The End

There you have it. That's the end of our crazy adventure. We appreciate everyone reading about our adventures and all of the love and support and prayers given to us. We really felt them out there. We are so grateful that this opportunity came up and that we were able to go and to travel safely. It's such a beautiful, varied world and and we are so happy and thankful that we were able to see parts of it. It really was the adventure of a lifetime. Thanks for sharing it with us!

Miles traveled: roughly 20,875 (likely a little more)

Books read by Tracy: 13

Audio books listened to: 7

Time gone: 3 and a half months

Average exchange rate: England 1.6-1.8, Euro 1.2-1.3

Countries Visited: 9 - England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Malta

First to get an accent: Neither, really. Gavin started saying words like the British do, but with an American accent. His co-workers told him that when he tried to do an accent, he sounded Japanese.

Favorite place to visit: Hard to say since they are all different and we enjoyed them all, but Venice.

This is the route we traveled on our last two week in Europe. We covered a lot of ground in those two weeks.

Jasmine's Journey

We weren't able to take Jasmine with us on our journey to England. Even if we wanted to fly 7 plus hours with her, all the steps and efforts to get pets into England wasn't worth it. So she had to stay here. We weren't sure what do to with her, but finally our friend Michelle offered to take Jasmine in. The only problem is Michelle has two other kitties. Those of you who know Jasmine, know she isn't nice to strangers. We didn't know how she was going to react to other cats, but we knew it wasn't going to be good.

We took Jasmine over to Michelle's one night and she was so upset, we couldn't even approach her carrier, let alone open it up for her. The next week, we tried again, forced her out of the carrier, but weren't able to get her back in. We had let her out in Michelle's guest bedroom and she and hidden under the bed. When we tried to take her home, she began swatting and hissing at Gavin and me, really upset and angry. It was terrifying and really upsetting to see her like that. We left her that night and went to Michelle's the next day to see if we could get her. We got much of the same reaction. She hissed when we got too near her and wouldn't let us grab her. Gavin and I were sitting on the floor, waiting to see if she would come to us. She did come out from under the bed, but walked to her food and started eating while growling. One of the funniest things we have ever heard. I knew that that moment, she would be okay. Not happy, but okay. Eventually, I took a book in the room, laid on the bed and ignored her. Within minutes she hopped up next to me wanting to cuddle. I pinned her down, shoved the unhappy kitty in the carrier and we went home.

The day we left for England, we took her to Michelle's and let her out in the guest bed room. Once again, she bolted under the bed and refused to come out. Our last view of Jasmine was her hiding under the bed, growling at everyone.

Michelle had a couple of rough months with Jasmine. Jasmine wasn't very nice. She'd hiss and growl at everyone and everything. I'm sure it was extremely frustrating for Michelle.

While Michelle was working in her yard one day, she noticed Jasmine watching her from the window.

And once she noticed Michelle looking at her, she began to hiss again.
Eddie, one of Michelle's cats, really wanted to be friends with Jasmine. He finally had enough of her uppity attitude and went to go visit her under the bed.
It took Jasmine a little bit to realize how good she had it there. Michelle pampered the little princess. She got her own room, soft food every day, and friends to play with. Much better than how she has it at our house.

Jasmine eventually appeared more and more from underneath the bed. Michelle said that her and the other kitties would be sitting downstairs and Jasmine would observe them from the stairs.

She still wasn't quite sure in this one, but had her fuzzy blanket with her.
Soon, Jasmine began to explore the house and find other blankets to sleep on.
Michelle even let her take excursions outside. Jasmine was spoiled rotten there. :)

She and Eddie became friends about the last month and a half we were there. She wasn't friends with the girl cat, Cami, as much. Jasmine would stalk and chase Eddie all over the house, which must has been quite the sight since Eddie weighs over twice as much as Jasmine does.
Soon, Michelle got to see the snuggly, cuddly Jasmine that Gavin and I know and love. Our favorite story from Michelle was the time she thought she had lost Jasmine. She looked everywhere in the House for her, but couldn't find her. She went back into the guest room and noticed a bump in the middle under the covers. Jasmine has crawled her way under the blanket to take a nap. We probably should have warned that Jasmine had a habit of doing that when it got cold.
Jasmine even began cuddling with Michelle. Michelle said that the second she would sit down, Jasmine would hop up in her lap.

All three kitties on the couch.

Her and Eddie hanging out.

She started sleeping in the other cats' cat beds, so Michelle went and got her one of her own. However, the silly girl won't sleep in it at our place.

When we went to pick Jasmine up, we were hoping for, at the very least, that should wouldn't be openly hostile with us. She wasn't incredibly happy to see us, but she didn't hiss or growl at us. I think she recognized us, just not in that setting. Michelle said she reacted better to us and any visitor she had had while we were gone. She was still pretty agitated and we couldn't get too close to her. We decided to ignore her and not look at her to see what happened. She ended up jumping on my lap, demanding attention from me. As soon as we got her in her carrier and home, she was just like the Jasmine we knew before we left.

Thanks Michelle for taking care of her! It was really assuring to know that Jasmine was in good, extremely patient hands!

Random

There were a few pictures that I wanted to share that weren't really part of anything.

The mall by the hotel that we were staying at went all out decorating for Christmas. It was really pretty and we really enjoyed the lights and the decorations. Except for the Harvey Nichols window. I don't know what they were going for, but it creeped me out.

Aliens, maybe?
The Broadmead area of the mall had a German Christmas Market. Every city we visited during the Christmas season had some form of German Christmas market.
The Bristol one had a windmill with a rotating nativity over the sausage grill.

Cabot Circus also put up these giant deer everywhere. These things were huge. When I stood under one, the belly was at least 2 feet over my head.

Millie's Cookies. They were so good. I loved the raspberry white chocolate one. Gavin like the double chocolate.
Krispy Kreme just got to the UK. It was really interesting to see how it was doing since it was a little different than the US. One of the main draws to Krispy Kreme, at least for me, is getting them hot. I'm not sure they were even made at this store. Maybe they were in the back. Also, they were ridiculously expensive. it was a pound twenty for one glazed donut, which with the exchange rate while we were there, made it to be about $2.00 a donut. This place was popular, too. A few times, we saw the line out the door and around the corner.

One of the first posts I wrote when we got to England, I talked about how the escalators were on the wrong side. We eventually got used to it and the first one we stepped on in the US, we tried to go on the wrong side.

And finally, gas (or petrol, have you) was so expensive. At this Shell, it costs 123.9 pence or one pound 23 per liter. That's almost 5 pound per gallon. With the exchange rate, that's almost 8 dollars a gallon. When we had to fill up the rental cars, it often cost us 70-80 dollars for a small tank of gas.

Malta

The beautiful Malta coastline.

Malta

For the last part of our trip, we stay on the small island of Malta. It used to be under the rule of Great Britain but became its own republic in 1974. I think it's actually closer to Africa than it is to Italy.

The first day, we took it really easy and just wandered around a little bit. We loved the stripes of different colors in the sea.

The area we were staying in was by St. Paul's Bay. It is where they believe that St. Paul got shipwrecked on his way to Rome to face trial as documented in Acts.

These were apartments and garages built under the main road.

For lunch, we stopped at a little cafe near our hotel. One of the main Maltese dishes is rabbit. Gavin was brave enough to try rabbit spaghetti.

The view from our hotel room.

It is a huge beach community, with most of the tourists coming from Great Britain.

We saw these all over Europe. People would hang Santa with a ladder off of their balconies. It was meant to look like Santa was going to their house, but sometimes it looked like Santa committed suicide.

The area we were staying in was the more residential/summer home area, so it was pretty quiet. It picks up during the summer months because it has a lot of clubs and music bars. We were a little bit away from the main area on Malta, called Valletta, so we took a bus tour of the island to go there.

Our bus tour included a free bout tour of the harbour.

Our tour guide on the boat said that the steps here were built shallow so that knights wearing armor would be able to walk up the steps. If they were too steep, the knights would lose balance and tumble down the stairs.

The Valletta Waterfront, which is a new area with shopping and restaurants.

This was the ferry we took from Sicily. We had no idea that it was hollow underneath like that.

Valletta

They used old cannons as riggings along the coast line.

After the boat tour, we hopped back onto the bus to visit Mdina.

This is an ancient Roman aquaduct. I love the cars parked underneath it.

Mdina is the old capital of Malta and is a walled city on a hill in the middle of the island. Only about 300 people live within its limits now. They believe it was first inhabited around 300 B.C. It is believed that the Apostle Paul lived here for some time after his shipwreck.

They are also well known for their glass and there were several beautiful piece for sale.

The streets were really narrow with tall buildings on either side. There isn't a ton to do there as it is mostly private residences. There is some shopping, some restaurants, and a couple of museums about the knights that used to live there.

Mdina was Gavin's favorite part of Malta. He was a little upset that we were ending our adventure in Malta until we visited Mdina.

St. Paul's Cathedral in the city center.

The view of Valletta and the sea from Mdina.

Part of the city wall. It's about a 25 foot drop.

The Maltese country side.

The village of Rabat, which is considered the suburb of Mdina. The name Rabat actually means suburb in Arabic.

Gavin standing by the defensive walls of the city with Rabat in the background.

The front gate of Mdina.

The view of Mdina.

This is the Mosta Dome. In 1942, a bomb dropped on a congregation of about 300 people, but did not explode.

The next morning, we had an early flight back to Bristol to begin our journey home. We were on the wrong side of the plane to get the whole island, but we got a good part of it.

Our flight back to Bristol was really cloudy, but the clouds broke for a minute over a snow-covered mountain. I think it's the Alps because I know we flew over France at some point.

When we landed in Bristol, we got a rental car, went back to the Marriott that we've been staying at the past three month and picked up the rest of our luggage. We then drove to another Marriott right outside of Heathrow Airport. We both had early flights the next morning. Mine left first, but was delayed in taking off. First, they switched planes right before we boarded, so some people had tickets for seats that didn't exist on the plane. Then, someone who was on the flight was sick and we needed to get permission from air control to fly with them on board.

We both made it safely. Gavin landed before me and was able to get our luggage together so we could get through customs. After another taxi ride, we were finally home.