Aug 1 Ely

I woke up at about 8:30 and Linda was up already. We had a nice chat this morning over coffee before the girls got up. We got a chance to put on more laundry this morning and the weather was nice enough to hang it out on the line to dry.

We had a relaxing morning and went out to the building where Linda works in order to help clean up after the big dinner party the evening before. It looks like it was pretty much cleaned up when we got there. Just a few bows to pick up and a tent to put away. Then Linda gave us a tour of the old “house” where Edward VII stayed while studying at Cambridge. The house was built during the reigtn of Henry VIII.

When we got back we had a nice lunch with some apple sausages. Something I haven't seen in Canada yet. Then after lunch we headed out for a little sightseeing in the town of Ely. There is the Ely Cathedral there which was built some time in the 12^th century.

Right near the cathedral was Oliver Cromwell's house, which is especially significant to see as we head to Ireland in a few days.  After visiting the cathedral we walked through the park down to the river. There was a band playing in the bandshell down by the river, and there was quite a bit of activity in the river. They have a lot of the very long and very narrow river boats here, of which we saw several go past.

After our visit to Ely we went back to the house and kept catching up with the laundry before Linda started on dinner.

Laurel and Thomas gave us a call on Skype about 5 pm here (9 am Mill Bay time). After talking for quite a while we actually turned on the video chat capability and spoke “face to face”. Shannon took Laurel and Thomas on a tour of David and Linda's house, of course saying hello to David, Linda and Sean along the way. As well Thomas brought Hunter in to have a video chat but Hunter didn't quite seem to get the hang of it. We also got to see the planting that Laurel had done in the front garden.

After dinner Shannon and Shayla hit Facebook again, this time working hard on uploading photos. If you want to go look at some of Shayla and Shannon's photos go check out their facebook pages. It looks like they are going to spend quite a bit of time uploading photos and tagging them over the next few days.