The Bulls

My parents, Grandma Terri and Grandpa Mike, arrived on a beautiful Thursday afternoon. I had successfully rented a car and made it to the airport with no mistakes (unusual for me, even in a drive around town), just in time to greet them after dealing with their lack of luggage. (They had departed the NW during a storm which apparently delayed the loading of the luggage, there was not sign of it.)

The weather was so beautiful in England, and uncertain in the future, that we decided to take advantage and stop at a favorite park. We pulled over at what happened to be a good exit for Hampstead Heath, bought a map, and headed towards northern London. It looked simple enough on the map, but that old issue of not being able to find the street names on the actual streets proved significant once again, but with my dad as a most able navigator, and my new-found capacity to tolerate being completely lost, we managed to reach the park in reasonable time.


The church in which my cousin Greta was married was a useful landmark. When we realized all the restricted parking was only restricted in the morning we were able to pull over on Greta's old street for our stroll.

We were treated to an incredible view of the city surrounded by locals basking in the sun, and passed by the place where my parents had enjoyed a concert in the park on a previous visit. We had one more stop before heading back to Cambridge, the Lord Palmerston pub which we had all been treated to visiting Greta in the past.


We (dad) was able to walk directly to this place as well. We arrived there at 5pm which would be a fine dinner time in the States, but here is more of a cocktail hour meaning you are more that welcome to sit and drink, but no food until 7. We tasted our first and only Cornish Pasty which was fine, and opted to head home to see the kids before bedtime rather than wait for the dinner hour. We knew we were risking running into traffic. It was still surprising what we were in for.

A look at what we didn't have for dinner that night. We did make it home by 8pm and were able to say hello and goodnight to the kids, and to find mom and dad's luggage had beat us home. A nice way to end the first day of their two-week visit which they are also blogging about at longviewmb.blogspot.com.