England Trip: Longleat and Glastonbury

Longleat is very impressive. Lord Bath still lives in the palace with his family, but you can visit a section of it. It is very opulent. Lord Bath turned a great deal of his property into a massive theme park with adventure playground, train ride, boat ride, drive through safari, animal shows, and some rides. 

The new meerkat walk through enclosure. I wish we could have picked one up and petted them. They're so cute.

 The kids loved the train ride through Longleat.

The teacup ride.

The kids love mazes so of course we went in. We liked it for the first 20 minutes. After 40 minutes of being lost in the massive maze it was less fun. 

I have an irrational fear of all things that fly around my head. I think my depth perception is a bit off and so often I duck when things are actually not all that close (much to Aaron's annoyance when we're driving in the car). During the bird show the team had the raptors fly close over our head. It cured me of my flying-bird-phobia which is probably thanks to watching Hitchcock's The Birds at a much too early age. These vultures are really massive and we did in fact have to duck to avoid getting hit. 

Cute little Peter the Postman village. 

 One of the funnest thing was seeing the tractor with reinforced frontal steel plate ramming the rhino to keep him off the street. 

 LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, Tigers. Lions are OK too, but love tigers more.

Glastonbury Tor. It is the highest point in the area and was used as a beacon tower. 

 All the way up the view was magnificent. 

 Never could get Ezra to look into the camera. Micah does this funny face when I say smile. 

 Can you see the heart shape in the field behind me?

 So I asked a lady if she would take a picture of us. She was just walking up the hill. She flat out refused, and said she was too emotionally overcome by the spirit of the place and didn't want to ruin it with taking a picture. Okkk. Found someone else to take the pic.

 Micah was such a trooper. He climbed the hill with his recovering leg. I was very impressed. 

 Glastonbury is a very quirky little town. It is rumored to be the birthplace of the potentially fictional King Arthur. All sorts of legends about Avalon and Joseph of Aramthea are told, who was supposed to have visited this place with Jesus as a little boy. Well...the jury is out on that one, but honestly, why not? I can't prove or disprove either. But I did find all the little trinkets very amusing. 

 Fairy wands, and elf crowns. 

EWE! Just EWWWW. The nastiest thing I've ever endured.

I have just experienced the absolute grossest thing in my entire life. SERIOUSLY! My stomach is still churning, and I'm feeling totally queasy. This smell is worse than my brother's size 16 athletic shoes he would wear all day with socks that probably were worn twice. In fact if an entire football team worked out and didn't shower for a week, and spent a night in the locker room with no windows open, I think you still couldn't match the stench of this. So why write about it, when all I really want to do is delete it from my memory? I guess I'm a writing paradox. What is it that makes us want to share and participate in horrible experiences. Yes, I'm talking to you writers, producers and viewers of all these gruesome murder shows like CSI, The Mentalist, Castle, Profiler, 24, or those wretched reality TV shows etc.  Yes, it's interesting and entertaining but let's not pretend it isn't a bit weird that we would want to spend our evenings watching people figure out just how exactly someone killed another human being. (And just so you know I love The Mentalist and Castle).

Anyway, remember that GAPS diet thing that I'm doing, and how I'm not allowed to give the kids anything that isn't home made? Well, soy is off the plate too. It's pretty hard to make anything Asian tasting without the use of soy, but instead you can use fish sauce. Now, I've used fish sauce before in Thai dishes, and I love the little kick in the flavor a teaspoon of that stuff will add. I didn't think it would be too bad to make it myself. The recipe was straightforward. Buy 1 pound of small, whole fish, chop them up, cover with water, add a tablespoon of salt, ferment in warm place for 5 days, and then store in the fridge for several weeks. OK, done.
So today, I thought, I'll strain it just in case there is a bit of a fish smell, which doesn't sit well with my ultra-sensitive-to-smell husband. BOY, was that inspired. In fact, I'm a little worried that I won't get the smell out in time for his return. Have you ever had the urge to throw up just from a smell? Well, let me tell you, that's one experience you needn't put on your bucket list. At first, I thought, this is rather stronger than expected, but after just five seconds I realize there was no way I was EVER going to put this on my food. The smell was so bad, that me, the ultra conscious tree-hugging recyclist, miss-I-don't-let-my-kids-waste-paper-they-can-color-on-the-backside-and-I'm-sorry-we-just-killed-a-tree-for-a-scribble actually threw out the glass jar. No, it wasn't broken. It was just so awful that I couldn't imagine ever putting anything in there again. But just rinsing it down the drain didn't seem to get rid of the smell. I wiped down the granite counter top, but still the smell remained. I threw out the trash (and I really should make those guys some cookies for picking it up tomorrow), sterilized everything, but the smell kept lingering. Even the sweet sulfurous smell of lighted matchsticks wouldn't disperse it. After five matches I pulled out the heavy guns, and lighted some incense, and essential oils. AND IT LINGERED ON. To my dismay I found that the scent cloud migrated to the living room. I would have immediately opened doors and windows, but I actually had left a door open, and 50 mosquitos had invaded my kitchen, I decided that I would take care of venting the house tomorrow. I felt so sick, that I couldn't even prepare the lunches and breakfast for the kids tomorrow.
I don't care what anyone says about my kids not getting preservatives, I will never make home made fish sauce again. EVER. For the teaspoon it takes to spike meals, they'll just have to put up with preservatives.

England Pictures:

On the day it rained we decided to go to the Cheddar Caves. This is where the original Cheddar cheese comes from, and believe me, it takes nothing like the stuff you buy at Walmart. Real cheddar is ripened in the caves, and tastes absolutely fantastic. 

 YUM, YUM, YUM!

 The following pictures were taken in the city I liked the most while visiting England. This is the Cathedral of Wells. 

 So, personally Wells wasn't my favorite cathedral. It was beautiful, but doesn't that arch look like a big monster with a wide open mouth and an exposed brain? 

 I loved the assembly room. The acoustic was totally amazing.

 Even the organ looked kind of like an evil bat. 

 Ezra was so cute in the cathedrals. He always wanted to kneel and pray. Then he took the hymnbooks to the pulpit and pretended to give talks. For the remainder of the trip he wanted to become a preacher in the cathedrals "so I can tell people what to do."

 Below are pictures of the very beautiful garden adjacent to the Bishop's residence. It was very lovely.