Under the Thames

50 feet below the surface of the River Thames

I like to visit oddball attractions when we travel. London is no exception. That's how my family came to find ourselves taking a walk under the Thames. Sure, some people head straight for Westminster Abbey or the Tower of London. Not us. On our first full day in this historic town, our first stop was the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

Sunset from Lendal Bridge in York

Sunset over the River Ouse in York, England

Vacations are supposed to be a break from the ordinary. A time to escape everyday life. A chance to do something different. Sometimes, that different thing isn't big or grand. It's not always diving with sharks or sailing through the sky in a hot air balloon. Sometimes, it's the small details. It's the altered way of approaching everyday events. 

Lately, life has been a whirlwind. The after school hours are a blur for me as I chauffeur my three kids between school, activities and home. On Tuesdays, I spend two hours in my car continuously driving around but never going further than 10 miles from my house as if I'm running my own private bus route. My legs ache as I exit the car, glad to finally be able to stretch them out straight. On Wednesdays, I shuttle my kids around, dashing into the house for a few minutes before setting off again in my car. Whichever kid happens to be home at 5:30 PM is assigned the task of doing the final steps of cooking our family dinner that night. Other days, I reach home, and no one has taken on the dinner prep task. That night's meal becomes a smorgasbord of various microwaved leftovers. Whomever shows up in the kitchen last gets the least desirable morsels.

That's why I find joy in how we dine when we travel. It's so much more relaxed (unless I'm yelling that I am HANGRY and need to eat immediately). Someone else does the cooking. Even better, someone else does the cleaning up. Yay! No one at the table is rushing off to do homework or take a conference call. Whereas we rarely order dessert while dining out in our hometown, being in a foreign country is the perfect excuse to explore the local cuisine via something sweet and decadent. 

Afterwards, we stroll back to the hotel. If luck is smiling at us, it's timed perfectly so that the sinking sun sends out its brilliant last hurrah for the day as we cross a Gothic style, Victorian era bridge. In other words, the experience of our nightly meal is transformed into something utterly different and out of the ordinary.

Long after the trip is over and done with, I hold onto these memories. That's what gets me through the regular, the mundane, and the whirlwind.

It’s Your Turn, Link Up Your Newest Travel Inspiration

I've joined up as one of the co-hosts of Weekend Travel Inspiration.

1. Link one of your inspirational travel photos or stories to this post by adding your info.
2. Copy and paste our badge and a link to this page.
3. Visit some of the other wonderful travel bloggers, read their posts, and leave a comment.  It would be great if you could comment on 2-3 posts.
4. Tweet it and include this hashtag. #wkendtravelinspiration .
5. Follow all the hosts of Weekend Travel Inspiration who are working hard to spread the word on what wonderful work travel bloggers are doing.
6. Don’t forget to check out my amazing co-hosts and their pages: Reflections Enroute, The Crowded Planet, ContentedTraveller, Albom Adventures, Safari 254, and FamiliesGo.

I've also joined with the following linkups. Check them out for more around-the-world travel inspiration.

• Travel Photo Thursday on Budget Travelers Sandbox, Budget Travel Talk, Tanama Tales and Rachel's Ruminations.
• The Weekly Postcard on Travel Notes and Beyond
• Weekend Wanderlust on Justin + Lauren

The Wondercrump Roald Dahl Museum & Story Centre

Outside the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre with a Big Friendly Giant (BFG) on the front

After hauling my family around England to places associated with the Brontë Sisters and Jane Austen, I thought it only fair to honor my daughter's request to visit the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Center. Like many children,  she's a fan of his books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Watching the musical, Matilda, based on Dahl's book of the same name was one of the highlights of our family trip to New York City. Plus, the Steven Spielberg movie adaptation of his book, The BFG, was released immediately before our trip to England. During our time in London, we crossed paths a few times with The BFG Dream Jar Trail which was set up to both promote the movie and celebrate Dahl's 100th birthday.

Bath, England through Jane Austen's Eyes

Dressing up in Regency era clothing such as Jane Austen may have worn

I have realized that I am slowly turning into a woman who could easily slip into a Jane Austen novel. Alas, I am not becoming one of those spirited, self-assured main characters in the tradition of Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice. Instead, I am displaying all the old-fashion qualities of a mother worried about social graces and fine manners. At eleven years old, my daughter is on the brink of becoming a "young lady," and against her will, I signed her up for etiquette classes (a.k.a. "charm school").

A Walk on the Yorkshire Moors with the Brontë Sisters

Today is the perfect, lazy day for curling up with a good book. The weather is unusually cold... well, for Central Texas... just a tad below freezing. The sky is dark with clouds, and the trees have lost their leaves. It's the type of gloomy, Gothic setting I pictured  when reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë or Jane Eyre by her sister, Charlotte Brontë. A place inhabited by dark and brooding types.

Ever since I read those novels in high school and at university, I've always wondered what it was like to stroll along the Yorkshire moors. Growing up amid the metropolitan sprawl and suburban strip malls of flat-as-a-pancake Houston, it was difficult to picture myself inserted into such a foreign scene. So, when we decided to visit York, England last summer, I was seized with the notion of making a pilgrimage to  the Brontë Parsonage in the tiny village of Haworth and finally walking among the heather in the rolling moorlands. "It's just a 90-minute drive from York," I explained to my husband with pleading, puppy dog eyes." How could he resist?

In Shambles on Britain's Most Picturesque Street

You can't tell from the photo above, but in the middle of the day, this cobblestone street is packed. Throngs of tourists peer into store windows and pop into shops to buy picture postcards, jewelry or slabs of fudge. Walking tours wind through the crowds valiantly attempting to keep their group somewhat together.

What is this place and what's the big draw? It's the Shambles, a narrow street in York, England. This street is so old that it's mentioned in William the Conqueror's eleventh century Doomsday Book and is considered to be one of the best preserved medieval streets in Europe. In more recent memory, the Google Street Team named it the Most Picturesque Street in Britain, and it was part of the Olympic torch relay route in 2012.