England!

Of course with the end of the trip nigh, our minds have been elsewhere and not on updating the blog. We still wanted to let you know (briefly) all the cool stuff we've been able to do because it is all worth sharing. We spent the first few days in Liverpool and basically had a Beatles-themed weekend. We went to the Beatles Museum and to see live music at the resurrected Cavern Club, in the style and area of the club where The Beatles got their start. (The original Cavern Club closed, but a new one with the same feel reopened some time ago and still has live music every day from noon until late.) We didn't plan it, but the last band of the night did Beatles covers only (and pretended to be them) so we got to pretend we were seeing the real thing. Kind of (but not really). Anyway, the Beatles Museum was quite awesome and we highly recommend it to any visitors to Liverpool. In fact, it's worth a day trip from London to check out if Liverpool isn't on your itinerary. We also checked out the stadium for the Liverpool Football Club, a historic and well-loved club by members of the community.

Our next stop was Sheffield where our friend Alex lives, but on the way we stopped in Manchester for an Etihad Stadium Tour. Nick's favorite football (soccer) team is Manchester City, so it was a top priority to check out their home stadium! After, we joined Alex for a fun couple days in her hometown where we explored the countryside and had a fun barbeque on her balcony. Even though we just met her on safari in Tanzania, it was amazing to see her again. We shared a truck for most of the drives in Tanzania so we got awfully close.

Finally, we made it to London! We've done a lot of walking and explored both the National Gallery and the British Museum. Most of the museums are free so it was very nice to be able to explore the museums, even when we only had an hour or two to spare. London is also very well known for it's theater, and we couldn't pass up the opportunity for discounted tickets. On our first night we went to see Funny Girl and then found out about a daily lottery for The Book of Mormon. They have a daily drawing for the front row and sometimes other orchestra seats where the lucky winners can get tickets for only £20 each. Nick's name was drawn in the second round so we got fifth row center seats to the Friday matinee show. It was pretty awesome! We hadn't seen either show previously so it was cool to do something new and experience London on a budget. We are definitely enjoying England thus far, but there is so much more we want to see but don't have capacity for. Next time!Read more