The Golden Girls Go Abroad

On May 31, my mother, her cousin and two of their friends (a total of four retirement aged ladies) arrived here at our house. They are using it as a base for a bit of local sightseeing, while also taking little sidetrips to France and Ireland. They leave tomorrow for Dublin, but will return in time to attend the senior's graduation on Saturday. I've dubbed them the golden girls.

So how have I entertained the ladies thus far? Last weekend I took them to Hampton Court Palace.

They returned mid week from France, so I took them over to Windsor Castle on Friday.

We had a couple interesting things happen at Windsor. While we were touring through the state apartments, my mother and I chanced to look out a window and spied one of the queen's corgis on a private lawn taking a potty break. It happened so quickly that we didn't have time to snap a pic of our royal canine sighting. 

A bit later in the gift shop, we were standing in line to make our purchases and saw a gentleman who appeared to be in his late 50s run up a bill totaling almost £14,000. When he was paying with a credit card and confirming his shipping details, the ladies behind the counter asked about this huge ring he was wearing and he took it off to show them. It seems he played for the Green Bay Packers and it was his team ring. 

Yesterday, I took the golden girls into London for a visit to Harrod's. Once again, everybody bought a few souvenirs and we had tea in The Georgian, their lovely restaurant on the 4th floor. 

Unable to resist, the 6th grader and I snooped through the 3rd floor Toy Kingdom at Harrod's in search of the Sylvanian Families display. We discovered these on our first trip to London in Hamley's Toy Store on Regent St before we moved abroad. We have collected a few more along the way as precious little keepsakes since the 6th grader is years beyond playing with them anymore. When I saw the little set below, I just had to purchase it for my long time friend Missy's daughter Josey. Their family loves to camp and I thought it was super cute. Plus the 6th grader bought a final Sylvanian badger family because they were just irresistible. Now we just need to see about getting a shadow box to hold all of the darling little critters.