Home for Summer Part 2

Entering week two of our trip home to England my husband has arrived and as we are now a group of four, accommodation with family is getting tight so we move into a hotel in town, even though we miss the home comforts of staying with family it provided us with the convenience of being able to walk into town for shopping, restaurants, meeting friends etc.

Chichester Cathedral built between 1091 and 1108

East Street Chichester City Centre

Chichester Cross: According to its inscription was built between 1477 to 1503

Our week consisted of many more family get togethers and dinners with friends plus a shopping trip of items to take back to America including English chocolate and candy, sorry sweets, clothes from my favourite store and new rucksacks from a famous British brand for the children to take back to school.

For our third week we dropped our hire car off at London Gatwick airport and flew to the Greek island of Rhodes with some great friends of ours they were renewing their wedding vows after ten years of marriage. Congratulations!

Our hotel in Rhodes: The Princess Andriana Resort & Spa

We wined and dined, sunbathed, swam, snorkeled, jet skied and laughed non stop for a week. Again always sad to say goodbye to our friends when we arrived back in London but this year there were no tears just lots of 'lets do this again next year'......plus myself and the 'bride' took advantage of the 'buy one get one free' wine offer onboard the flight and were two sheets to the wind by the time we got off the plane, a fun ending to a great holiday!

For our final night in England we got a taxi to my brother-in-law's house, the girls got to hang out with their cousins and the adults enjoyed our last decent curry for a while.

The next day we were flying back to Austin and we had one last surprise for the girls, we arranged for some Austin friends who were also flying back from Europe to catch the same plane as us. All the children were over the moon with excitement to see each other and we didn't hear hardly a peep out of them for the whole flight.

We had two days before the girls started back at school and they have now been back for four weeks, plus since arriving back in Austin we have celebrated my birthday and our youngest birthday.