Don't miss my post about our trip to the Cotswolds

For some reason, my new post about our trip to the Cotswolds appears in-between my 2 posts about our visit to Bath.  

So please scroll down to the post "To the Cotswolds We Go"  for details about our journey to that amazing region and some great photos.

More Bath photos (we traveled to Bath on September 9th)

More photos of our trip to Bath.  They include Bath Abbey, the Roman Bath and our trip to the "World Famous" Sally Lunn House, which is the home to Sally Lunn's Bun, a pastry that Sally, a baker, created in the 1600's.  The picture does not show you just how fabulous were these buns (although Sophia's expression helps).  Slightly sweet and covered in a warm, sticky, cinnamony-sugary-buttery sauce.  We all split just one because they are quite large. If we ever make it back there, though, we won't hesitate to each get our own!

To the Cotswolds We Go (we traveled here on September 10th) (I posted this on October 31st)

While we were staying in Bath, we took one of our days and spent it on a bus tour of the Cotswolds. It was a fantastic day. It was a small bus that held only 14 passengers. When we arrived to wait in line for the bus, the other patrons eyed us warily. We could read their thoughts almost as if they were shouting them "oh, no!! a 2 year old on the bus! crying! whining! our trip ruined!". We said nothing, though, because we knew that the 2 year old in question was our girl Sophia, seasoned traveler and most excellent bus rider. And it turned out that we were right. Sophia was a good girl all day long. So good, in fact, that at the end of the day the other passengers and tour guide cheered her off the bus with compliments and big smiles. Phew.

The Costswolds are an area of lovely rolling hills, hand-built dry stone walls (which means no mortar was used to hold them together, just amazing stonework), houses with thatched roofs and villages so quaint that they are impossible to describe and portray accurately. (So  you can learn more if you'd like to, I'm including a link to the official website which is worth a look.)

http://www.the-cotswolds.org/top/english/intro.shtml

The bus wound its way through the narrow lanes of English northeast country side. It was a lovely day and we saw so many farms, from small to large, that looked like they came out of a film set. We stopped in several towns and got out of the bus to look around and take pictures. I fell in love with all of the beautifully painted doors and gates set into garden walls, so I have a million pictures of doors. One of our walks was particularly pleasant. We stopped in 'Upper Slaughter' and were told that we couldn't get to the village next door, 'Lower Slaughter' by bus, so we would be taking a path there. (The name of these villages stems from the Old English 'slough' or 'slothre', describing a wet land or muddy place.) This was an apt description. Off we went trudging along quite a muddy path that led us through fields, over hills, through fences and in and out of farmer's pastures. It was so much fun. And Sophia, who has been hiking with her daddy since she was 3 months old, just hiked along with everyone else and loved it.

Our visit to Bath

Our first
destination
in England was the elegant city of Bath. The city is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone. We were very lucky with weather and had very little rain. We stayed in a beautiful apartment with the great address of 1 Hay Hill for the 3 days we were there. It was a former bakery that created the famous 'Oliver' biscuits, which are yummy cookies that are a cross between a cookie and a cracker and are magnificent loaded with strawberry jam and joined by a lovely hot cup of tea with milk. One of the great traditions of apartments and B&B's that you rent from in England is that they have all the makings of tea waiting for you when you arrive. When we arrived at our place in Bath, they had the Oliver biscuits, homemade strawberry jam and tea and milk and sugar ready and waiting for us. So our introduction to England was an easy plane flight, a smooth train ride with great scenery, a comfy and beautiful apartment and a special tea. Things were starting off great!




After freshening up a bit and enjoying our tea, we headed out the door to see Bath. It is such a pretty place. The buildings are mostly made from a limestone called "Bath" stone and it is a creamy yellowish color (although we read that during earlier centuries it wasn't so lovely because of all the soot that settled on it from so many fireplaces constantly burning). We walked into the center of the city and were struck by the many attractive buildings and the striking architecture. The 2 structures that dominate the city centre are Bath Abbey and the Roman Bath. Both are splendid.
Bath Abbey was our first experience with an extraordinary ancient church. Built in the Gothic style during the 7th century, we were awed by its age, its architecture, and the sheer size of it. This Abbey is over 1300 years old and seeing it began for us what has been a non-stop journey of one historical and spectacular sight after another.
We saw the Roman Baths the next day. What a sight to behold. It was buried for centuries and when uncovered, it was amazingly intact and well preserved. It dates to 60 - 70 A.D. and was the sight of a popular Roman public bath. The picture I took shows the temple that was built to house the Roman Bath House (which still has 'locker rooms' and private dressing rooms)(also, just beyond the Bath House, you can see Bath Abbey). The water is green looking, but we learned that this is algae reacting to the sunlight, and in the time of the Romans, the Bath would have been covered and so the water would have been clear. The clever workmanship of the Romans, the attractive craftmanship of the stone carvers, and the sense of serenity that you get walking through this place - I simply run out of adjectives to describe for you how cool it all is. The source of the water for the baths is a natural hot spring that bubbles up from the ground. The Romans, and those who came after, considered it a Sacred Spring. Those who came to bathe in the waters here believed in their power to heal and to maintain good health. There is still much interest in 'taking the waters'. In 1983, a new, 'clean' well was dug and the water from that spring is used at a modern Bath Spa today and is the water that you can drink in the 'Pump Room'. For 50 pence a glass (about .90 cents U.S.), you can drink to your health. We all shared a glass and while it mostly tasted like iron, we did feel surprisingly energized after partaking.

When we first arrived in England

In an earlier blog, I started to describe our flight over to England on British Air, which was a redeye flight.  We left Baltimore at 9:30 p.m. and arrived at Heathrow airport the next morning at 9:30 a.m.  (which was 4:30 a.m. our time).  Sophia is 2 now, so she had to have her own ticket, which meant she had her own seat, which she loved.  She spent most of the flight playing with the audio and video controls on the arm of her chair.  The first 3 times that she pressed the button to call the flight attendant, they were very kind and polite when I apologized profusely.  The next 9 times that she pressed it, they simply ignored us and calmly shut the button off as they passed by.  

Steve slept through most of the flight and Sophia and I fell asleep around 1:00 a.m.  When we arrived at the airport, we took the tube (subway) to Paddington Station (home of Paddington Bear) and then an above ground train to Bath, where we began our journey.  We tried to pack lightly as we knew we would be moving around a lot in the beginning.  Even so, we had Sophia's stroller, her pack-n-play, one very large suitcase with clothes and toiletries for the 3 of us, Steve's computer bag and Sophia's little bag full of books and some essential toys.  Oh, and we had Sophia.  So hopping on and off trains was a bit of a chore but we got better at it as we went along.  The main difficulty stemmed from the fact that the trains try hard to run on time, so they open and shut the doors soooo quickly.  We almost lost body parts and a bag or two, but somehow it all worked out.  We arrived in Bath and took a taxi to our beautiful apartment that we would stay in for the next 3 days.

I have to mention our stroller - it was a shower gift from our good friend Merri.  Without that stroller, we could not have carried all of our luggage and traveled in the ways we have been able to travel.  It is big and sturdy and comfortable for Sophia and we can carry sooo much stuff.  We've carried the pack-n-play a million miles, carried our groceries, trudged up and down miles of cobblestone roads, been through fields and on and off countless buses and trains.  It folds down into a small bundle so we've been able to take a taxi a couple of times when we had the stroller with us.  All of our taxi drivers have been so impressed with how small it gets when folded.  That stroller has traveled so much, the tread is worn off of the tires!

We met up with Dan & Jen & Jake at the beach

Asmentioned in an earlier posting, we took a trip to  Dewey Beach and we were able to hook up with our friends Dan and Jen and their son Jake. We had a great time. Here are a few photos for you to enjoy.

Photos of places I've mentioned

Being a newbie to blogging, I am having a hard time figuring out how to place my photos where I want them, and to give them captions.  (Any advice is welcome!)   So what I'll do until I work that out is load a few photos at a time and describe them.

So here are pictures from when we went to Dewey Beach in early September, before leaving the States to come abroad. We had such a great time and the weather was fantastic.  We walked on the beach a lot, and had great meals.

In the picture where Sophia and I are eating breakfast, take a close look at the foreground of the photo. What you will see is a piece of 'scrapple'. Scrapple is a pork product of mysterious origins that Steve absolutely loves. He grew up eating it and considers it a real treat, so he was thrilled to find it served at this outdoor restaurant at the beach. If you look at the photo again, you will see that Sophia has a look of "I'm not so sure about this" as her daddy gives her a bite of scrapple to try. For me, this falls into the category of haggis and tripe, that is, foods I will never eat but Steve will eat whenever the chance presents itself.

Plans change, they do. October 18

It started out so great. There we all were, me, Steve, Sophia and Steve's mom and dad, Ken & Louise, tooling along in a comfy mini-bus with our guide, David, on our way to the "Norfolk Broads". The Broads are a series of waterways created in Medieval times. Large pits were dug and they then filled in with water from natural springs. They were used for travel and trade. (Interestingly, it was only realized in the 1950s that these were not natural shallow lakes and were made by human hands).

We'd booked the van 2 weeks ago to take us for a day-long trip to see the Broads and several little towns and quaint villages that we would encounter along the way. That morning, we'd all gotten up early. Sophia often needs to be up a while before she's ready for breakfast, so we didn't think too much of her having a light appetite and only eating a little cereal and drinking juice. We should have looked more closely at her behavior...

So we'd been on the road for about 7 minutes when Sophia asked to get into my lap. Again, this was a little unusual because she likes feeling like a "bigger girl" and having her own seat and seat belt (they don't have baby seats for the buses here). She hopped into my lap and snuggled in, and promptly opened her mouth and gushed juice and undigested cereal all over me, the seat we were in and the floor of the van. The atmosphere in the van changed from jolly and light to not-so-jolly and not-so-light. The driver pulled over, we all hopped out, cleaned up Sophia, me, and the seat the best we could. Sophia seemed completely unaffected by it all - as if she'd not been the one that had just spewed apple juice across the van. So we made the decision that she'd emptied everything she had in her and seemed fine, so we'd keep going. The driver was amicable and said he had 5 grandchildren and "one was a real puker in the car" so continuing was okay with him. Three miles down the road, sitting in her daddy's lap, Sophia threw up again, and then one more time for good measure in Mommy's lap. We were then, of course, on our way home.

I really can't emphasize enough that I was waaaaay more upset than Sophia - she was non-plussed by it all. When we got home, Steve and Sophia and I hopped out and I brought her right up to the tub, then into jammies and into bed. She slept for 3 hours. She woke up, fully recovered and raring to go. Ken & Louise continued on with the driver for the tour and had a terrific day, and said that the van "only smelled just a little".

Rambles in Norwich, October 17

How magical this city feels. Each morning we have such a great view out our windows. Steve and I have finally made good on our pledge to walk in the early morning before Sophia wakes up (my in-laws are here while we are gone), and so we have had several walks this week that have been spectacular. We call them 'rambles' -- walks with no particular destination in mind. We've followed tiny little alleyways, gone through rabbit holes in the shrubs, crossed under ancient archways and gone down paths that we'd not noticed or not taken before, and we've been rewarded with picturesque gardens, houses right out of the "Hobbit" and the feeling that we are in another world, another time. These walks are making me feel so good, so alive, so refreshed, so blessed. Time with Steve and views that anyone would enjoy seeing - who could ask for more at 7:00 a.m.?

Oh, the places we've been

We've really done so much since we left Binghamton at the end of August (how long ago that seems!). We are so grateful to have had the opportunities we've had, to see friends and see sights and then of course to come to England. I'm going to try and start from when we left and give you an idea of what we've done along the way.

We left our house at just the end of August. A few days before we left, we hosted a neighborhood party. Steve had gone 'round the neighborhood and handed out invitations and introduced himself to folks on streets near us. We had well over 50 people at the party and it was great fun. It created a really nice feeling in the neighborhood, which is something that Steve is very good at. Steve's pal from graduate school, Eric, drove over from NJ for a few hours and that was a really nice added element, since we hadn't seen Eric in a really long time (he lives in Atlanta w his family but was visiting relatives in NJ).

We drove to York, Pennsylvania, where Steve's mom and dad live. We have house-sitters, Stefan and Kim, who, along with our friend Ed and our neighbors Connie and John and Suzann & Aidan, are taking good care of our old house while we are gone. We spent several days with Steve's parents and then drove over to Maryland, to visit Steve's brother, Kenny, and Liz and Sarah & Annie & Robby. They have a new house in Virginia and they took us over to see it. Virginia is a beautiful state and the house is high on a hill with a great view. The next day, her cousins showed Sophia how to bounce on a trampoline and she loved it. It was really fun visiting with them for a couple of days.

Next, we drove to see my niece Melissa and her family in Pasadena, MD. We had a really great time spending the day with them. They have 2 dogs and 2 cats which means that Sophia was in heaven, since she loves cats and dogs. (That's my niece Melissa with Sophia at the top).

A couple of days later we took a 3 day trip to the beach. For those of you who know me well, you know how much I loooved this trip. We went to Dewey Beach, Delaware. This is a really small beach town right next to Rehoboth, which is more well known. It was great. We did what Steve sometimes likes to do, which is drive into town without a reservation and then choose a place that we like, for its location, for its ambiance, and hopefully for its reasonable price. We've always had great luck with this method and this time was no different. Since we came after Labor Day weekend, 'peak' season was over, so we were able to get a pretty good price at a time when the weather was still spectacular. We spent our days lounging at the beach, where Sophia and her daddy built castles and dug big holes and mommy relaxed or fetched water for them for the castle moats. We also walked and walked along the beach, then had a great dinner somewhere, and then walked the beach some more and saw some beautiful sunsets. One day while sitting on the patio outside of our room, Sophia spotted dolphins on the distant horizon. She has a great eye (we think she inherited this skill from me, because I had a reputation when I worked in archaeology for often spotting artifacts that were on the ground, or partially hidden, much sooner and more frequently than others looking with me). Steve was with her and they saw hundreds!!! of dolphins leaping and frollicking. Mommies and babies, all ages and sizes. I got outside just in time to see a dozen or so, but even that was amazing.

At the end of this trip, we had the great good fortune of meeting up with our friends Dan & Jen & their son Jake. Dan and Steve had been in touch and so we knew that they were vacationing across the bay at Cape May, NJ. So they took the ferry across the Delaware Bay into Lewes, which was just down the road from us. We strolled around this quaint little town and then had a nice long lunch, with lots of laughing. It was a short visit but really terrific. Jake is 2 months older than Sophia and they got along great. When we came out of the restaurant after lunch, Jake just casually took Sophia's hand and off they walked to see the sights. Adorable does not come close to describing it.

We headed back to York that night and spent the next couple of days catching our breath and getting ready to leave for England. (I'll add more photos later, so please check back!)

Some pictures of Sophia from our travels

Sophia has been such a great traveler.  these are just a couple of pictures of her along the way.