First day--getting oriented and a quick stop in Oxford.

One perk of taking a million AP classes is that when AP exams finish in the second week of May, you're basically done with school and can miss a week and go jaunt around Europe with your parents!! Hugely grateful to my parents who flew out well before graduation to stay with our younger kids so we could go on a graduation trip with just Abigail. 

We flew out of O'Hare which was good because it gave us a nonstop flight to London Heathrow, but bad because it meant crappy Chicago traffic, a parking guy who was like "hmm we actually stopped doing airport shuttles this morning, better find an Uber," and an unexpected stop after Abigail was (maybe carsick maybe just sick sick) to clean up and buy some new clothes. 

But we made it onto our redeye flight, didn't sleep, got to Heathrow and picked up our rental car which Neil bravely piloted (felt so weird to all of us but I especially felt like I was in a nightmare sitting in the driver's seat with no steering wheel! Thankfully I got used to it but man the first half hour or so was totally freaking me out). 

Then we drove off towards Warwick Castle--this was one of my favorite parts of the trip, just getting out in the countryside and getting a tiny glimpse of normal life. Like this double-decker bus turned party bus. 

Or this Tudor McDonald's. 

Eventually we made it to Oxford...

I really wish we had more time to explore Oxford. Our plan was to walk around for a couple hours and get some food, but Abigail was really not feeling well (and at the time I didn't know she was sick, I just thought she was being cranky, and I was not super patient after my sleepless night). So she didn't want to eat anything and she didn't want to walk, so we just grabbed some stuff at a grocery store. 

We did have a nice little chat in this street though with some people from Provo who recognized Neil's BYU hat...

So beautiful!! This was the outside of Christ Church College (which you'll recognize as the Great Hall in Harry Potter). We had planned to go in but Abigail wanted to just go back to the car so that's what we did (and she immediately fell asleep, poor kid). 

So so close. I admit I was pretty salty about not going in. 

Also a big Dorothy Sayers fan so I would have loved a couple full days to explore...which felt like the theme of every single thing we saw!

The bells were all chiming while I took these pictures and it just felt so magical. 

Wish I'd had time to go into this store, so intriguing!!

And I thought this was fun--a glimpse of some of the full regalia, I believe this was for the Knights of the Garter.