at the Derby Cathedral. We were not sure if we would be able to on a Sunday, but it was open. This is the Cathedral that was in our view in the first apartment. The church was built in 1530.

This is the fancy Lectern.

This is actually the memorial for Bess of Hardwick. She is the one who was involved with building Chatsworth (from a previous post) and she is buried in the this memorial with 45 of her relatives. It is kind of creepy to think about 46 people being in the memorial somewhere.

A view from the front looking towards the back.

The pulpit, fancy again.

So this is the first cathedral we have seen over here and I really enjoyed it. We have a few more on our list to see before we head back to the states. I really looking forward to seeing them.

Our next stop was the Derby Museum and Art Gallery. I really didn't know what to expect, but it ended up being pretty fun with a lot of interesting things to see. Our first interesting thing was this old wooden boat that was made about 3,400 years ago. It was made from a single oak tree trunk. The boat was actually found in a gravel quarry in 1998. It was pretty amazing to see it still so in tact.

The museum had a whole collection of different animal bones. I thought these shark tooth swords were pretty crafty.

I took this picture for my mom who works at Luxottica/Lenscrafters. Thought she might think it was cool. This is a collection of glasses from the 18th century to the 1980s. There are even a couple glass eyes in there.

Andrew was pretty interested in this hippo. This exhibit explained how hippos used to swim in the Derwent River 120 thousand years ago. I just thought that was kind of cool our first apartment was right on the Derwent River.

Andrew took a quick stop to do a little coloring.

Hope this picture doesn't offend anyone. It was pretty creepy looking at this mummy!!

Andrew and Daddy!! They are so cute!!

 

The best part about our day in Derby was we only had to pay for parking and our traditional stop at our favorite cafe. The cathedral and museum were free. As we were walking back to our car I wanted to take this picture for everyone at home to see. Derby is a London Live site, so they have this big screen set up so people can watch the Olympics live. It has actually been set up since we arrived in Derby. They showed the Queen's Jubilee and today they were showing Wimbledon.

 

Coffee, Coffee

One of my favorite things about England is that you can get a latte just about anywhere. It is no secret to all my friends and family that I love me a latte!! I have been sampling all of the local cafes to find the best mocha latte. Here are some of my lattes if you are interested.

 

This was the first cafe I tried. It was great!!

This one was pretty good too and they put fancy cocoa beans on top.

This cafe is so cute, but unfortunately the coffee is not great.

I had to try the Starbucks here and it was great! It is probaby my second favorite.

This place was amazing!! It had a great latte and amazing desserts!

The winner is definitely Caffe Nero!! It was the first place we tried. The lattes are amazing and they have pretty good food. The girls that work there are so sweet. In this picture Andrew got his own babyccino. This isn't the first place I have seen a babyccino here. It is basically cold milk with a little milk froth and cocoa on top.

 

 

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Thomas Land/Drayton Manor Park

Last Saturday we decided to take a trip out to Drayton Manor. It is a theme park that has a whole section called Thomas Land. Andrew has a strong love for trains and Thomas! We thought he would enjoy it. They had all kinds of Thomas themed rides. I wasn't sure if Andrew would like the rides but I thought we would give it a try. The majority of rides required him to be .9 meters. I am pretty sure he was just under 1 meter. Andrew ended up loving the rides! He also got to ride his first roller coaster with me. This park ended up being so much fun because it also had a zoo and dinosaur area. The weather was great, although it did rain once for about 15 minutes.

Andrew's first roller coaster ride. He was a little unsure when it started but by the end he loved it! That is also when the weather decided to pour rain so Andrew and I were soaked by the end. I even bought the little picture the park takes while you are on the roller coaster. Andrew's face was priceless.

Here is Andrew after the rainy roller coaster ride. We got to take a ride on Thomas! We actually got to ride 2 different trains at this park.

Andrew loved this carousel so he had to ride it twice.

He spotted this Bob the Builder thing and had to get on that too. Here we are in this awesome theme park and he wants to play with something that you could find outside a grocery store! Haha!

Andrew and I got to ride the big ferris wheel

Here are few pictures from the zoo.

I think I could watch the meerkats all day.

They had some extremely large snakes

Creepy, why are they making eye contact?

This was pretty funny. The turtle was biting the lizards tail. The lizard would move away and the turtle would just follow and bite it some more. The lizard then decided to actually kick the turtle in the face. Too bad I didn't get it on video.

Andrew thought the lemur's were hilarious. It was time for them to eat so they were all over the place. He was laughing every time one of them jumped up on the fence.

This is a picture from the dinosaur section.

As we were walking, Andrew stopped and asked me to take his picture with the penguin. That might be a sign that I take way too many pictures.

We spend most of the day at the park and when we got back on the road I looked back to see what Andrew was doing...

I am pretty sure he had fun!!

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The Olympic Torch

Last Friday the Olympic Torch made its way through Derby! The park that is in walking distance from our apartment was having a celebration and the torch was supposed to come right through the park. We actually were able to meet up with some of Mark's co-workers that are from Indy before we headed out. We were able to find a place pretty close to the path of the torch. We were able to see him run by and then we were lucky enough to get a picture with the torch. I guess the lady was the next person to run with the torch on Saturday. We were pretty lucky to see everything! This is probably as close to the Olympics as we are going to get. We had a great time hanging out with Mark's co-workers that night.  

Here are a couple facts about the torch. Every year they light the flame in Olympia from the sun's rays and then it is delivered to the host country. The torch has 8000 holes, one for each torchbearer. The torch weighs 800 grams (about 1 pound 12 ounces) and it is made of a lightweight alluminum alloy. This the 3rd year that the UK has hosted the Olympic Games.

There it is!

Andrew didn't really care about it.

The guys got their shining moment!

We were so lucky that the weather was nice. (We probably could have done something with Andrew's hair. It has a mind of its own!)

The park was packed with people.

 

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Happy 4th of July!!

Hope everyone enjoyed their 4th!! Over here it is obviously not a holiday. Mark was in a meeting all day in Bristol. Andrew and I hung out at the apartment because it was raining. It was the third consecutive day of rain, which also meant Andrew and I were stuck in this aparment for the third day!! While Andrew was taking a nap today I saw the sun!! I checked the weather and there was only a 20% chance of rain for the rest of the day. When Andrew woke up from his nap I decided we were going to venture out to a little shopping center that is a mile from the apartment. It was so great getting out today!! We went to Hallmark, the post office, and a couple other random stores. Here are a couple pictures from our day. 

This is in front of the little rose garden at our apartments.

I bought Andrew this shirt last year for $3. He had to wear it today. I am sure it is funny to see him in pants on the 4th of July. The weather was nice on our walk but still in the 60s.

This is the street our apartment is off of. Andrew calls the area to the right "the jungle"

A random phone booth and a mail box.

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