Day 2: Drive North/Warwick Castle

Our second day I woke up with a jet lag headache. It was so hard to wake up! We got everything packed up and ready and enjoyed a great English breakfast at the hotel and then hopped on the bus over to the rental car place. This time it was only a 5 minute bus ride, haha. We got our car and paid a little extra for GPS, but it was totally worth it! GPS seriously saved our trip! I get really car sick so for me to try to read a map and try to direct Ry in a place that I have no idea on top of driving on the other side of the road and with all those roundabouts...thank you GPS!!! This was the view from my seat.

I have to be honest and tell you that I was super nervous about Ry driving, but I should have known better that it all came back to him after a few roundabouts. He actually knew how to drive around England really well. I was quite impressed. Our kids love Shaun the Sheep on Disney so I had to take a picture and tell them we saw him on our trip.
On our way north we stopped at Warwick Castle. It is one of the few preserved castles in England so we had to check it out. The weather was perfect, sweater weather with the sun shining. Ahhhh, love it!

We toured the castle and checked out all the sights and I think Ry is touching the fire place that is specifically roped off...oops.
We climbed the towers and got to see some pretty spectacular views of the city of Warwick and the surrounding areas. Again, those skies are so blue and beautiful!
We decided to take a tour of the dugeon areas and they do this whole presentation about how horrific it was there. Well, in doing this they call people out to make things interesting. I ended up getting called to the court to be tried as a witch so on the way out of the castle that day I put myself in the stocks and had Ry give me a good BOOOOOOOO!

After the castle, we took a walk into the town of Warwick and had lunch outside and took in the sites. Then we started back on our drive to Harrogate. Of course we had to stop at a rest stop and buy all the different types of English candy to try. I found a few favorites that I really liked and Ry reminisced with all his favorites from his mission. We got to Harrogate that evening and Ry drove me around to wear he lived and to some of the places he remembered. It is such a beautiful place! We stayed with a family that Ryan was close to while on his mission, the Smith's. I think Ry felt like he walked through a time warp when he walked into their home. It felt like no time had passed even though it had been 10 years since he had been there. We enjoyed catching up and having true English scones while we visited. I was seriously spoiled rotten the whole time we stayed there. You will hear a lot more about the Smiths as our story unfolds. More to come...