Journal Jar: Describe a favorite vacation of your married years.

I have not been very good at doing my journal jar subjects. Okay, I've been horrible at it, and you are all allowed to get on my case for it. The topic that I am going to write on today is about a favorite vacation of Aaron's and mine.
First of all, you have to understand that traveling is a very important part of my life with Aaron. We will scrimp in many areas of life so that we have the ability to travel. Plus we have the added bonus of having some airline benefits since my dad and my brothers have and do work for different airlines. So we are afforded many opportunities that others don't have, and we take full advantage whenever we can.

So, having said that, it is very hard for me to choose just one vacation that is my favorite because we have done a lot of really cool stuff. We went to Europe for 2 weeks about three years ago. That was definitely an awesome experience. We mostly stayed with many of my friends which was so neat to be able to do. We were in London for a few days and did the typical London touristy stuff, including seeing the amazing production of Les Miserables. Then we went into some of the outerlying, countryside of England and visited friends and did some sightseeing. We stayed with the Gough's in Witham, with the Eldiftar's in St. Albans, and with the Strong family in Shrewsbury. We also visited with many of my other friends, such as Mr. Shah in St. Albans. I would have loved to see many other people, but I had unfortunately lost contact with many and could not find them.
We then ventured up to Scotland for what was one of the most memorable experiences

that we have had. We got a neat little B&B in Glasgow. We wanted to stay in Edinburgh, but all of the hotels were sold out for the annual military festival at Edinburgh Castle. So we stayed in Glasgow which was only an hour away by car. We booked a little B&B online at a discount website called laterooms.com. It was awesome. We got the room for something ridiculous like 38 pounds a night, when it was normally 150 pounds a night. There isn't a better way to describe it other than enchanting. Then we went to Edinburgh and had to listen from afar to the military festival, since we didn't have tickets and it was all sold out. The bagpipes were so amazingly beautiful, and the castle was gorgeous. One of the best parts of Scotland was getting to see my heritage. The Hays family (my maiden name) is from the Hay Clan of Scotland. They used to be a very powerful clan and to this day are next in line to the Scottish throne behind the royal family. I got to see one of the castles that belonged to the Hay Clan. It is called the Neidpath Castle. It is in ruins now, but it was very cool to be able to see something like that from my family history. I kept reminding Aaron that he was married to someone very prominent! :)
After Scotland, we flew to Brussels and stayed with my friend, Michele Gyssels. She was our hostess and tour guide. We also went with her on a little day trip to Brugge, which is a city built on a canal system, much like Venice, Italy. It was so cool. Thankfully we had Michele there to translate everything for us.
We then went to Paris and stayed 2 nights there in a little hotel. My friend Elena Gamez was living there and she took us all around Paris and showed off her language skills that she was learning. I don't have any pictures of France at this time, as that was the last roll of film that I ever used before going digital. That roll is still halfway used in my old camera, and I really, really need to get it out and develop the film. Elena took us to the Eifel Tower, Notre Dame, and to Sacred Heart Church. It was very beautiful and everyone was so kind there.

After that we returned home to California. There have been many other awesome vacations that I will have to write about in other posts, so remind me to do it. I specifically want to talk about Alaska, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, and some other ones.