For just a couple of weeks in spring, all the cherry blossom trees bloom and the streets and parks are filled with a floral fragrance. The blossom trees aren’t very noticeable the rest of the year, but in April they become filled with white and pink flowers.

Cherry blossoms (and apple blossoms) are one of my favorite flowers. Last year, when I first began to attend school in Edinburgh, the neighborhood the school was in had tons of these blossom trees and they were in bloom when I started going, and just a week later the petals began to fall to the ground. It made my walk to the bus stop a lot more enjoyable, even though the flowers were only there for such a short time. This year, I was really looking forward to seeing the trees bloom and then getting to watch the flowers and their petals progressively float off the trees. However, that plan was a bit disrupted due to the lockdown and school closure, but that still didn’t stop my determination to see the trees in the school’s neighborhood.

My family had recently purchased bikes so we could do something besides walking outside. My school is four miles away from where I live, which isn’t too far, but being new to biking on the roads made it harder than I thought. Roundabouts were scary to go on and there are a lot of them in Edinburgh. Intersections were also quite confusing and frightening since I had to figure out which lane to go into (I went in the wrong one many times). Fortunately, there weren’t many cars on the roads since you’re only allowed to leave your house for exercise or something essential. It took my 45 minutes to get to the neighborhood near the school, though it was supposed to only be a 30-minute ride. I eventually made it to school, the sight of it being closed and empty was a bit sad. I spent the remainder of the day biking around the neighborhood looking for cherry blossom trees, which I did find. The trees were not in their full bloom yet, so I made plans to come back a week later and look at them too.

How I woke up was by my mom yelling about something that was currently going on, and it turned out some guy slipped and possibly broke (we don’t really know) his leg which in my opinion seems really lame not just because your leg is broken but because the guy seemed to have skis with him which indicated he was there for a ski trip, and how unlucky it would be to break your leg right before.

The campsite we stayed at had this thing where you can order bread and other such bakery stuff in the evening and have it delivered to you in the morning. That was pretty neat because I do like croissants which they had. The plan was that we were going to go up Augulle du Midi, where you could get a good view of Mount Blanc. The ride up the mountain side was in crowded cable cars, that were pretty fast. The mountain was about 12,500 feet tall, which made me a little lightheaded when we got to the top. It was really sunny out, and even though the town below got cloudy, the mountain was higher than the clouds so it wasn’t affected. It was 3°F on the top of the mountain, which was a lot colder. The views were amazing.

There we snow tunnels you walked through to get to different parts.

There was also a cafeteria with extremely expensive food, but then again they did have to haul it all up the mountain somehow. We still bought French fries; not everyone gets to eat French fries on the Alps, why risk the opportunity?

We stayed about 2 hours, exploring, seeing all the views and warming up inside the cafeteria. The ride down felt more crowded, but it was more fun. At one point the cable cars route suddenly took an abrupt turn downhill, and it gave everyone that falling feeling which made half the car scream (I was one of them).

We wanted to take the cable cars to Italy, but apparently the one to Italy was closed due to being broken by a recent storm. Bummer.

We accidentally got on the wrong bus home which made that journey three times as long, but over all I’d rate this a grade-A experience.

I visited the Van Gogh Musuem and the Rijks museum. I, personally, love art, especially Vincent van Gogh. The Van Gogh Musuem is the largest collection of his paintings, drawings and letters in the world. Walking through it was like walking through his life, and I found it really interesting. We had to wait about 45 minutes in line to get in, because we didn’t buy the tickets online. But it was worth the wait. I recommend going.

The Rijks museum was also enjoyable. There were lots of different art from different time periods. We saw some of the Dutch masters’ work, and a lot more. It took a while to walk through the museum because it’s pretty big. Over all, I liked it.

Renting bikes in Amsterdam is fairly easy, and the bike paths are just like roads (that is if you’re not biking on the actual road). There are ferries that lead out of central station and across the canals, that are for foot passengers and bikes. And better yet, they’re free. I do think you need to bring gloves, because my hands got really cold while I was biking. At one point, Max and I split up from the group and explored Amsterdam a bit ourselves.

We didn’t go anywhere specific, but we did get pretty lost at one point. Afterwards we got these really good donuts so it ended up being all okay. We hung out with my aunt a lot and she gave us a general tour of Amsterdam too, which was nice.

I didn’t do everything there is to do in Amsterdam, so hopefully I’ll return there sooner or later. But until then, Amsterdam was a very pretty city.

So far I like Scotland the best even though I can’t understand what people saying half the time because of their accents.
I can’t wait until we go to Ireland!

-Jennah

The pub we walked to was very cozy, and we would have gone again had we been able to
get to it. We walked back to the camper in the semi-dark.
While we were at Tintagel, I got a pea coat at a charity shop. I’ve been looking for a coat in every charity shop since Edinburgh,  so that was a good find.
At the pub it was quiz night, and Dad, Max, Jack and I were a team. There were a lot of strange, local questions so naturally we lost miserably.
After Tintagel, we went to Bewd,  which was a small, gray town. Annie and I stopped walking around to go back to the camper, but we got lost. Luckily it didn’t take long to find our way again, since the town was so small. Small. So small. The smallest town.

  – – Jennah

We left Florida later than we intended. The camper needed to be customized for Team DeCorso – new sofa, new table, 5 bunks with an optional 6th bunk, bunk lights and chargers, a new oven/stove, upgrades to the running lights, a new stereo and speakers, new countertop in the kitchen, 14 hooks for coats and an overall upgrading of the camper (like scraping off the pink & blue gnocchi-like wallpaper border that was added to the bathroom and kitchen). During this time, we had a great stay in Florida! Swimming, bike riding, Snapple-drinking good time with grandpa & grandma!.

We left Florida on October 10, so very late as we needed to be in Halifax to catch our flight to Glasgow on October 20th.

The USA & Canada

We raced up the eastern seaboard.  In Asheville, we visited Aunt Alice and cousin Mary. In Cleveland, we visited Grandma Dorothy and Aunt Pat & Uncle Smitty. Jack visited Carnegie Mellon and spent an evening with their pipe band.  In New York, Mark realized he did not have the title to the camper and we had to send power of attorney to Ryan at a FedEx. In New Hampshire, someone hit our mirror while we were parked and broke it off. In Maine, we went out for lobster with the legendary Joni McNutt. In Calais, we fetched the camper title from FedEx. We drove around the Bay of Fundy, watched the tidal bore and arrived in Halifax on 10/18. We woke up early on 10/19 to discover that the transmission had completely failed. A panicked call to Mr Transmission, and $3000 (thankfully Canadian) later our camper was on the road again. Mr Transmission lent us a pick up truck so we could run our final errands and do our final paperwork for shipping the camper over. On the morning of October 20th, the camper had to be at the quay before 11am but our flight did not leave until 10pm. We spent the day sightseeing in Halifax , learning about the great Halifax Explosion and the Titanic Exhibit. Two things we learned: the explosion released the equivalent energy of 2.9 kilotons of TNT and Halifax was the staging ground for rescuing people from the sinking Titanic, although all they recovered were dead people and a sad collection of items like dolls and baby shoes.

Edinburgh

Our plane landed in Glasgow and we caught a Citylink bus to Edinburgh and were at our lovely home by 11am. Ourhouse was literally 41 steps off the Royal Mile, on Bell’s Wynd. Later, in a bookstore in Leith, we would read in Haunted Edinburgh that our house was haunted. The house was perfect for us, the location was fabulous.

The camper departed Halifax on 10/24 and was supposed to take 7 days to get to Liverpool but a storm in the north Atlantic delayed the ship and we were happy to extend our stay in our little house on the Royal Mile to 3 weeks. We had a really great, super fun, amazing time in Edinburgh. We went to Tesco and bought a ton of weird British food (vegetarian haggis, clotted cream, crumpets, bangors, swedes, neeps, bramble jelly, turkish delight and several chutneys). We went to the Scottish National Gallery. We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We visited the castle. We went to almost every pub, or so it seemed. One night, Mark and Jack and I went to a small pub

with traditional music and had a great night of drinking, singing and dancing. We went on the Harry Potter Tour, in the poring rain, and saw where JK Rowling wrote the books, the inspiration (and grave) of Tom Riddle, Diagon Alley and much more.

We spent Halloween here. Sylvia and Annabelle went trick or treating in neighborhood of old gothic mansions. They had to do a trick at every house to get candy. Max supplied one excellent joke that no one had yet heard here: Why does Peter Pan fly? Because he can Never Land. We found the neighborhood from someone we met at the Unitarian Church in Edinburgh. We also went to the Royal Botanical Gardens on Halloween and did the Witch Hunt Trail, where you had to collect information on magical plants for a surprise. That night, was the Samhain Festival at the Grassmarket, a torch procession and very well attended.

Liverpool

Finally the camper arrived in Liverpool. Team DeCorso got up way too early and took a train to Liverpool. While Mark fetched the camper, Jack & Jennah went on a quest to find the house where John Lennon was born and Annabelle, Sylvia, Max and I went to the Albert Docks, World Herit age Site (not exciting at all).

Mark appeared with the camper and we piled inside and began the long task of preparing it for travel. We had screwed all the doors shut and put paneling over all compartments and screwed that shut, a basic RORO safety measure. Turns out, someone did steal stuff from our camper, it seems they always do. They took our Tide-scented Febreeze, a string of solar LED lights and, sadly, Mark’s drill so unscrewing became much more work. Next we had to find water, gas and propane (which required a fitting which had to be shipped from Oxford). While we unscrewed cabinets and waited for the fitting for the propane, we camped north of Liverpool at Crosby Beach, site of the 99 Iron Men statues. We also rode out the first storm

with a name in UK history, which battered the camper with 75mph winds. We had to move in the middle of the night to find more shelter. We also went to a store called Go Outdoors! and bought all of Team DeCorso suitable rain gear, jackets, boots, umbrellas and hats.

Then, with fuel and water and propane, we started on our left-driving journey.