 It's Thanksgiving week 2007. John, Tandy, Ethan and Colin blast off for London's Gatwick airport. |
 It's a long flight. |
 As soon as we hit the ground in London on Saturday morning, we donned our backpacks and headed across the city to the Imperial War Museum. We missed this place on our first London trip and wanted to catch it. |
 We explored for several hours, but were quickly running out of steam. It is a fascinating place full of history. We headed to our hotel and turned in early. |
 Sunday morning. We took the tube to St. Pancras Station to catch our Eurostar train to Paris.
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 Several hours later, we arrived at Gare du Nord train station to discover that a massive transportation strike had just begun. Paris was completely shut down. |
 We paid a small fortune to someone that took us to the center of Paris. We grabbed a tour bus and off we went. Oh, and it was cold. |
 Really cold.
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 With chattering teeth, we caught the sights.
With no transportation, we had a horrific experience trying to get to our hotel that night, in the dark, in the sub-zero temps. We finally made it and were glad to be safe and warm again. |
 The Strike. Everything was shut down. Paris was grid locked. So we wound up stuck in our hotel room reading books and watching French game shows on TV. There was just no way to get around.
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 Then, we met Yves. He saved our Paris vacation. Yves runs a taxi/tour business and volunteered to take us on a midnight tour of Paris--the only time that the streets were clear. So, from midnight to 3 am, we toured Paris. |
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Tuesday night, we took the train back to London. Then, on Wednesday morning, we took the train to Cardiff. This began the best part of our vacation.
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 Cardiff is a beautiful city. We spent the afternoon wandering around the city.
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 We spent much of the afternoon at Cardiff Castle.
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On Thursday morning, our tour guide took us on a remarkable
tour of Southern Wales. Steve Griffin is a great guy and gave us a
great day.
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 Our first stops were at several Roman ruin sites. |
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Then, it was off to Chepstow Castle. This is the oldest stone building in the UK.
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 Our next stop was Tintern Abbey. |
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 Raglan Castle |
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 Caerphilly Castle |
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On Friday morning, we hopped on the train and headed to
Bath, England.
We dropped off our backpacks and wandered around the town. |
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 The Roman Baths |
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 Bath Abbey |
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 No caption needed
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 And, back to America. This whirlwind trip found us in London, Paris, Wales and Bath--all in just seven days. |
