Trooping the Colour Revisited

 


Today is Trooping the Colour and whenever I see it played on television each year, my thoughts go back to the time when hubby and I went to London to check it out in person. We went in 2009 and it was quite the experience. I'm not much of a royalist, but I like to check things off my list to experience while I'm living in England. I figure that I'll have a series of memories to look back on when I'm old and grey :)

If you'd like to check out my experience, you can find it here. It was quite a day! I took lots of pictures! :)

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

A Decade of Experiences

Today is a big day in my life. Ten years ago today, I stepped off the plane and started this journey of living in England. I can hardly believe that it's been a decade, but it has been. When I think about these years, one line comes to mind from Charles Dickens...

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

(From A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, 1859)

Don't get me wrong with that worst part, but it just resonates with me. Life is a balance of the good and the bad and in ten years we as human beings go through a lot. The thing that makes me rejoice though is that despite the ups and downs, I'm still standing :)

My gratitude for this experience of living away from where I was born is surrounding me as I type these words. I've wrestled quite a bit with being away from my family, but on the other hand I've been having this gift of great experiences. So in the end, I can't complain at all. All is well :)

I look forward to seeing what's next. Onward to ten years plus...let's go!

Balloon Crowns

Today I had to walk up to the High Street because I had to visit the post office. I went up first thing this morning and it was good to get a chance to get some exercise along with running my errands. It's quite a workout because the walk to the High Street is uphill all the way. And let me tell you, in the past I used to be huffing and puffing when I finally got to the top. LOL. But now it's all good.

 

Anyway, I went up to mail a package off and I saw that they had cookies and candies set up on a table inside the post office. There was also an older gentleman there who was making balloon shapes and animals. All of this was because the post office in our town recently reopened after being closed for a few weeks for renovations. So they were celebrating. The post office is a combination kind of a place. It's a post office, newsstand, general store type of place.

 

So when I left, I passed by the older gentleman who was making the balloon animals and shapes and he says, "Would you like a crown?"

 

This is my crown below :)

 

 

 

I gladly took it and thanked him. I stuck it on my head for a minute, but then I thought it might pop or float away, so I carried it down the hill and back home again. I thought that it was so sweet of him to give me my very own crown first thing in the morning. It made me feel like a kid again. Who knew that I'd trudge up the hill this morning like any other day, but come back down the hill a newly crowned queen ;-)

 

P.S. ~ I just looked at this picture again and maybe it's just my dirty mind, but the balloon looks kinda rude too. LOL.

 

Until next time...

Straight From My Heart

Hello all!

I'm still scanning through my pictures from the walk that Brit Boy and I took at the nature reserve, so please bear with me. I didn't realize that I had taken so many pictures until I loaded them onto my computer. The nature reserve was an amazing place and I just kept taking more and more and more pictures. I love taking pictures so my camera is never far away from me :)

I'll be sharing some of the photos in the next couple of days, so please come back for that. It will be more like my posts from the old days of this blog and that's something that I want to get back to. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I've been taking loads of pictures all during the time when I was studying for school and unable to get here to blog. Now I can share them. Some are quite random and some are picturesque. My collection is a regular hodgepodge, but I've always thought that that was the strength of my blog before...the focus on a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Kind of like my philosophy on life :)  It will be nice to get back to what I love again!

So today I will share one of my random pictures. It's a potato that I found in our cupboard the other day. I thought it looked like a heart. What do you think? Of course if you look at it another way it could look like someone's backside. LOL.

I vote for the heart though. What do you see?

 

From my heart to yours...have a wonderful day! :)

Lovely Bath

Today I'm finally sharing my photos that I took during our recent trip to beautiful Bath. It was a bit of an overcast day and near the end it rained, but that city is a gorgeous place to visit in mostly any weather. There are many things that I love about Bath...it's architecturally beautiful, it's just the right size, and I always feel a difference when I visit. I'll explain. I've been living here for a bit over six and a half years now, and even though it is great to live here, after a while I've gotten used to it because I'm living a normal life everyday. I know that it's a treat to get a chance to live outside one's homeland, but for me when I'm let's say, washing dishes, I could be anywhere as I get dishpan hands :-) I guess that what I'm trying to say is that after this while and simply getting on with life, I don't think daily about the fact that I live in another country. But from time to time, when I'm least expecting it, I have this realization that "hey, I'm in a totally different country". And in those moments I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to have this experience. I try to be grateful generally in my life, but I do get those moments when I stop in the middle in my life and take a look around. I guess you could say that momentarily I stop and smell the roses. When I have those moments I tell myself that I have to take notice more...I'm working on it...I'm a work in progress :-) Anyway, back to my story. So when I'm in Bath I have those moments of realization and I feel the difference, like "yeah, I'm somewhere else". Bath is probably my favorite place so far that I've visited in England.

We went to Bath that day to simply have a lovely day out and it was great! Brit Boy and I always enjoy having a stroll around the city and this is where Brit Boy attended university, so it holds a special place in his heart. Since I've been so wordy already, I'll just make the rest of this more of a photo post with very few words ;-)

Left: This is a rather blurry pic that I took from the car as we were waiting to get off at the exit. Bath is beautifully laid out within the rolling hills.

Right: The view as we drove along into town to get to the parking. I love the way the houses hug the curve of the road.

           

                 




        Left: The view driving into town and down the hill

Above: I love the shape of this building

Above: Street Scene...Bath is full of cozy little areas like this

Above: Pretty side street. I don't know the name of the church, but I love how it is nestled just right there

Above: A view of Bath Abbey and to the right are the Roman Baths

Above: Which way do we go???? LOL

Above: My delicious lunch...a spinach & cheese ravioli garnished with cheese and salad and the glorious bread. Yum!!!! Wish I had some now! It was SO good! We ate at a department store restaurant and were floored that the food was so nice and tasty and reasonably priced!

Above: Brit Boy's lasagna

Above: Last but not least, the sweet shop where I got my Nerds candy that I mentioned in my previous post. It was such a cute shop...old fashioned and just perfect!

And that's all folks! I have about a thousand more photos of Bath because every time we go I just can't help myself. It is that beautiful! I always feel at home there. And I LOVE getting the chance to share it with all of you. I will share some more photos in the future because I want everyone to get the chance to experience this interesting place. So I hope that you'll indulge any future photo posts that I do ;-)  These photos don't even scratch the surface. More to come...

If you'd like to know more about Bath, just let me know in the comments. I could talk about it forever and I'm not being paid by the city, I just love this beautiful place. LOL.

Until next time...