What's in my Head

Day 1 began with landing at the London Heathrow airport and picking up our rental car.  Yes, we rented a car and while driving in England is as difficult and stressful as you've likely heard, it was the best way for us to see all the amazing things we saw.  With our car rental, we wanted to rent an all data plan with internet and navigation.  Because we picked up our car on a Sunday, they had no data plan rentals, apparently those are available only on weekdays.  Instead our car was upgraded to an automatic with navigation on board.  We left the airport and headed for Folkstone, England.  Folkstone (pronounced Folkston) is a town near Dover and is where the channel tunnel entrance is to go to France.  We got there pretty late, about 7 England time.  We had left the day before from Las Vegas and had flown about 12 hours, with about 5 hours of delays.  We were exhausted and just checked in to our hotel, ate dinner in the hotel dining room, and ...

We planned this trip pretty quickly.  We applied for passports at the end of May and then relaxed for a month or so.  Around the beginning of July, we decided we had better start planning this trip.  First, we had to decide what we wanted to see and then plan the order.  For half of the trip or more we would need a car, so we decided to do everything we needed to see with the car first.  This meant, renting the car at the airport, driving to Dover, seeing the sites there, and then taking the channel tunnel to France and driving to the Normandy area (there are a lot of little towns down by the beaches of Normandy that were made famous in World War II).  Then we would drive back up the coast to Dunkirk, where Jon's grandfather was one of the last soldiers rescued off the beach.  Then we would take the tunnel back to England and head down to Bath and Paulton (the town his mother grew up in).  We would visit her childhood home and some cemeteries in t...

Jon and I were so blessed to go on a once in a lifetime (I'm hoping for twice or 3 times in a lifetime to be honest, but we will see) trip to visit England and the northern coast of France.  Our trip abroad had been discussed among Jon's siblings and parents for about 3 years.  We really hoped his parents at least would go.  Jon's mother hasn't been back to England in decades and we want her to go see her living siblings and homeland once more.  Also, our family history on the Derrick side (Jon's mom's father's side) has stalled at Jon's great great Grandfather.  We need to find the Derricks, specifically Francis and Hester.  These were our main reasons for the trip.  Making it happen was another matter. We talked about how fun it would be to all go together and explore their Mother's homeland.  We tried to plan it for a year we could all go, but that was difficult because babies might be born this year or that year and we had to save up for the...