A Trip to Wales!

This past weekend was a "bank holiday" weekend in the UK. A bank holiday is like a federal holiday in the US. My favorite part about bank holidays is that there's no reason or remembrance tacked on to them, like Columbus Day or Labor Day. This particular holiday was just called "Late Summer Holiday" - I dig that, because it just owns the fact that it's just a holiday. I mean, I don't know anyone who actually thought about Columbus on Columbus Day after about the 3rd grade, haha, so it's nice to just call it what it is, a day off just because.

So Jay and I decided to take advantage of this end of summer holiday to go camping in Wales. Jay has been wanting to take me to Wales and I've been itching to see the ocean, so we combined the two and headed off to St David's which is in the south west part of Wales.

If you couldn't guess, the A arrow is on St. David's. I put a red dot in the general location of where we live, in case you were wondering. We're basically in between Gloucester and Swindon (the two major places I've been applying to jobs, actually). Anyways, St. David's is gorgeous. It has a surfer town vibe to it, but still with a totally British country feel - a very neat combo. We spent the night in a campsite on a farm overlooking the water. It was pretty breathtaking.

The view from our tent.

After setting up camp, we headed into town for some dinner (I had a delicious fish pie!) and a little sight-seeing. We came across a gorgeous old cathedral which of course was St. David's. As it was starting to get dark we decided to check it out the next morning.

After a good night's sleep, I was awoken by a few mooing cows (sleeping at a farm and all) and opened my tent to that beautiful view of the ocean. We packed up all our belongings into the car and headed back into town. First stop was of course breakfast, and then we headed down to the cathedral.

The church itself was gorgeous, but my favorite part was the ruins behind it called the Bishop's Palace. We had a good time climbing through them and checking out all the little passages and underground store rooms.

Quite a fun little adventure.

After that, it was back in the car to explore some back roads of Wales. The scenery was gorgeous - lots of water, rolling green hills, sheep, and cute little houses. Occasionally the roads were a little scary (lanes that are technically two ways but barely wide enough for even one car!). We made our way along the coast, stopping for lunch at a "chippy" (a little fish and chips shop) in a little town by the water. Low and behold, right across the street was a castle! So of course we had to check it out.

You'll notice in the sign above that the text is written in two languages. Turns out it's English and Welsh - I had no idea the Welsh had their own language! I was quite surprised by how different it is...I imagine is closer to Gaelic than English. It made for some interesting road signs and town names (I saw one town whose name had no vowels in it..not even a y.) Here's an example of a road sign in both languages...

After that it was some more relaxed driving around the coast of Wales and then finding a camp site to crash for the night. We settled on one tucked up on a hill. A very simple site but one that allowed camp fires which is a bit unusual (and awesome). On Sunday, we woke up bright and early and drove the two hours back home on back roads. It was quite lovely (minus the traffic we hit about 20 min from our house!).

We enjoyed a nice night in our own comfy bed and then on Monday decided not to let the holiday or the gorgeous weather go to waste. (Note: it's a lot chillier in England than I anticipated - somewhere around 65 - 70 each day, which is lovely, don't get me wrong, but compared to the east coast when I left it's down right chilly. It feels like autumn already. I quite like it!) So we hopped on the motorcycle and ventured off to Newent, a town about 40 minutes north west of us, and home to a few vineyards! We had packed a picnic, so we spent the afternoon tasting wine and munching on our delicious food. It was quite a lovely day.

That's all for now. Until our next adventure! :)

Meg

Settling In...

Hello! I know I have been quite absent these past few months, but that's because Jay & I were living apart, he in our new home in the UK and I in DC and MA gearing up for our wedding. So we didn't really have any adventures together so to speak. But, that's all changed now because we finally had our wedding and I have officially moved to the UK - so hopefully there will be lots of adventures to come and I promise to keep the blog updated much more frequently!

This post, however, is going to be a collection of adventures, to make up for my absence. First of course, was a wonderful wedding. The day was absolutely perfect and we had a glorious time with our friends and family, and of course, each other. The very next morning it was off to the airport and to London via DC (very fitting, don't you think?). A couple of nights unwinding and sleeping in our new home and we were off again, this time on our honeymoon to Paphos, Cyprus! We had an absolutely wonderful time. Cyprus is gorgeous and the weather was lovely (though quite hot!). We had a room with a balcony and breath-taking view of the sea. Here's two shots from our balcony of the sunset on our first evening:

We spent our days lounging on chairs by the sea, opting for seats in umbrella shade on the grass, reading, drinking and taking the occasional dip in the sea.

It was absolutely perfect - just what we needed!!

Now that we're back, we've just been settling into our new house. There was a very large trip to IKEA for a dining table, chairs, bed, mattress, desk and a few other odds and ends. We've got that all put together and are finally rid of all of the army furniture. We've also gotten ourselves a BBQ, two hammocks, a small herb garden for our patio and a few plants for the front of the house. If they're still alive in a few weeks I'll post some pics :)

I've also driven a few times (we've put fun little red L magnets on the front and back of the car to let everyone know I'm a "learner" - usually these are only used for kids with their permits, but we figure this way other drivers will know that I don't know what I'm doing and will give me some extra space!). It hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be - I've even made my way around a few round-a-bouts!

That's all for now. This weekend is a "bank holiday" weekend (aka long weekend) and we're planning a camping trip to a few vineyards and Wales. I'll definitely post about it when we return!

House Update

Hello! Sorry for the delay - it's been a busy few days here. We finally are finished with the house (minus a few piles of papers and such that need to be organized). To celebrate, on Friday we popped a bottle of champagne in the backyard and then went out in town for a nice dinner.

But it was a bit of a long haul finishing up the house. We didn't end up taking any touristy trips last week, instead choosing to stay home and get the house organized. On Friday, the couch and wardrobes came which was quite exciting.

The couch started off slow...

But after a little hard work we were really happy with the result!

The wardrobes were also a bit labor intensive, but not as bad as I thought they'd be. And they're totally worth their weight in gold - all my clothes have such a nice home now and Jay is able to use the whole closet in the room for all of his. Mission Accomplished.

And here's the rest of the bedroom...

We also hung the rest of our artwork and pictures which really gave the house a more homey feel. We were especially excited about the Boston skyline canvas print we found at Tesco:

Here's some shots of Jay's wonderful picture hanging in the front hallway and the stairwell:

And now that we have our couch, we were able to move the futon up to the spare bedroom, along with the vanity/desk that used to be in our room. So even the guest room is coming together nicely...

We also found this cute little Memo board/key holder that we've hung next to the back door (we generally use the back door rather than the front for coming in and out).

And as it was Jay's birthday on Saturday, we celebrated in the morning by taking the motorcycle out for a quick ride - it finally became legally road ready on Friday. In the afternoon, we took a quick overnight trip to his parents house in Milton Keynes. The drive was lovely - just over an hour on mostly back roads through beautiful countryside. We had a nice dinner with his parents and then on Sunday more of the family got together for a delicious Sunday dinner. By the time we got back on Sunday evening, we were exhausted, and crashed out on the couch to watch some NCAA action.

Now we're off to get a few more things done, mainly trying to open a bank account for me. For a little added fun we're going to bicycle into town instead of drive (about 2.5 miles each way). Hopefully, all goes as planned :)

I'll keep you posted!

Meg

Heading into town...

Hello again! As promised, here's a little peek into our new neighborhood.

We live on the Duke of Gloucester Barracks army base in South Cerney, England:

Most of the area around our house is either green fields on the base or the farm next door (our house is right on the edge of camp). Here's the view from our bedroom window, which looks out onto our front yard and the camp's playing fields.

Here's the view of our farming neighbor behind our house from our upstairs hall. The grassy part to the left of the fence is our yard, to the right of the fence is our neighbor's yard. The big fence in the back is the edge of the camp, and the brown field behind is the farm. Hooray for living in the country!

But South Cerney is just a village, not a proper town - there's only one shop and a couple of pubs. So when we need to "go into town" we pop down to Cirencester, which is only about 2 or 3 miles down the road. Cirencester is a market town that back in Roman times used to be called Corinium. I absolutely love the town - it feels to me like Newburyport back home. Here's a couple pictures to show you what I mean...

Today we picked up a few more things for the house and also stopped for a yummy lunch. I had a fish cake salad with a lemon hollandaise sauce that was to die for!

YUM!

In downtown there is also a really pretty cathedral-like church called St. John the Baptist.

But it's not all country living - we still have lots of the comforts of home. My favorite right now is our SKY satellite cable. We sprung for the good package to keep me (and also Jay!) from feeling too homesick for US TV (we've watched Bones and House already). But the best part is my new favorite channel...

Just yesterday we watched the Red Sox - Phillies spring training game. And we've been keeping up with a good deal of March Madness as well. Hooray for technology!

Allright, that's all for now. I'll try to update again tomorrow. We still have a fair amount of unpacking to do (we had hoped to get it all sorted today before shopping took a bit longer and a bit more energy than anticipated), but we're hoping to take a trip to Blenheim Palace (birthplace of Churchill!).

Good night!

Meg

Our New House!

Jay arrived to our new house in England on January 22nd. Finally, eight long weeks later, I have made it out here to visit him and check out our new home! I have to say, I was a bit nervous, but I shouldn't have been - our house and the local area are lovely!

We got right down to work these past couple days getting the house together - unpacking all of our boxes, shopping for furniture and odds-and-ends at IKEA and even the British equivalents of Home Depot (B&Q), Walmart (ASDA) and something similar to Target (Range). It's been exhausting and exhilarating all at the same time!

Here's a few pictures to give you a taste of our new home...

The front of our new house!

We're the left side of a duplex - the last one on a dead end street. (You can see Jay and our new car as well!)

Here's a view of our backyard (complete with the bird feeder Jay put together and the new fire pit we got today!)

We LOVE the fire pit!

Jay being super handy and putting together (with my help, promise!) my new dresser from IKEA (love that MALM!).

Our kitchen. Note the two separate faucets for hot and cold water. I was not a fan of the two taps. I found it incredibly difficult to wash dishes well using this system. I either froze my little fingers or nearly burned them off. But thankfully, Jamie is my hero and we found a "deck mixer tap" at the Brit Home Depot that did the trick and now we have one faucet - hooray! See...

YAY!

Our newly decorated living room - thanks for the bookshelves IKEA!

That's all the pics for now. I promise more once our couch and dresser come on Friday!

I'll also post some pictures of the local area tomorrow. We're heading into town to take care of a few errands - setting up my health insurance and opening a bank account for me, etc. and I'll be sure to take some good pictures!

Have a good night everyone!

Meg