The next port stop on our cruise, and also my birthday, dawned cold and gray as we docked at St. Peter's Port, on the Channel Islands (Hello, England). From my understanding, the channel islands are loyal to the British Crown, but not the Parliament. I'm not totally certain how it works, but hey.

We docked late, having had to get all the way up the coast of Spain, and by the time we got a tender and got onto the island, it had warmed up and turned into a rather nice day, but was also nearly 4 o'clock. As St. Peter's Port was a smallish town, and it was also my birthday, my parents had basically assigned me the task of deciding what to do for the day, and the one thing I wanted was to have a proper English tea. Mostly just because it's something I've always wanted to do, but also because the Gurnsey islands (which St. Peters Port was a part of) are very, very famous for one thing.

Their cows.

Apparently, they have these cows that produce some of the best milk/creme etc in the world, and so the clotted cream on the islands is supposedly some of the best in the world. So after wandering around half the town (and up some very steep staircases) we stumbled upon a hotel/spa building that at first glance looked expensive, but turned out to be quite reasonable, and more importantly was still serving.

We were settled in a wonderful little lounge - there had been a terrace as well, but the couches looked more comfortable after our hike - and after some brief discussion on types of teas and who would be getting high tea (with sandwiches and sweets - me) and who would be getting cream tea (just scones and clotted cream - everyone else, and I would share) we ordered.



It was amazing. Why don't we do this sort of thing in the states? I think it's a fantastic tradition.

Some shots of the room, because I'm a dork and take pictures of everything:







We sat there. That's the decimated remains of our tea still on the table. We were hungry.

After tea, we decided to wander back down to the dock and eventually back to ship. The entire town went up a hill, so there were all these staircases set up off the roads and in between all these houses. They had some marvelous views.





That's our ship there in the background.

At the harbor I saw yet another hello kitty car (pink, this time), and then we got back on the ship. Anyone want to explain Europe's fascination with Hello Kitty to me? I'm quite confused The wait staff brought a cake and sang to me at dinner because it was my birthday, which was nice if a bit embarrassing.

Our final stop on the trip was at Le Havre, France. However, we didn't stay there. Over the past year, my brother had been living and working in Rouen, just under an hour away by train, so instead of exploring another industrial port city, we headed out there to see where he'd been living and meet up with a few of the French friends he'd made. Now, the thing about Rouen that makes it really famous is that it's where Jeanne D'Arc was burned at the stake. They feel kind of bad about it now, so everything ever is "X Jeanne D'Arc" - Rue Jeanne D'Arc, pastries whose name translates to "tears of Jeanne D'Arc", it was quite amusing. We did get to see the spot where she was burned (supposedly) as we were wandering around. I happened to be talking to Pauline (one of my brother's friends we met) about it and it turned out that oh, this church is the one they erected in her honor and she was burned like five feet that way and over there are the ruins of a roman wall.

o.o

Wow. Um, okay. That was unexpected. Oh, Europe and it's insane amounts of history.

But anyway. We did a lot of walking around Rouen, largely because that way we could see everything and also because my brother knew his way around. Almost all the buildings showed signs of damage from the wars - pockmarked from bullets and such, and the one Cathedral we went in had had most of its stained glass break during one of the bombings, and it still hadn't all been replaced, which was kind of sad. There were also giant cracks in the ceiling which was kind of terrifying There were also a ton of ye olde medieval style buildings, like you see in Beauty and the Beast.





They were everywhere. My brother lived off this plaza that was full of little shops and surrounded by buildings like that. It was amazing.

We spend most of the day just wandering around and seeing the sights and some places that my brother and his friends used to hang out, and then raced to catch the train back.

At dinner we said goodbye to all of our wait staff and they sang to us again, and the next day we docked in Dover, England. We had an adventure getting the rental car and then driving to our B&B (horrible traffic. We stopped moving for like an hour). We had an early dinner at a local pub, which was fantastic, and then just kind of crashed for a while because we had to be at the airport at 6:40 the next day.

I'm not going to bore you all with details of the flight home and unpacking and such, but the rest of the pictures from my trip are here if you want to see them, though they don't have any detail as to where they're from so if you're confused about any, ask XD.