Quist World Tour

It was hard to leave York today. It’s a beautiful city, and we had only seen a tiny fraction of what there is to do and see. We needed at least another day to even get started. But reservations in Wales awaited us, so off we went. From York, we intended to drive to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the plentiful William Shakespeare sites. What I hadn’t noticed before is that we would drive right through Warwick, where there is a big medieval castle that Brian and I visited about 15 years ago. Natalie had told us she wanted to see as many castles as possible, and this one would really fit her particular definition of a castle. So we stopped in to see it, after we ate our lunch standing in the parking lot next to the car. Allison says she is getting all of her nutrition from bread, cheese and ham this week, and I think I’m in the same boat! I won’t give you the whole history of Warwick Castle, mainly because I haven’t read the whole guide yet, but I can tell you that William the...

At around 9:00 this morning Brian went foraging for baked goods and juice for our breakfast. He scored some fresh, flaky chocolate croissants at a store down the street. We packed up our daily supplies and set upon York. We walked to the York Minster, a gorgeous gothic cathedral reminiscent of the Notre Dame in Paris. We went inside briefly to gawk at the interior, but decided against paying for a tour. A few of us were ready to get back to the stores they wanted to go to yesterday. First we stopped at the Japanese print store—gorgeous older woodblock prints for anywhere from $150 to my favorite print which turned out to be $12,000. Closer to our price range were the antique Japanese matchbook covers, which were framed and cost something like $60 each. Next was the fair trade store, and the third on the must-see list, The Armoury.  Here we saw weapons and armor from many points in history and alternate history. For instance, in a special stand right at the front, t...

Whew. We survived. Brian left the house this morning to go get the rental car, and he made it back, driving on the other side of the road, alive and without any dents or scratches. Carsten and Louise were going to pack up and spend the day seeing London with their baggage in tow, so they packaged up all the leftover food (so much bread!) for us to take along. We spent a few minutes saying goodbye and suggesting where we might see each other again in 3 or 4 years. Maybe Australia? Grand Rapids? California? Who knows. Carsten said next time we would leave the kids home, which elicited immediate protest. A lot of hugs and a few pictures later, we were on our way. The “estate car” turned out to be basically a small station wagon without the way way back. It just has a larger storage area in the back, which is exactly what we need. I kept throwing my odds and ends in the passenger seat, and Brian inexplicably kept moving them to the driver’s side. Finally I realized that, of ...

Third day in London. Let’s just say there are more things we want to do in London than we would possibly have time for, but some of the most interesting parts have been the unplanned experiences. Happily my hips seem to have recovered some overnight, and walking was not quite as problematic today. First off, this is the weirdest Easter ever. It’s always been problematic to me that Easter so often falls during spring break, because we’ve made the decision to be away from our church’s Easter service three times now. After the build-up of Lent and Palm Sunday, it is a hardship to miss the celebration of Easter. We originally had planned to be at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Easter service, but in the end it got too complicated with other events and the aforementioned 12 travelers, and so we did not this year. It’s a real loss. Allison and Line renewing their friendship; not sure what Andrew is doing. My view of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Instead, we went bac...

Last night we decided that the dozen of us would leave the house at 9:00 am to go to the 11:00 changing of the horse guard (something like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace but on horseback).   If you’ve ever tried to get 12 people out of the house by a certain time, then you know how that worked out. At 9:46 sharp, we left the house. Brian the Navigator led the way with a list of travel directions on his phone, taking us to the nearest rail station and calmly transferring us all to the appropriate Tube line. We rode the Tube about 14 stops out, disembarked, and promptly found ourselves in a very different neighborhood than expected. Apparently, Brian had also searched the Portobello Road Market last night, and he accidently hit the back arrow this morning and navigated us directly there. And so, we did not see the changing of the horse guard today. Luckily the Vingborgs are particularly flexible people, or at least they hid their irritation quite well. But we ...