Oh The Grand Old Duke Of York...

 'He had ten thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again...' 

Who remembers this nursery rhyme? We used to sing it as a song at summer camp way back when, and as you sang the word up you had to jump up from your seat, and when you sang down everyone sat back down. 

We might not have marched to the top of the hill but we definitely climbed some serious steps on our recent visit to the city of York. We spent two nights in York so rather than my usual way of blogging I will resist jamming all the doings into a single post, and make this a two-parter. 

Hubs and I knew we wanted a little mid-trip getaway while visiting our daughter. We had gobs of visitors when we lived in the UK, and it was always nice when those staying more than a few days took a little side trip somewhere in the middle and allowed us to regroup at home. 

Also, we viewed this trip as an anniversary celebration even though our anniversary was in the middle of June. 40 years needs more than a passing mention and we knew we wanted to do something a little bit special. We decided to go to York for a couple of days because a) it's a reasonable drive from Cambridge (less than three hours), b) it's a city we never got to when we lived here, and c) it's dubbed the most romantic city in England so happy anniversary to us. 

We left Cambridge in the pouring rain Monday morning and made it to York around noon. We were unfamiliar with the city geography and it took a minute to figure out which car park made sense, how to get to that car park, and then how to pay at that car park. 

Once parking was sorted we headed straight for York Minster, one of the world's most beautiful cathedrals. 

If you read the cathedral's own website it tells you this place was 'built for the glory of God'. That every aspect of this ancient building 'from the handcrafted stone to the collection of medieval stained glass tells the story of Jesus Christ'. 

Do we build for that reason anymore? 

Not on the scale of York Minster, that's for certain. 

One thought that lodges in your mind when you wander in and out of so many ancient castles and cathedrals is the care and sheer effort that went into the design and construction. Most times these cathedrals took decades to complete, centuries even, so the original architect, stone masons, glass glaziers, etc. were long gone by the time the church was actually finished. Still they took that care because they knew what they were building was for the glory of God. 

I will never get over the beautiful architecture in this country. 

You can climb the central tower in the cathedral here, once you sign off on the medical waiver and take a few deep breaths and look around and think to yourself if that man with a bit of a beer belly can do it so can you, and then you're off. 

Up. And slowly because it's 275 steps on a medieval stone spiral staircase that is 24 inches wide most of the way up. 

Deep breaths. 

You climb something like 150 steps to start and then you come out into the glorious daylight to walk across a narrow path that feels a lot like scaffolding, and then on into the second staircase for the remaining 125 steps to the top. 

Freedom! 

Deep breaths. 

Hubs enjoyed the climb but wasn't crazy about the sensation up top. It was really windy and it felt like you could topple right over the edge. I was just happy to be breathing fresh air. 

The views from up top are amazing and it was worth the climb. 

You repeat the journey back down and then you go find yourselves a pub for a pint and a shared plate of Yorkshire sausages.

We wandered around the quaint cobbled streets and peeked in some shops before making our way back to the carpark and on to our hotel. 

Our hotel-

Swoon! 

We stayed in Middlethorpe Hall and Spa, a William the III country house set on 20 gorgeous acres about three miles outside the York city centre. 

It was built in 1699 and is one of only three Historic House Hotels of the National Trust. 

We rested for a while then headed to the dining room. First though, a cocktail in the lounge...

I'm a fan of all the little touches like silver spoons and cocktail picks, fine china, a garden view, old paintings, and old English houses in general. 

We were escorted in to dinner and enjoyed a three course meal. The food was so beautiful and we savored every bite. I very discreetly snapped some pictures. 

We were first served an 'amuse-bouche'...a zucchini arancini and a crab spread. Next we had the halibut with a coconut lemongrass bisque that was so delicious I wanted to pick up the bowl and drink every last drop.

 I didn't but I wanted to. 

For the main I had salmon with watercress, horseradish, and yuzu which was super scrumptious, and hubs had the Yorkshire duck with plum, pistachio, honey and daikon. 

Dessert was Annabel's strawberries with champagne, elderflower, and verbena. 

This was served chilled and it was wonderful. Annabel's is a Yorkshire strawberry farm so a true farm to table dish. 

After dinner we walked back to our room and called it a night. Come back tomorrow so I can tell you all about breakfast lol. Other stuff too, but breakfast deserves a mention. 

And yes, this was me not jamming everything in to a single post. 

Time Passages

In yesterday's Hodgepodge I asked readers what they were doing five years ago, and decided I'd make that more or less the subject of today's post. When not a lot is going on in your corner of the world you have to reach a little for blog content.

After I asked the question it occurred to me that we've been at this whole Corona mess for five long months (feels like years) so I started wondering what we were doing just prior, and decided to take a peek back at that too.

Five months ago...we were in the first few days of everybody stay home !!! Stay far and away from everybody else in the entire world including your own extended family !!! Now in our house we'd been discussing the virus for a solid two months prior as it hit South Korea hard in January. A friend reminded me yesterday how we'd had a conversation back then, so concerned about my daughter and her family, never imagining we'd be in the same boat just a short time later.

Five months ago hubs and I drove home after spending a long weekend with friends in Florida. Things were open when we headed down, but closed by the time we headed home. The shutdown happened almost overnight. We ate lunch at Chick-fil-a coming back and it was only their first or second day of strictly take out. Of course Chick-fil-a is awesome and handled the upheaval like it was no big deal.

I don't know if anyone imagined in March we'd still be slogging through this insanity five months later, yet here we are. Who's over it?

Five years ago...I wrote a post entitled Retirement Day 187. Currently we are in Retirement Day 2000 so I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. By the way, it's going swimmingly.

Except for the pandemic and the unrest across America and the general nastiness online and the no travel-no-houseguests-no making plans, but other than that it's going swimmingly.

Five years ago we took a fun trip up the East Coast to attend a friend's daughter's wedding.

We drove from New Jersey to Prince Edward Island Canada and thoroughly enjoyed eating our weight in lobster rolls, the staggering beauty of Maine and PEI, and in-person time spent with real life friends.

Also, five years ago I apparently still took pictures with a good camera and not just so-so pictures with a phone.

I would so love to jump in the car and take a road trip somewhere new and pretty and not give a thought to hotel cleanliness, gloving up to pump gas, masking up to get out of the car, or doing math to calculate how many gallons of hand sanitizer we'd need for the journey.

Five years ago we sold our house in New Jersey and spent six weeks living with my mama before heading south. I'm sure she was ready for us to take all our stuff and get on with things, but five years later would give anything to have us back in her house for six weeks.

Six days even.
I haven't seen my mom in person since January.

While we were living with my mom our old and beloved dog died. Five years later her name is still mentioned on a fairly regular basis with an ache in our hearts and smiles on our faces.

NJ winters could easily last into summer, but this photo wasn't actually taken in August. I like it though, and it is five years old. This beautiful pup was something else and when she was gone we said we'd never have another. Letting them go is too hard and we travel too much and have too much company and blah blah blah.

About that same time Daughter1 brought a puppy into her Washington State home and now that puppy is a five year old dock diver living his best life on a Carolina lake. Go figure. And his mama is raising our two favorite boys on the other side of the world, which is something else we didn't see coming five years back.

Five years ago we moved from New Jersey to South Carolina. Not to this house, but to a cozy apartment just across the parking lot from Daughter2's cozy apartment. Those were the days!

Well maybe not really 'the days' because it wasn't a huge amount of space, and we were so anxious and excited to get this house built, but also yes it kind of really was 'the days'. Apartment living meant we didn't have to think about home maintenance and repairs, dock maintenance and repairs, boat maintenance and repairs, catching beavers before they destroy the landscaping, and a host of other assorted bits and bobs that go hand in hand with home ownership.

Then again, there were no early morning lake sunrises where the sky turns pink before your very eyes, no magical light dancing on the water, no boating to dinner, no big porches for napping and reading and enduring this weird season that in 2015 we didn't know was coming, and for that I'm grateful.

Five months may have dragged, but five years have flown.
Time is funny like that.

"The best thing about the future is it comes one day at a time." 

attributed to various speakers...true for us all

Anyang Hasseo aka Hello

Greetings from the land of the morning calm. Obviously not America-ha! I don't always write when I'm traveling, but since I've got people and dogs in my house this trip it feels okay to blog in real time-ish. I'm
alwaysusually behind here on From This Side of the Pond, so 'real time' is a relative term, but I'm determined to get some words penned before Christmas rolls around and fall happenings feel like old news.

My daughter just told me I'd probably spend the first three paragraphs explaining why I haven't written lately, and another couple talking about the flight over and by then the post would be so long I'd  feel the need to wrap it up without ever really getting to the heart of the matter, which is this-

A brand new baby boy to love.

In South Korea, which is a long way from the Palmetto State but still! He's here and he's perfectly perfect with his head full of dark hair and  the most deliciously squishy cheeks, and we are already head over heels.

His mama is a rock star y'all. Giving birth is always a bit scary, but giving birth in a country not your own where English is not the language of the day requires a heaping helping of faith, strength, and courage, and her well runs deep.

So let's talk for a minute about the trip over because my daughter knows me and she's right when she says I'll overstate it. She also knows doling out a million unnecessary details is kind of my jam, and isn't that why you read here?

The days leading up to our trip around the sun were only slightly crazy. 9,717 miles since October 2nd kind of crazy but whatever. Here's how it rolled out...

The week before we were due to fly east hubs, Daughter2 and I drove to Maryland for the wedding of a boy whose family we've known and loved since our kids were small. We spent the Friday night before the wedding with hubs sister and family, then attended the very lovely ceremony in Annapolis on Saturday. We got up at the literal crack of dawn Sunday to get Daughter2 on her flight back to South Carolina and hubs on his flight to South Dakota for a long planned pheasant hunt and me on the road for the drive further north to my mom's in NJ. I was more or less 'in the neighborhood' and believe it or not this made the most sense.

I know it all sounds nuts and it kind of was, but we tried to just take it one trip at a time, vowed to enjoy the moments as we lived them, and never allowed ourselves a look at the month in it's entirety so as not to lose our minds. We mostly succeeded.

Hubs arrived back in Maryland Thursday afternoon and hopped in the car as I buzzed the airport arrivals lane, so we could hit the highway home. We made it back to SC just before midnight, spent Friday doing laundry, unpacking, repacking, having my hair done (priorities!) and then were back up with the birds on Saturday for our flight to South Korea.

Bring on the Morning Calm please.

We were able to get a direct flight out of Atlanta and a mere 14+ hours later were in the airport in Seoul waiting on our driver for the hour and a half ride to our daughter and son-in-law's home. Easy peasy. And bonus, we beat baby boy here which was such a blessing as we were able to stay with the mancub while his mom and dad brought his brother into the world.

We're Tired. Yes with a capital T. Jet lag is for real when you're in an upside down time zone, and five days in I'm still waking up at 3 AM and nodding off at 7. But!! we're here and we're so grateful for so much.

For the miracle of new life, and for strong willed little girls who grow up to roll with whatever life brings...

For new experiences and the blessing of time...

...the way our hearts expand and grow right along with our people.

California Dreamin'

We got home late Wednesday evening after spending nearly two weeks on the west coast, and then somehow I'd scheduled a full day and evening of activity for Thursday, which meant grocery shopping and errands Friday morning so here it is Friday afternoon and I've just now finished uploading photos from two cameras onto the computer.  Hi! Come on in and see my vacation pictures!

While I'd never say that in real life, this is blog life so Hi! Come on in and see my vacation pictures!

Hubs and I are determined to see a little bit of the northwestern part of the US while my daughter and her family are living there, and decided this visit we'd drive up the Northern California Coast, follow the shoreline all the way up through Oregon, and then cut over to Tacoma for a few days with our grandson. Hey, when you're in the neighborhood, right?

Not being too familiar with the geography, the distances one can reasonably travel in a day on the coastal roads, or the best places to stop for a night, I began reading and asking questions on the Trip Advisor travel boards. Everyone there was so nice and made me feel less anxious about the fires and our chosen route. We jumped on the coastal road early and had no plans to veer into Napa this time around, so no smoke or fire issues at all on our trek north.

Pinterest was also a great resource and in fact was starting to overwhelm me when I happened upon a fantastic blog called California Through My Lens. Y'all I feel like I need to send this blogger a case of beer or a dozen roses because he had the most wonderful, easy to read, helpful posts on the exact trip we were taking.

His relaxed way of traveling fit with our own relaxed way of traveling and we followed an itinerary very much like the one he followed when he went up the coast and into Oregon. He listed mileage and the hours it took to drive those miles, his favorite stops and some he thought you could skip if you didn't have an endless amount of vacation time, he shared great places to eat that we'd likely never have run across on our own, and best of all he suggested we bring shoes that could get wet (more on that later). Thanks Josh!!

I'm going to post old-school style here with a day by day recap because I've got a lot of pictures and they need to go somewhere. Don't worry... I have a lot of words to balance it out.

Day 1. Which was really Day 2 because Day 1 was a full day of travel from South Carolina to Atlanta to San Francisco. We picked up our rental car and no we didn't opt for a convertible because it's the Pacific Northwest in October and a convertible seemed crazy
even for us. Also, we almost always rent from Hertz, but their prices were double that of Alamo so we went with Alamo and had a great customer experience from start to finish. We stayed at the Courtyard Marriott close to the airport and got on the road bright and early Day 2.

Day 2. San Francisco to Mendocino. Also this post may actually be Day 2 hour one only, because it's already so long and we haven't even gotten on the road yet. Buckle up...

We decided not to spend any time in San Francisco this trip, we've both been to the city and while we'd love to go back and linger there we opted to get on the road early and start making our way north instead. We did stop at the Golden Gate Bridge, because you've got to cross it to get out of town, and also because the sun was shining and we both had that wonderful anything is possible feeling a road trip stirs up in your soul. Road trips are my favorite.

Can you tell it was breezy? We had absolutely gorgeous weather the first five days of our trip, but you will see my hair acting a little crazy in some of our pictures. I just couldn't worry about it so decided might as well embrace it. Also can I just tell you that after 33+ years of marriage hubs has not lost hope that he can improve my sense of direction? He still insists on telling me routes and showing me maps and pointing out where the sun is in the sky until it makes my head spin. We're going north, right? Or 'up' as I like to say. That's basically all I need to know. I was happy I'd ordered honest to goodness laminated maps, the kind you can fold and unfold and hold in your hand and that allow you to see the big picture.

Seeing the big picture helps, on road trips and life in general.

The first stop we made after crossing the bridge was at the Muir Overlook. We almost missed it thanks to a detour, but initially we ignored the detour because we weren't sure it was for us. Turns out it was but if we hadn't driven up the road to check we would have missed this amazing little corner of the world.

Stunning! I will use that word many times in describing both the California and the Oregon Coastlines because it fits.

There are some old base stations here that were set up following the attack on Pearl Harbor to allow soldiers to watch for potential attacks on the San Francisco harbor. They're no longer in use of course, but interesting to see and think about.

The views here are incredible and it was the perfect start to a trip filled with the beauty of creation at every turn.

Okay, next post-Day 2 for real.