I’ve been getting a little flack from my wife and my brother about not writing a blog post about his visit. Mainly because the pandemic turned the whole thing in to a debacle and he basically paid a LOT of money for a day in London. Ok, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you see my point. I’ve been feeling guilty about the whole thing. As we’re starting to creep out of lockdown, I’m feeling a little better about it, so here we go.

Patrick flew into Heathrow the day after Lizzy’s birthday. What a present, huh? We let him have a day of rest, then, while the girls were in school, Kyla and I took him for a tour of London. We began with a bus tour that hit most of the major sites around the city. We then went for a ride on the London Eye, the giant ferris wheel. It was our first trip, so we got some amazing views of the city.

We’d planned to go to Dublin for the weekend, but the Coronavirus put that city in lockdown a few days before we were due to leave. We began to look around for someplace nearly as exciting, and naturally alighted on…Birmingham. Patrick and I took a train and arrived in the city around noon, walking around city centre and seeing the sites.

We then decided to head to Cardiff, so I could show him one of my favorite places in the world: Cardiff Castle.

Unfortunately, while we were in Cardiff, we learned that the U.S. was about to start putting restrictions on incoming flights. He decided it was best to get back into the States before that happened, so he made arrangements to fly out a day later.

It wasn’t the visit we’d hoped for, but we’re looking forward to him coming back to visit when this is all over.