A Visitor from Hogwarts

Last Thursday and Friday our friend, Carmen Fenn, came to visit us.  It was a somewhat disastrous trip, but fun and adventurous nonetheless.  I will explain the disastrous part.  Carmen is currently getting her MBA at Oxford (aka Hogwarts).  We worked together at Vivint when we lived in Utah and became good friends.  It normally takes 3 hours to get from Oxford to Chester, but on Thursday we had a random storm that caused lots of train cancellations and delays.  She got stranded in Birmingham because no trains were going northbound due to the weather (we live in the north).  She ended up having to get a train to Shrewsbury (yeah I know some random town in Wales).  Shrewsbury is about an hour from us.  We had rented a car for the weekend because the whole purpose of her coming was so we could go to the temple.  Since we had a car we went and picked her up.

After picking her up we started making our way to the temple.  We had originally wanted to go to the 3:30PM session, but it was now after 5PM.  It takes about 2 hours to get to the temple from where we were and the last session was at 7:30PM.  Anyway, we get on the motorway and the traffic is horrendous!  It is basically stand still and we slowly watched the time tick away on the clock.  Eventually we realized we would never make it in time, got off the motorway, and turned around. She ended up traveling 9 hours that day when it should have only taken 3!

When we finally got to Chester we decided to go get a chippy since Carmen has not had one yet.  We also made her try a drink called Dandelion and Burdock.  She enjoyed the chippy.  Simon was very happy because he got to eat sausage, chips, and gravy… one of his favorites.

Carmen's first chippy!

A very happy man- sausage, chips, and gravy

After dinner we gave Carmen a tour of Chester.  We took her to see the Christmas lights in the city center, the river Dee, the roman walls, and the clock.  We came home and made her try some cream crackers with butter, syrup, and cheese (I think this combo is gross), chocolate trifle, and Shloer (a non-alcoholic drink).  I think she enjoyed everything.

City lights

Carm and the big tree

Simon and I

Chester

You can't see it, but we had to climb past spikes to get up here

The River Dee at night

Carm and I by the city clock

Chocolate Trifle from Tesco

Shloer

The following day Simon and Carmen decided to skip classes and we drove back to Chorley to do a session at the temple.  Before we left we made Carmen try bacon butties for breakfast.  We made it to the 12:30 session and went to see some Nativities in the stake center afterwards.  We then got pizza and headed back to Chester where we said our goodbyes and dropped Carmen off at the train station.  It was fun having her here.

Bacon Butty (literally a roll with bacon, but you can add eggs/sausage/whatever)

Simon and I in front of the temple

Simon and I again

Carmen in front of the temple

The three of us

Nativities

Huge Christmas books!

To gauge the height of the books (although it looks like Simon is peeing on the sheep)

Simon and I with the Wise Men (one bears a similar resemblance to Genghis Kahn)

The manger

Simon having fun