Category: England

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Me in Ely and Cambridge

Here it is Saturday. I think I am starting to catch up with the days. Even though it is already Saturday, I’m writing about Friday.

Today we had breakfast in the hotel. The Lady said that breakfast was served every morning in the hotel!  I thought it was nice of them to give us breakfast everyday. Blue and Orange monsters need to start their day with a good breakfast. 
After breakfast, it was back on the bus. The people in Britain call it a “coach”.  I thought a coach was someone who taught game players how to beat up other game players.  That is not what it means here.  Mr. Martin was there waiting for us. He is the coach driver, not the coach.  Mr. Martin drove us to a place called Ely. There is a big church there called a Cathedral. The Lady and the singing people were going to sing a concert there. 

We had to park a hundred miles away and walk to the cathedral. Well, it was not 100 miles really, but it seemed like it. Mr Guy carried me all the way from the coach (see I’m learning to speak British!) to the cathedral.  When we got there, I was surprised. The only churches I had seen were small ones like the one in Delaware next to store where The Lady and Mr. Guy adopted me. Ely Cathedral is GREAT BIG. It is all stone and colored glass windows. As we walked it seemed to get bigger. It was almost a scary place. 


Some nice folks there gave us a tour. That made it seem less scary. Ely is very old. Because it is so big and made of stone, things echo everywhere. All the voices sounded louder.  We learned a lot about the history of the cathedral. I did not get it all. I think there are things I needed to know before I got there about Norman (whoever he is) and some other guy named Henry D8. Maybe he is related to R2D2.  Even though I was confused, Mr. Guy really seemed interested. So I guess it was all good. 

In the afternoon the singing people did their concert. It was really good. I had never heard them sing before. I was a little worried that they would not let blue and orange monsters in to the concert. The cathedral people were very nice.  A couple of them asked Mr Guy all about me. He told them how I go places and have this blog. They thought that was great! So I got to go.  When we got to the chapel where the singing people were going to do their concert, there was some blue there.  The Chapel was called The Lady Chapel and the blue lady was The Virgin Mary.



If you want to hear what the singing people sounded like, here is a link to one of the songs that they sang in The Lady Chapel at Ely Cathedral.



When the singing was over, we got back on the coach and Mr Martin took us back to Cambridge. We had the whole afternoon to look around there. Cambridge has a big and old college. It is bigger and older than the college where The Lady teaches or either of the colleges where Mr. Guy and The Lady went to school.  The Lady got me a new shirt just so I don’t forget about Cambridge!! YAY!!! 


I’m not really going to go to Cambridge for college. I would have to leave The Lady and Mr. Guy. I don’t want to do that.  And, I am not really good at school things.  I like it when The Lady and Mr. Guy teach me what I need to know. 

One thing that Mr. Guy taught me about while we were in Cambridge was telephone booths.  I thought booths were someplace that you sat with your friends at a restaurant, a place where you were supposed to eat and talk to your friends who are right there with you.  Telephone booths are places where you do talk to your friends, but you have to pay money to talk to them on a piece of plastic that is attached to the wall of the telephone booth with a big thick piece of wire.  This all seemed very strange.  Mr. Guy’s telephone booth is much smaller.  He can carry it in his pocket wherever he goes.  He does not have to stay attached to a big red box on the street corner to talk to his friends.


While we were in Cambridge, we also did something called punting.  I thought punting was something that those coach people did to help their team beat up the other team.  Apparently in Britain, punting means something else too.  We rode on a funny boat where a guy stood on the end and pushed us along the river.  



It was fun and we got to see more of Cambridge.  It was a little like bumper cars though because not all of the boat drivers were good and boats kept running in to eat other.  It was not scary, though.

Neither was this dinosaur.


We had a snack with Mr. Mickey and Ms. Robin.  They liked me and were not embarrassed to walk around with me.


After our fun afternoon and evening, we went back to the hotel. We were going to leave Cambridge in the morning and we needed a good night’s sleep. 


So that is what Friday was like. I will tell you about Saturday (which is really today) tomorrow!

I know…the time and days are all confused because I wrote this on time but did not post it on time and now it is several weeks later.  After I wrote this post, I realized that it was going to be hard to get this done while we were in England.  I will tell you all about the rest of my trip, but I will write about it from where I am now, back in Texas!
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England Bound!

This post was written on Friday July 22. We had trouble with getting the pictures to my blog. So Mr Guy and the Lady are helping me catch up.   I have so many pictures and so many things to share!  It is going to take this little blue and orange furry monster lots of minutes to write all of these words!  Please be patient with me!
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Wow I’m a little confused. I think it has been three days since we left home. It was Wednesday, but now it is Friday! The Lady says we lost six hours on the plane. Disappearing time is too much for a little blue and orange monster to understand. 

You may wonder why we are going to London. Actually we are only going to the London airport and then traveling by bus to another part of Great Britain. Mr Guy told me London is a city in Great Britain. The Lady sings with her church choir and they are singing at churches in Great Britain.

The last few days have been a go go go time. We got on the plane in Dallas on Thursday, Wednesday, I looked at the sign and it said we were going to London. 


The Lady and Mr Guy had told me that we would be going on a long trip some time ago. We had even looked it up in the Atlas at Mr Guys school before he retried retired. Until I helped Mr. Guy and The Lady pack a whole bunch of stuff at home, it did not seem real.   

They let me put a few shirts in their bags.  I did not take too many because I knew I would find some new shirts in England.  I was afraid that if I took any more shirts, there would not be enough room to bring any new ones home.


The Lady had to take lots of special singing clothes that took up a lot of room in her bag.  She packed something that she called vest mints or investments or something.  They looked like a long black dress and a short white bib or something.


We got to the airport very early and then waited a while before we got on the biggest plane I have ever seen. The Lady and Mr Guy said they had never seen one that big either.   I wish we had taken a picture!


We were in a section called “business class”. I wasn’t sure this was good because I thought Mr Guy had retired and The Lady was off for the summer; I did not think they would be busy in classes while we were on the airplane. Mr Guy explained that class is a word with a lot of meanings. In this case it means a type of space you get on the plane. The Lady said that this was like first class we had flown before, but maybe even better. 

It think business class really was better! There were lots of buttons for me and Mr. Guy to push and we got lots of space and the seat folded out into a bed! 


They gave us great food for dinner. 


Mr Guy and I watched a movie.  Our TV also showed us where in the world our airplane was flying.

This map didn’t look quite like the atlas that Mr. Guy had shown me.


These screens had lots of numbers on them!  All of this made my eyes tired so I took a nap.  Or maybe I went to bed.


The Lady worked on her pictures and on her own blog. When Mr Guy and I woke up it was time for breakfast! And it was already Thursday morning. I thought it should be Wednesday night still because we didn’t sleep that long. Mr Guy tried to explain time zones and the lost six hours to me, but I just did not understand. 


When we finally got to London and got off of the plane, we went through this place called imagination, or something like that. There we told the Great Britain person (Mr Guy says people from Great Britain are called “British”) why we were in Great Britain. The Lady and Mr Guy had to show their passports. These are little books with terrible pictures of The Lady and Mr. Guy that say that they came from the United States and that they are allowed to travel to other countries. Mr Guy said I did not need a passport because everyone wants visits from blue and orange monsters. 



Once we got our bags, everyone from the singing people group got on a bus. Most of these people had not met me so there were a lot of introductions. I will tell you more about the bus another time. The most important thing about getting on the bus was that everyone was excited because Mr Simon is our guide and Mr Martin is driving our bus. These two did the same things for the singing people three years ago when they came to Great Britain. The Lady and Mr Guy had not adopted me yet so I wasn’t on that trip.  It was BBB – Before Blueper B.

Mr Martin is a good bus driver. He took us all to a city called Cambridge. 


First we had lunch…or breakfast…or a midnight snack and then had a tour of Cambridge. 

The singing people had special blue shirts so that they could find each other.  I like that their shirts were blue!  I did not have one of their special shirts, but by accident, I wore a blue shirt that was the same color as theirs.  That’s good.  I didn’t want to get lost in this city that was way far away from home.


It was fun to see this very old city even though we were very tired because we lost our nighttime, which meant we lost our sleep time!  

After our tour, we finally went to our hotel, ate dinner and went to sleep.  We woke up and the it was Friday.


That is what we have done so far. Today (Friday, really) we are going to a place called Ely Cathedral where The Lady and the rest of the singing people will make music together for the first time in England. I hope I get to go. Then we will go back to Cambridge and have the afternoon to look around.