&...rainy rainy Wales.

&...rain.

Really? Should anyone be surprised by rain in Wales? Yeah, we shouldn't have, but the rain and  the wind got to be a bit much at times.

Of course we could laugh it off sometimes. Sometimes. We were more likely to laugh without the crappy cold wind.

Posers. :)

 Cardiff Castle.

No Dr. Who Experience yet, but the Dalleks have already invaded.

Cardiff Bay. Blue background blob soon to be opened Dr. Who Experience.

English border complete with difficult to see Union Jack on the cliff. 

Penarth Pier.

Bleak, but beautiful Barry's Beach. 

(Apparently, I like alliteration.)

Cardiff Millennium Center.

Chepstow Castle.

And on the most rainy freezing blustery day we found Caerphilly (Carefully) Castle. Castle walls to shield us from the wind made for some fantastic exploring. The best £4 we spent on the whole trip.

J and the ducks.

Beautiful Welsh countryside.

The town and a Tesco Metro (you can barely see) in the background. Tesco became one of my compadres favorites on this trip. Pain de chocolate, almond and lemon croissants...sometimes they were even warm. 

mmm.

Tintern Abbey in the fading light. Too late to go inside, but still a lovely little detour.

&...

&...Loch Ness.

The great irony of the trip was Scotland. Though there was serious rain at Rosslyn and a little snow over the mountain pass on our way to Inverness, we basked in the sun in Scotland. 

Glorious sun.

Coming down the mountain into Inverness. No longer afraid of W driving on the wrong side of the road.

The ruins of Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness.

  

Hairy Scottish cattle.

Nessie and the locks at the southern end of Loch Ness.

Glorious.

&....Edinburgh.

&....Oh how I love Scotland. 

After a bit of a mishap trying to find Hadrian's Wall, we made it to Scotland and started out our time in Edinburgh with Rosslyn Chapel. 

The DaVinci Code did much to heighten the popularity of Rosslyn Chapel and while some of that is silly --including people wanting to know where people were sacrificed in the crypt (that may be wrong--I don't really care...sorry Dan Brown)--but the upside of the DaVinci delirium is the money that has enabled a major conservation work on the chapel. While conservation of a beautiful place makes me happy, scaffolding and silly inside photography rules limit my documentation. 

Rosslyn is a romantic and ethereal place. Impressive intricate stonework incorporating pagan symbols with traditional Christian symbols, potentially pre-columbian corn, a twisted fallen Lucifer, and a fantastical story of a stone mason and his apprentice. Green monsters, murder, and charity as one of the seven deadly sins by mistake--what more could you ask for? Oh yeah, you could ask that in an painful 1970s "conservation" decision they didn't whitewash all the interior sandstone with concrete. Concrete.

Please no more of that.    

We finished our tour and requisite wandering and then tick tock the heavens opened up. Dumped. Yet again. Such rain and an inability to leave safe dry confines required good hot chocolate. Rosslyn's no doubt newly acquired barista served up a steamy thick hot chocolate to perfect the moment. (Hence my conflicted relationship with Dan Brown and capitalism.)

&...did I say I LOVE SCOTLAND?

Oh Edinburgh. 

After a bit of an ordeal with parking the car and climbing back Jacob's Ladder (literally) to our hotel, I was able to explore. I walked around Edinburgh thinking about what I could do to spend a summer there--I am open to suggestions. Apparently, useful and correct directions are not Edinburgh's strong suit, so before we could have dinner a couple missing cohorts had to be found. What was lost was found and we had a lovely well-recommended dinner with Mother India and then a semi-creepy and problematically historical tour of the caverns below Edinburgh. Despite the creepy factor and my inability to turn off my historian brain, it was entertaining. Even if it was just B's jumping.

Despite the disingenuous directions and crappy parking, our hotel was fantastic--Princes Street Suites. And it was next door to a cemetery. David Hume and Abraham Lincoln's cemetery. Though I suppose exactness would require noting that though Lincoln stands atop a memorial to Scottish-Americans who fought in the Civil War (the American one), his bones do not lie there. (His bones are in Springfield, Illinois, likewise cool, but not next to David Hume.) 

 The Governor's House was the castle next door to the cemetery.

With three visits in less than 24 hours, I think I liked it.

And more Edinburgh.

St. Giles Cathedral. 

Double double toil and trouble.

Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street Gardens.

Sir Walter Scott.

The Scottish National Gallery with Edinburgh Castle in the background.

The Royal Mile looking out to the sea.

View from Arthur's Seat.

Scottish parliament (the modern boxes) alongside Holyrood House (the Queen's Scottish residence). 

Arthur's Seat.

We planned a full itinerary for Scotland, including A LOT of driving. A ridiculous amount for any Brit, not quite so much for four girls from the America's west--just on the wrong side of the road.  

&...i have visitors!

Visitors mean that it is time for a break and time to take better advantage of where I live.

B, W & J arrived on the 20th (in time to celebrate my mom's birthday). I left Leicester that morning to glorious sun, which was much appreciated after a week plus of rain, and I thought perhaps it might stay for a bit. Alas, no such luck. This is England and it was not meant to last. 

It appeared rain was our lot in what became the wettest April on record in years.

I arrived in London at Victoria and it was nice, so I decided to walk a bit to the hotel. As I hit Hyde Park, it started to rain. Stopping in the rain for a minute to take a photo brought an overly friendly Italian whose rate of talking sped up with the rain. He apparently didn't have any desire to not get wet. Just about the time that I was far enough past the tube station to not turn around and the heavens opened up.

Generally the skies in England just spit, but this was a deluge.

I had to laugh to myself as I got more and more wet. Every time I was close to a tube station, it lightened up a bit and I continued to walk. And then the skies opened up yet again.

At least gold gilding looks amazing in the rain.

More to come.

[A few years ago after I came back from a trip to Thailand, J&R sat down with me and patiently looked through 700+ photos. I had cut them down, but there were still 700+. I was so excited about them--I just kept going. (R had just started dating J so there was serious patience on her part.) In an attempt to avoid the same dazed looks, the photos that follow will obviously just be my favorites and I'll post them separately.] 

&...bored.

There are days when I don't leave my flat and I work a few too many hours without any planned diversion. Today was such a day. I planned a diversion, but had no desire to go out when outside suddenly felt like the cold and rainy part of winter again. On said cooped up days inevitably I reach a point where my brain needs something different. And inevitably that is when the above clip goes through my head.

Again and again.

I'm not sure that bored is the right description for those days, it isn't like I don't have anything to do, but perhaps it is good that I don't have a gun or a blue dressing gown because if I'm honest, the wall did have it coming.

One day I'll be good at learning limits and planning diversions so I can avoid becoming my favorite high functioning sociopath.

P.S. I'll comment on my love of SHERLOCK another day, but suffice it to say, if you haven't watched SHERLOCK yet, go and watch it NOW. For those of you in the U.S. Season 2 will be on Masterpiece in May. Get ready.

&...it was bound to happen.

I think if anyone is going to move to a foreign country from the United States, England is a pretty easy option. They speak English--generally a much more interesting version of English. I think for the most part things went quite smoothly. I feel pretty well sorted and feel like I now comfortably live in England.

That said, there are a number of things that have caused me to retool my MO. One of those things that I've had to adjust to is my refrigerator.

I rented a flat without a fridge--obviously I liked the flat much more than its lack of fridge. This was surprising in and of itself, but I bought a used one that seems to work quite well. (I only kick it every once in a while when I think it is humming a bit too robustly.)

The only issue is size. It fits under the counter. With a freezer the size of a shoebox.

Transitioning from having a full size American refrigerator all to myself to this miniature fridge has been a bit of an adjustment. The bigger transition has been to this freezer. No more Costco trips (let's be honest I don't have a car anyway) and I suppose frequent walks to the store do get me out of my house when I'm in writing mode. 

I like diet coke. That hasn't changed--much to my mom's chagrin. And I like it cold. 

Ice is a difficult thing in this country, rather an almost impossible thing. When I order a drink and they ask me if I want ice, I say, "Yes, please....five times more ice than you think anyone might ever want." And I end up with 5 ice cubes at the bottom of my glass. Not worth it. And there is not a whole lot of room in the fridge.

Despite this, I like COLD diet coke. It is kind of chilly in my cupboard and it's not too bad straight from the cupboard, but i like it COLD. Not enough room in my freezer for ice cube trays and though they do have handy ice cube bags, I have yet to figure out how to get a proper amount of ice cubes out of any ice cube bag without frostbite. So I stick a can of diet coke in the freezer from time to time. 

And if you are someone who sticks cans in freezers on a regular basis, inevitably at some point you will forget and leave the house. And invariably that can will explode. 

Well this time it was canS--plural. Two, to be exact. 

I mistakenly thought for a moment that it might be less of a mess since my freezer is so tiny. Alas, no such luck. The freezer door was frozen shut. I had to pry it open. With a knife. Meanwhile a variety of odd questions skip through my head: What happens if you stab freon? Does anything really still have freon? What happens when I stab my hand and blood spurts everywhere and I pass out? Do I even know the emergency number if I don't pass out? Thankfully, none of these option came to fruition and the finally door opened. 

The frozen diet coke made its way into every possible crevice. Every possible crevice. And every single item that was in that freezer was now solidly frozen together. 

&...so the cleaning began.

Have I learned my lesson? 

&...heart breaking...just a little.

A good friend shared this conversation between her kids:
K: Let's visit Janiece.
D: We can't. She lives across a big ocean.
K: Like the Salt Lake?
D: Even bigger.
K: Let's visit her there. I miss Janiece.
D: Me too.

Ok, even if there was a bit of liberty taken with the account, it was so sweet...so sweet. K&D I miss you too. Thanks D.