Amsterdam Adventures

We missed out on the four day President's weekend due to Aaron being on call but that's okay because he got the following Friday off and we were able to take advantage of this three day weekend just as much as if we would have had four days. We had our next trip narrowed down to Dublin, Belgium or Amsterdam and finally decided to give Amsterdam a go. We booked airline tickets through Ryanair again and to get the best deal we flew out Friday morning at 0655 and returned to London at 2000 on Sunday evening. In order to catch our flight on Friday morning, we did some serious rising and shining around 0330. We flew from Stansted into Eindhoven which was about a 1h45min bus ride to Amsterdam. We had planned on booking bus tickets through a company called Terravision, which is the same company we went through when in Rome. The only available bus time was 0900 which was when our flight was expected to arrive, so we held off on booking tickets online and figured we would just get them at the airport. When we came through arrivals there was no Terravision booth to be found. Super glad we didn't spend money on a non-existent bus company. We found a different company that had a bus leaving at 1000 so we were able to grab something to eat before catching the bus, it was mid-morning but we had been up for hours and were starved. The airport restaurants menu was completely in Dutch and we thought we might be in trouble when the clerk automatically started speaking to us in Dutch but she quickly switched over to English, probably as soon as she saw the petrified look on my face.
The bus ride was mostly highways, but I did catch one glimpse of a windmill. We arrived at Central Station right before noon and decided to head to the recommended Pancake Bakery for lunch. Before reading our guidebooks and researching places to eat, I had no idea how popular pancakes would be here. It seemed like many of the cafes were advertising pancakes so that made me happy! The Pancake Bakery was amazing. Beyond amazing. I decided to order a banana and nutella pancake and Aaron got an omelet (to balance between sweet and savory and also substantial nutrition vs a sugar coma). The pancake was ginormous. It resembled a crepe more than the fluffy stacks of pancakes we are used to in the States. It was delicious in every way imaginable and Aaron's omelet was just as tasty.

After lunch, we were refueled and ready to hit some of the sights. While waiting for the bus at the airport, we bought "I Amsterdam" cards which are definitely something to be looked into if ever traveling there for a short 2-3 day trip. We choose the 48-hr card which was a perfect for our travel itinerary. The I Amsterdam card includes free entrance to over 30 museums, a free canal cruise, free public transport, free entrance to 5+ attractions and discounts at select places. Our goal was to break even on the cost of the card and all of the attractions (obviously) but we ended up getting the value and much more when we sat down and calculated the cost of all of the places we went. We would have had to buy transport tickets as our hotel was on the outskirts of town so it was a plus just to have the free, unlimited public transport.
Our first stop was The Tulip Museum, but we were bummed to discover it was under renovation expected to be done next week which didn't help us at the time! So we explored the gift shop and headed to Woonboomuseum, aka The Houseboat Museum. Houseboats line the canals of Amsterdam, it was truly amazing to be introduced to their way of life on the water. I actually looked into staying on a houseboat vs a hotel while in Amsterdam but couldn't find any to fit our budget. I'm sure it would be quite the experience!

 Inside the houseboat, to the left and right are the beds where the family of four slept!

 Standing on top of the houseboat.

Next, we went to the Amsterdam Museum which was a great introduction to Amsterdam and the Netherlands. The museum was interactive and had English translation stations every spot you went to. We ended our afternoon at Bloemenmarkt which is the city's floating flower market. It was amazing! Lots of flowers, souvenirs and quirky little shops. We stopped at Old Amsterdam's cheese shop to take in some samples - yum!

We attempted to take public transport for the first time and hopped on a tram to head to the hotel. We ended up going one stop too far, but we arrived at the hotel despite this. We stayed at Westcord Fashion Hotel which was near the Westcord Fashion Center. The hotel had plastic fashion models all over the place, slightly creepy but understandable decor. We ventured back out for dinner and went to bed entirely too early but we were exhausted and both slept great!
On Saturday, we woke up to rainy weather but decided to proceed with our plan to visit the zoo in the morning before our 1pm tickets to the Anne Frank museum/house. It doesn't matter where you are, the zoo never gets old. It was fun trying to translate all of the animal signs into what animal we thought they were.

We stopped for a quick lunch in the Prisengracht area near the Anne Frank Huis. Our e-tickets allowed us to skip the line and go right in which was great because by then, the rain had cleared and the line was quite long. We found out during our 30 minute introduction that due to fire regulations only 200 people can be in the building at a time so that explained the line. The tour that we booked provided us with a 30 minute intro with an educator that usually gives school tours during the week. She brought to life the big picture of the time period with the second world war and also broke down the details of the small picture of Anne and her beginnings in Germany and what brought her and her family to Amsterdam and then finally into hiding in the very building we were about to take a tour of. It was an unforgettable experience. Aaron did not read the book but he enjoyed the tour and museum just as much as I did. In one entry, Anne says, "I want to go on living even after my death!" Thanks to the Anne Frank Foundation, her wish has come true! Approximately 1 million visitors each year make their way through the bookcase that concealed their hiding place.

Trying some traditional Dutch apple pie!

After Anne Frank Huis, we decided to take advantage of the weather and go on our free canal cruise. It was about an hour long and such a wonderful way to both rest our feet and see the city from a different perspective. Who knew there were so many canals! The architecture of the canal front is astounding. After the cruise, we returned to Bloemenmarkt to buy some cheese to take home which we were both pretty excited about. We ate dinner at Burger Bar, a recommended Trip Advisor eat. It was yummy, but nothing beats Five Guys - which we miss, so much.

Bikes are everywhere in Amsterdam. It was truly astounding to see the many different ways one can travel on a bike. We considered DC to be a pretty bike friendly city but if there is a bike friendly city it is Amsterdam for sure. They have entire lanes throughout the city dedicated to their travel method. At one point, I saw a family of four on a bike. Some bikes had little ledges on the back where another grown adult could ride side saddle like. Central Station had a parking garage, just for bikes. We learned on our canal cruise that the parking garage housed 2,500 bikes but that didn't compare to the 9,500 parked near the Central Station area due to there not being enough room in the parking garage.

On Sunday, we had e-tickets to the Van Gogh museum at 11am. Our I Amsterdam cards were due to expire at 215pm and we needed to catch the bus back to the airport around 315pm. So we caught a mid-morning breakfast at The Pancake Corner, a place we had spotted while riding the tram back and forth. Once seated, we realized "The Pancake Corner" was just another name for a greasy sports bar. They did have pancakes though and Aaron decided to go big with the "Dutch pancake". It was a pancake with vanilla ice cream, cherries, whipped cream and cherry sauce. Talk about sugar overload, for sure. It was delicious though and worth the carb overload. I ordered eggs and toast to balance things out.

The Van Gogh museum was pretty great. We were able to skip the line with our pre-booked tickets (which cost nothing extra to do) and take our time wandering through the world's largest van Gogh collection. It was pretty great to trace van Gogh's style through his short time as an artist. The famous Vase with Sunflowers is currently in Paris, so we had to settle for seeing a fake on the wall.

 We had some time to kill after leaving the museum so we went to see a windmill on the outskirts of town and after that we checked out the Bijbelsmuseum - Biblical Museum.

We wandered for a little bit after that and bought some delicious fries or frites in a paper cone drizzled with cheese. While waiting for Aaron to get the fries, I couldn't help but notice the smell of pot (brought back so many RA on duty memories, thank you East Halls) permeating the air. I finally realized there was a coffee shop right across the street. The possession and purchase of small amounts of marijuana is allowed in Amsterdam and usually happens in these coffee shops. When talking to people about going to Amsterdam, most had something to say about this marijuana reputation and also the Red Light District which we didn't even come close to being near. We caught the bus back to the airport around 315pm and arrived to Eindhoven around 5pm. We did some serious time travel at 8pm when we left the Netherlands and arrived in London at 8pm. My backpack was searched at Eindhoven, apparently the cheese we bought set off some sort of alarm. We had no issues coming through the border this time around, as I obsessively checked to make sure my visa was packed several times throughout the trip. We had a really great time in Amsterdam, it went beyond our expectations of a short, weekend trip and would definitely recommend it to anyone as a place to visit!

Living in England Part 1 of ?

This is an entry for those of you that are wondering how life differs from what we were accustomed to in the States. I'm sure the longer we live here, the more things we'll have to share with you. 

1. Cars .. this is a topic that will probably be returned to. When we went car shopping we discovered that our options were limited due to the fact that most cars in England are stick shift. Aaron has no problem with stick shift, his first car - the beloved red 'Stang was stick shift. We can casually mention that I am unable to drive stick. Or we can bring up the memories I have of Judd's determination to teach it me one afternoon in the Woodward Elementary school parking lot. I remember running into a trash can (that's it, I swear) and him giving up on me. I could probably do it if I absolutely had to and there were no cars ahead of me, behind me and I wasn't on any type of incline. At all. But there are no such guarantees. So we found a Ford Fusion (they call them Mondeo's over here) that is automatic and wonderful. Until the one time it didn't start and I had to call our landlord because I was supposed to be picking Aaron up from work. We got all the way to base and our landlord didn't have any identification on him so we couldn't go through the main gate and he said, that's okay - you can just drive my car to get him, I'll wait here. That's when my inability to drive stick was exposed. So we should probably work on that on that. 

This was in Windsor. The gear shift box completely stopped working. USAA, roadside assistance and a tow were not on the agenda for the day. We'll have to go back to see Windsor Castle another time. 

2. Tax, taxes: We'll start with the TV tax. You have to pay a tax to watch TV over here! Our American TV is downstairs and doesn't have the ability to connect with British TV frequencies so we aren't even able to watch TV on it. But the house we are renting came with a TV upstairs that does receive British TV channels, so we had to pay the TV tax. We were warned that there are vans that patrol the streets and wait to see if you are emitting any sort of TV watching signal and then they check to see if you have paid the tax and if you haven't you get a hefty fine. It sounds silly to think of someone getting paid to do that but we didn't know how true it could be and we definitely weren't going to risk finding out. UK TV license = £145.50 ($232.80) And then there is road tax. We just recently paid this gem. Over here, you pay to have your vehicle inspected once a year and then you also pay a road tax. There is a little circular disc that goes in the left lower hand corner of your windshield with a month and year on it. Road tax =£294.30 ($470.88). Oh, and then there's sales tax called VAT. It's like 20% tax added to your purchase. Have I mentioned that it is expense to live here? 

3. Let's talk more about driving and the roads. First of all, it's weird to drive on the other side of the road. It's also weird to drive on the other side of the car in general. Aaron and I have both gone to the wrong sides of the car time and time again. We have both adjusted fairly well though. England has this thing with roundabouts. I used to think of a roundabout or traffic circle, as the one at Lycoming Mall or the street that runs parallel to Wegman's, Starbucks, Panera. Yea, no. Here in England, they are hard core about their traffic circles. Some have traffic lights but most do not. They will have two (if not more) lanes of traffic and multiple points of exit. It's all about which exit you are taking. It determines what lane you need to be in and what lane you need to get in. The first time I had to drive a traffic circle by myself, I missed my exit and just kept following it around until I was able to exit, the second time around. I probably looked ridiculous, but I have memories of intentionally going around the traffic circle at the mall more than once just to go in circles - so I was clearly practicing for England way back when.

These pictures from the driving manual we received to take our driving exams.

4. English houses: They are very small. The British like to "live on top of each other" as one of the realtors lovingly put it one time when we were touring potential rentals. You will see miles and miles of farm land that in the States would be dotted with houses. Here, houses are all clumped together in certain areas. It's odd to see a single home on a plot of land but very common to see development like areas of house upon house upon house often in the same style. Our kitchen is quite different from an American kitchen. Our cupboards house more than just pantry space. One cupboard has a freezer, one has a mini-refrigerator (but full-size to the British). Another has a dishwasher and yet another cupboard contains our washing machine.The washing machine is literally right next to the sink. The house we rent didn't come with a dryer so we borrowed one from base. There really wasn't any room for it in the house without putting it next to say, the dining room table - so we put it out in the garage (aka storage space, I have yet to see someone actually park there car in the garage - ours is way too small to put a car in). Which is fine except that every time I do a load of laundry, I have to take it out to the garage to dry. It's almost always raining whenever that time comes too. Our dryer is a condenser dryer. It has a compartment below the dryer that collects water. So after every load, if not in the middle of every load - you have to take the container out and empty the water. It's super annoying and since the dryer is out in the garage, I have no way of knowing if it has stopped running due to the condenser filling up. So is life, it goes on and I've gotten more exercise out of the daily task of laundry. : ) 

We love the town that we live in! 

5. English language barrier: So we are so incredibly lucky to be in a country that speaks that same language as us. For the most part. Some things said have definitely left us with our eyebrows raised. Like remember above how I was talking about our landlord taking me to base to pick up Aaron when the car wouldn't start? Well, our landlord called the gate guard a "little sausage" for not allowing him to go through the gate without identification. Aaron and I had a hard time containing the laughter on that one. I know Aaron has already told some people the story of when we went to look at a rental property and the landlord kept telling us to give him a tinkle. He wanted us to call him, give him a ring. The other day at work Aaron overheard a British civilian talking about car troubles and how he simply lifted up the bonnet to check things out. Yea, he was referring to the hood of the car. Clothes pins are called pegs. And if you want to sleep in, you are having a bit of a lay in. Cookies are called biscuits. British people are very friendly and helpful so it's been a definite change of pace from our DC lifestyle.

Biscuits!

Traditional English breakfast (not a huge fan of the baked bean portion). 

Enjoying England so far! : ) 

Roma

We decided to take advantage of our first four day weekend over here and do some traveling. The toughest decision we had to make was where to go! The possibilities seem endless. We tossed around the idea of Italy and finally settled on Rome. So on Friday we headed to London Stansted to catch a flight to Ciampino, one of Rome's two airports.

We let our landlords know that we would be out of the country for the next 4 days and they strongly encouraged us to set the alarm system for the house that we hadn't bothered with since moving in. Aaron fiddled with it the night before we left and finally was able to change the pass code from the obvious 1-2-3-4 (which would be the the first thing a burglar would try, right?!) It's important to note that we tested the system out and got to hear how annoying the alarm system was once set off, inside and outside.

We chose to fly Ryanair for obvious reasons, they are usually the cheapest way to fly most places in Europe. For example, right now they are having a sale boasting ticket prices of £16.99 one way. That's like $27 a ticket! Pretty awesome if you ask me! So anyways, the flight was basic, cramped and slightly uncomfortable but it was a 2 hour flight, no room to complain. The no-frills flight didn't stop the mostly male flight attendants from selling anything from snacks and drinks to a whole catelogue full of toys, perfumes etc. They even roamed the aisles selling lottery tickets.

We arrived in Rome just as it was getting dark, so the bus ride from the airport to the main terminal station proved hard to see any major sights. Our hotel was approx a 12 min walk from the station but we were faced with our first obstacle as soon as we disembarked the bus. The directions I had printed from the hotel had street names but we couldn't find them anywhere. We went into the metro station in search of a map but only found the routes of the buses and metro. We decided to activate our cell phone to use the GPS - which cost extra money due to being out of the country in order to get headed in the right direction. We eventually discovered that the street names were engraved about halfway up the buildings on each corner. Before long, we arrived at Hotel Napoleon, our home away from home while in Rome. The reviews for this hotel were excellent minus the occasional mentioning of it being in a shady area of Rome. We quickly realized this to be true. The square surrounding the hotel was full of flea market type of goods. Anything from shoes to sweaters to men trying to sell random toys spread out on a sheet on the ground. We checked in and got settled. We had reservations at the hotel restaurant for dinner that night and when we checked in we received a special invitation to attend an hour of wine tasting and appetizers with the hotel owner. As a P.S. - feel stupid moment #1 would be having the bellhop (first sign we were outside of our normal Holiday Inn comfort zone) take our bags to the room and adjust the temperature and fix our drapes and realized that we only had €20 euro bills to tip him with. We felt horribly unprepared for such moments.

Second sign we weren't at the Holiday Inn, look at the elevator!

We enjoyed meeting the hotel owner and trying some cheese, salami and I almost tried what looked like bruschetta and had it halfway in my mouth when the stench of something fish-like entered my senses and I just couldn't do it. Our first meal in Italy included spaghetti carbonara for me and lasagna for Aaron.

Spaghetti carbonara - spaghetti with bacon and egg

After dinner, I insisted we go out in search of gelati. It didn't seem like there were many decent places nearby but good old Google helped us out and found a gelati place ranked 4.4 stars named Palazzo del Freddo. 

It definitely lived up to it's star rating. Aaron tried a cherry, berry and what we think to be cantelope flavored. I tried chocolate, hazelnut and chocolate chip. I'm sure the workers get a kick out of us English speakers attempting to pronounce their flavors in Italian.
We quickly realized that English and communicating weren't much of a problem. Most people knew English pretty well. That didn't stop Aaron from yelling grazi every moment he could.
On Saturday, we had a tour of Vatican City scheduled for 11AM. The tour was projected to be 3 hours. We gave ourselves plenty of time to catch the metro to the area we needed to be in. Feel stupid moment #2: we stopped at the concierge's desk in the lobby to ask about metro tickets and how to go about getting them. The concierge pulled out 2 tickets and told us we could have them. We were so grateful! Then he said, no, you pay now. Woops! The metro ride was uneventful. The Italian metro does not have individually seperated cars, it is one big, long train. Which made it weird to look down the train while going around a corner. Also, at one point, the train slowed to pass another train coming the opposite way and we heard a desperate voice calling out in Italian growing nearer to where we were standing. We thought it might be praying but no, it was just a woman begging. On another metro ride we saw a little boy about 6 or 7 years old weaving in and out of the passengers begging for money.
Our tour of Vatican City was amazing. I feel like if we wouldn't have booked a tour, we probably would have spent the entire day there. The tour took us through one side of the Vatican museums, outdoors to a courtyard, to the Sistine Chapel where we were able take time to marvel at Michangelo's works on the ceiling and front of the chapel.

The tour also included a visit to St. Peter's Basilica, the largest Catholic church in the world. Our tour guide was awesome, although she created a bit of an information overload with 3 hours worth of material to digest.

Inside the basilica

St. Peter's dome

The Pope's altar

When the tour ended, we decided to breeze through the crypts, which happened to be open and super creepy by the way. By that time, we were both desperately wanting to sit down. So we decided to walk and see where it took us. Our tour guide recommended leaving the more touristy area right outside of the Vatican. So we began walking, with one my tour book maps to guide our way.

                                                        

We passed by Castel Sant'Angelo and stopped shortly after to eat lunch at a pizzeria. We were hoping to find some authentic pizza and we ordered what we though would be ham and cheese pizza. When our food arrived, it was ham and cheese inside of a folded, flat, crisp crust. It wasn't pizza but it was delicious. 

We took a look at the map and decided to start walking towards the Pantheon and see what other sights we could see in the process. 

Piazza Narvona

The Pantheon was amazing. It was free to go in and roam around so we enjoyed its astounding architecture. 

We also found the Trevi Fountain, which was something I wanted to make sure we saw. 

We were starting to feel tired of walking but the weather was beautiful! We decided to push through and walk to the Colosseum. The weather forecast for the next day was to be rainy so we figured we go get some pictures of the Colosseum while the sun was setting. As we approached the massive structure we noticed all of the scaffolding in place. We found out the next day that the Colosseum is currently under a cleaning phase. We were able to see parts of it without the scaffolding but were bummed to see that the outer layer you famously see in pictures, was hidden. 

After this walk to the Colosseum, I was ready to crash. I knew that once we got back to the hotel, I wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. So we ate some more gelati to justify all of the walking and settled into our hotel for the night like the old souls that we are. : ) 

The next day, we were back to the Colosseum for another guided tour. This time around, our tour guide was an archaeologist who was extremely knowledgeable and informative. We met another couple who were actually on our tour of the Vatican as well. They were from England as well, not too far from where we live. They wanted to know why in the world we left America to come to the UK. Um, hello .. Europe, need we say more? 

The Colosseum was massive and breathtaking. It is just amazing to think of a structure built almost two thousand years ago still around today. 

Our tour also took us to ancient Rome and provided us the opportunity to imagine things before the Roman empire collapsed. 

After our tour, we went off in search of some real pizza this time. Aaron ordered the spicy salami pizza and it arrived with what looked like pepper flake jelly in small clusters throughout the pie. It smelled good, but had a weird consistency. I played it safe and ordered ravioli. 

We decided to walk to where they held the chariot races which wasn't too far from the Colosseum. There wasn't much to see. We sat down and looked at the map and were pondering our next move when it started downpouring. It had been sprinkling on and off again throughout the morning but this was absurd! All of a sudden, all of the men who had been trying to sell us souvenirs had magically appeared with ponchos and umbrellas to sell. We hurried to the nearest metro station and bought tickets. When I approached the ticket machine, my ticket was fed into the machine and didn't come out - so the barrier never opened for me to get through. Aaron had already made it through and he tried communicating with the metro worker that was standing at the gate. The guard just smirked and shrugged his shoulders. Finally, someone came up and put their ticket into the machine that ate mine and two tickets popped out. We got off in the Trevi Fountain area and did some souvenir shopping. When we went to take the metro back to the hotel, my ticket worked and Aaron's didn't. We found out that tickets we originally purchased were for one trip and that my ticket hadn't be processed because of it getting stuck in the machine. So I handed Aaron the money over the barrier and waited for him there. The ticket machine wouldn't give him change so he had to go upstairs to the newstand to buy a single ticket. The newstand was closed so he came back down and had to buy 3 tickets minimum to break the bill he had. There was a homeless man begging Aaron for money. Even though he only spoke Italian, Aaron was able to understand that he had one euro and need 50 pence more to have enough for a ticket. At that point, Aaron was flustered and frustrated from figuring out how many more tickets he had to buy so he hastily gave the homeless man some change and then had a second thought and grabbed the change out of the homeless mans hands and placed a metro ticket in his hand. If the man needed 50 pence to get a ticket, then Aaron did him one better and gave him an actual ticket. The thing is, we didn't see him come through to take the metro .. so who knows what happened from there, but Aaron didn't stick around to see what the shock on the homeless mans face would lead to after he gave him money and then took it back. 

Once back to the hotel, we asked the concierge where to eat near the hotel. By that time, we were exhausted from the day's tour and rainstorm. We got two recommendations being that it was a Sunday evening and not many places were open. The restaurant that we decided on was probably as close to an authentic Italian experience as we could get. Aaron ordered stromboli and I tried a different kind of spaghetti and we both had a garlic bread bruschetta type of appetizer. We noticed that it doesn't seem like they serve spaghetti with tomato sauce like we are accustomed to. The only pasta dish that we saw with tomato sauce was elbow macaroni. Maybe we were looking in the wrong places but we concluded that Italian food is actually quite different than American Italian food.  

The next morning, we were up early to catch the shuttle to the airport and head back home. We were satisfied with everything that we got to see and do and were looking forward to getting home before one, so that we would have the afternoon at home. Flying out of Ciampino was much more complicated than flying out Stansted proved to be. We had to form a line once in the terminal to get on multiple buses that shuttled us to the airplane. Ryanair does not assign seats, so you could have been the last one to board the bus shuttle and the first one to board the plane, it didn't matter. Once landing in Stansted, we headed for customs and to pass through border patrol. It's important to note here that when we got orders to England, I went through a rather long and complicated journey (thank you Denise) to get my visa stating I was accompanying Aaron on military orders. Once we arrived to England, I had even more difficulty getting my tricare health insurance activated because my name was not physically on Aaron's set of orders. It's safe to say that once my visa was in hand, I thought the worst was over - yet Aaron was convinced troubles would continue to haunt us. So my UK visa is in a government issued passport. We were given the advice to use our travel passports for leisure trips. So that was the only passport I brought along on the trip. Feel stupid moment #3. While we were in Italy, Aaron wondered out loud if I had brought my government issued passport and I said, no. Well, it turns out that I did indeed need it to re-enter the country. It's kind of a duh moment where you realize, yes .. I probably should have brought that along. So we approached the customs window praying that there wouldn't be any difficulties. Aaron had no difficulty in explaining that he was a member of the visiting forces, showed his ID and they stamped his passport. For me, they questioned where my visa was and wanted to know why I would ever travel without it. We explained that it was our first time traveling abroad from England and that I do indeed have a visa. I assumed that they would have this information in the system anyways. So we were told to take a seat so that they could check my name in the database. The woman who helped us stated that if I was indeed telling the truth, we had nothing to worry about. Which is how we felt, nothing to worry about. It took a little bit and she returned and we returned to the counter. She told us that they looked pretty extensively in the database and were not able to find my name anywhere. This is about the time where I started to panic and imagine detainment at its worst. My visa was in a locked safe over an hour away. Aaron told her that the NY consulate issued it, what did we have to do to prove this? She went on to hand me a paper informing me that I was being detained so that she could look up some further information. We sat back down and started discussing what to do. I would have to stay there for obvious reasons while Aaron went back to the house and got my visa. The lady returned and told us that they had found my name in another database. Why would there be multiple databases and why is it that I'm not in the main one?! No time to question such things, we were ready to move forward and never look back and never, ever travel again without multiple passports in hand. I feel like I've got the mark now and I'll be on the list on the clipboard that they go look at when questions are raised at the UK border. Oh well, lesson learned. 

We arrived home safe and sound a little later than we hoped but home nonetheless. We discovered the house alarm had been reset when the power went off at some point during our absence. So now, it has randomly been going off without it even being set at all. 

If we've gotten anything at all out of this trip, it's that we've felt the need to watch The DaVinci Code and Gladiator. Stay tuned for more travel stories!