Southport

This weekend I took a quick trainride up to the town of Southport.  I originally had tickets to a vintage fashion fair in Liverpool but decided against it for 2 reasons.  1) I had spent parts of the last 2 weekends in Liverpool and wanted someplace new and 2) 3 giant 30ft dolls were parading around Liverpool in memory of 100years since the titanic sunk.  They were expecting a quarter of a million people over the weekend so I decided to skip the massive crowds and head for the quainter towns. 

Liverpool docs with 1 of the 30ft giants

Southport Pier

When I looked up the town of Southport, I found that it had one of the oldest piers in England.   But when I arrived the pier didn’t look that old, but it was EXTREMELY long.  I would say it was easily a ½ a mile long and the wind was so cold off the sea that I couldn’t even bring myself to walk to the very edge of it.  For every step I took forward, I felt like I was pushed back 2 from the wind.  Thankfully it was sunny out, the weather had called for rain all day so I was so happy they were wrong.  Once I walked down the pier and back, I toured around the gardens and a bunch of the streets.  You could tell the town had its hay-day in the 50’s. A lot of the buildings looked like they were from that era and while some had been renovated, others look like they had seen some better days.  Oddly enough, walking down the high street reminded me a lot of Georgetown in DC.  The old brick buildings with pretty awnings; it made me feel like I was back in the states.  That is until someone talked to me J 

Alleyway to the HighStreet

I walked up and down the high street (that’s what Englanders call the main street with all of the shops) taking pictures.  Im sure everyone knew I was a tourist!!  There wasn’t a lot to do in the town but I think during the summer months it is a lot more crowded.  I did manage to get in a little shopping as well but I was good and not of it was for me.  I cant stop buying kids clothes for my nephew and now for my girlfriends daughter Grace.  They are just too freaking cute!!  Don’t worry, I don’t want one of my own yet.  Around 5pm, I took a train back to Chester and enjoyed the scenery.  I tried to take a picture of the golfers on the golf course but it was too blurry.  It was so amazing to see the number of people out on the greens even though it was so windy.  I have figured out that every time the sun is out, every single person living in the UK is outside.  Guess that makes sense since today it was cloudy, rainy and so ugly! 

Wanted to sneak into this garden

I am heading home on Friday and I cant wait.  I just got off the phone with my boss and he has asked me to stay an additional week now, so I will be home for 3 weeks!!!!!!!!  I am absolutely ecstatic.  More time in a bed where my feet don’t hang off the edge.  Oh yea and aaron too.  Lets just hope Rob (UK boss) will be OK with me coming in for a day when I return then taking another 5 days off for my parents visit. 

Well this will be my last post for the next 3 weeks.  Sorry its so boring but i don’t have a lot to tell. 

Oh yea, I did curb my shopping appetite this evening with a trip to TKMaxx (identical to our TJMaxx).  Im not much of a digger when it comes to shopping but I have been doing so much online shopping that I was desperate for any sort of shopping.  The shops on the high street close at 5:30 so it was my only option to touch real clothes.  I was good though, I picked up a top, pair of shorts, a dress, a belt and shoes for £75.  I was proud and am now so excited to go back to Houston to wear them.  Its all summer stuff so I cant wear it yet.  Yay for hot and humid Houston!! 

See you guys soon! 

Two tickets

Two tickets to what you ask. 

To paradise?  Nope 

To the Olympics?   Nope (well I do actually but that’s a different subject)

To a great musical?  Nope

Two traffic tickets - yes!!!!!

Yes, you read correctly, I have lived in England for less than 2 months and I now have two traffic tickets.  Since I have been here for 2 months, I wish I could say that I received one per month even though those would still be really bad odds.  No, I received two tickets in the span of two weeks.  Seems to be that 2 is not my lucky number.  I am sure you are wondering what on earth I did to receive two tickets. 

Well both tickets were mailed to me so I couldn’t plead my case of being the dumb American to a cop L  Instead the wonderful country of England has wonderful traffic cameras that they place all over motorways, city roads and roads through the small towns.  Stupid traffic cameras.  I will say they do warn you though; they put up traffic sign of a camera giving you a warning of the cameras.  That’s better than the red light cameras where you get no warning. 

The first one I got was for driving in a bus lane while leaving Oxford.  I didn’t even know I was driving in a freaking bus lane; I was just following what the GPS lady told me.  The ticket was for £30 if I paid it in the next 14 days, £60 if paid after that.  But the best part about this ticket, not only did I get a pretty picture of myself driving the car but I also got a letter from Avis, who we rented the car from, saying they were charging me a £30 administrative fee for telling the city of Oxford it was me driving the car.  Really Avis, £30 administrative fee?!?!  Needless to say, that was not a pleasant evening for me.  I will say that I have a great coworker and friend.  David, who was driving with me at the time, shared the ticket cost with me even after I told him he didn’t have to.  That’s a good friend. 

Now for the second ticket, I sort of thought this one was coming.  After dropping Aaron off at the airport the other weekend, I was making my way back into the city limits of Chester when I looked up to see the speed limit sign of 30mph.  (Side note: the speed limits are in mph, the car speedometers are in mph and the street sign distances are in miles but yet everything else is the metric system, so odd!!).  As soon as I saw the 30mph sign, I looked down at my speedometer to see how fast I was going, saw I was over and started to slow down.  As soon as I looked back up, I saw the wonderful light in my rearview mirror, the flashing light of a speed camera.  I do think I jinxed myself on this one though because the night before I had told Aaron that I was a little afraid that we were going to get a ticket from the cameras from driving through Wales.  There were one or two areas where he was going above the speed limit in small towns or around construction areas.  No ticket for Aaron though!  When the ticket arrived earlier this week, it said I was going 37mph in a 30mph zone.  I was amazed when I heard this.  I could not believe I had just gotten a ticket for 7mph over!!!  Apparently, if I was doing 5mph over, I would have been fine.  So my boss and I read the fine print and it looks like this ticket will be £60 and 3 points on my license.  Since I don’t have a UK license for them to apply the points to, the letter said something about going to court.  We aren’t sure if I personally have to go to court or just the ticket will be taken and I will have to write a letter saying im guilty.  Let’s hope it’s the latter cause I really don’t want to go to court for 7mph over. 

Now I am paranoid about getting another speeding ticket and am constantly looking for speed limit signs.  Let’s just hope these will be my last two tickets during this trip! 

One more thing, for those of you that live in Houston, I will be home next Friday night. My boss is letting me stay for 2 weeks instead of one!  The weekend of Cinco de Mayo I will be in Nashville for Karens bachlorette party but I still expect lots of happy hours while im home :)   

48 hours!

Hello all!  Its been a whirlwind weekend and im going to try to sum it all up but not in a novel.  As you may know, Aaron came to visit me this weekend.  Unfortunately due to his work, he could only take Thursday off (he had Friday as a holiday) so it worked out that he had about 48 hours to spend with me in England.  Thursday he flew to Newark and then was supposed to leave at 7:30pm from Newark to arrive at Manchester at 7:30am Friday morning.  Needless to say, that didn’t happen L  His flight from Newark was late leaving by 2 hours because they couldn’t get the plane across the airport even though United’s website said the plane had been at the airport since 1pm.  After finally leaving and being in the air for an hour, the pilot came on and said they were turning around and heading back to Boston for a medical emergency.  Now when I think of a medical emergency, I think of life or death and the person is extremely sick.  Not a person that gets off the plane on their own accord and smiling, which is what this woman did!!  They spent the next 2 hours at the Boston airport waiting to take off again.  Finally, aaron arrived around 1pm into Manchester, 5 hours late.  I was extremely pissed at United at first but I had to get over it and just be thankful he was here. 

Our original plan was to head to Liverpool so he could see the beatles museum and then head to the coast of Wales where we had a bed and breakfast reserved.  We skipped Liverpool and headed straight to wales.  I have to say I was pretty excited to have a car because the drives through the countryside were absolutely breathtaking.  We first made a stop in the town of Conwy to see their castle.  I had already been so I knew it was beautiful and figured a 10 minute detour would be good for Aaron.  Conwy is on the north end of England, next to the Irish sea.  We didn’t stay long, just enough to snap a few pictures since the Castle was already closed for the day. 

We then headed to the town of Caernarfon (your guess is as good as mine as to how to pronounce it) which is on the west side of Wales, bordering the Irish sea as well.  The town is quite small but it was so beautiful.  When we pulled up to our B&B, it reminded me of rainbow row in San Fran because the homes were all painted different colors.  And to say the streets were narrow is a major understatement!!  It took both of us to drive, one person steering and one person checking to make sure the car wasn’t going to hit the walls or other cars.  Friday night we walked around the town for a second and made a pit stop in a local pub that was built in the 1500s.  We tried a few local brews and they were quite delicious.  I wish there were cask ales back in the States, they taste so much better than our beer.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cask_ale -> Click on the link to see that they are totally different than the US keg beer.  After the pub stop, we made our way to a cute little Italian restaurant for dinner then headed home to pass out. 

Saturday morning Aaron was super jet lagged so we took it easy with a quick stroll around the town and the castle. The tower we climbed up had amazing views of the town, the sea and the countryside.  3 views from 1 spot – doesn’t get much better than that!  We didn’t have long in the town before we had to head out to make our train journey in Snowdonia National Forest.  I had booked us tickets for a train ride up Mount Snowdon which is the highest mountain in England/Wales.  

It was a bit of a fiasco getting there.  The GPS took us to one location that just didn’t look right.  While it had a train station, nothing said “Snowdonia Mountain Railway” which is what our tickets said.  When I found a guy to ask, he said we were in the wrong spot but it was a 10 minute walk.  Of course, it was 1145 and our train was at noon so we hopped back in the car and pulled into the correct parking lot to grab the last parking space (whew).  We ran across the street to grab the train only to find a line of 25 people waiting for the ticket counter.  I knew if we waited in line, we were not making the train.  I had to plead my case to a few people (and cut in front of the 25 people) before finally getting the tickets and getting on the train just in time.  The train wasn’t going up to the summit because of the weather but it was still a neat little journey.  The train car holds about 40 people and its not very fast but it gave us time to enjoy the scenery.  There was still snow on the ground and the farther up we climbed, the less we could see because of the dense fog.  By time we made it to the ¾ mark where we were stopping, you couldn’t see more than 15 feet in front of you because of the fog and clouds.  Little bummed we couldn’t see the whole mountain (I was told the views are awesome) but it also gave it that true “English feel” with rainy, foggy weather.  Lots of people were hiking up the mountain which they said could take 5-6 hours to hike up and back but im glad we didn’t as most everyone had serious hiking gear on.  

After the train ride, we headed to Liverpool so Aaron could make a pit stop at the Beatles gift shop and to the Cavern, a replica of the Beatles hangout.  I showed him around the town and we did a little shopping before heading home.  Saturday night we fixed our craving for Indian food and then passed out after feeling as if we needed to be rolled out.  Next thing you know, I was taking Aaron to the airport for his 9:30am flight Sunday Morning.  Its crazy to think I had less than 48 hours with him, and he spent more time on airplanes and in airports than he did with me but I was so grateful for him to come!! 

I keep telling myself that this is a once in a lifetime experience but I miss Aaron, my friends and my family like crazy!! I just have to remember to make the most of it and figure out where im going next weekend J  

A New Car

I bought a car!!!  Well technically I didn’t buy it, BakerRisk (my company) bought it.  But hopefully come Thursday it will be mine to drive around.  Before I left for the UK, my boss and I had discussed how I would get around over here.  He brought up the idea of buying a used car and got it approved by all of the big wigs.  Some of you may be thinking, why on earth do I need a car over here?!  Well I don’t need it on a daily basis but it is nice to have if I want to go places on the weekends.  Or if its pouring down rain outside and I don’t want to walk to the gym.  Right now, I have a rental car from the weekend and it was raining this morning and this afternoon when I went to the gym so it was quite nice not to be poured on while walking home. 

And what kind of car you ask…It’s a Voxhaul Corsa.  Im excited that it’s a car you cant get in the US and it’s a pretty small car which is great for trying to parallel park or getting around on the narrow roads.  Rob (the UK manager) and I went car searching last week and went to a couple dealerships.  The goal was a used car for under £6000.  We found out quickly that was harder than it sounds.  We first went to a Ford dealership and test drove a Ford Fiesta.  Man that thing was pathetic on the inside.  It felt so cheap and tinny that I was so thankful when Rob said he didn’t like it either.  We went to the Voxhaul/Chevy dealer next and found two cute little Corsas.  One was a Silver ’08 with a manual transmission and the second was a sky blue ’07 with a semi-automatic transmission.  Semi-automatic being it doesn’t have a clutch but you can shift up and down if you want a more fun or just put it in automatic mode and drive.  We test drove the automatic and it seemed quite nice!  After thinking about it, we figured that less than half of the people that would be coming over here could drive a manual.  Rob gave the approval and we decided that we would wait until Bill (my boss) came in over the weekend to get his approval.  He came in on Saturday, gave it a test drive and we bought it Saturday afternoon.  I just have to wait for all the paper work to go through but hopefully I will have a car on Thursday afternoon.

Now to the next big piece of my life….im going to try to become a vegetarian.  When Bill was in town on Saturday, we spent a good amount of time talking about a new book he read called the China Study.  Its all about eating habits of the different classes in China.  It found that those who were in poverty had typical diseases associated poverty.  People who had minimal funds and lived off the fruits, grains and vegetables of their land were very healthy, small amounts of cancer, heart disease, etc.  Finally, people  who had loads of money and could afford all sorts of meats had high levels of cancers and diseases.  I havent read the book yet but after doing some small research, I have decided to try being a vegetarian.   We will see how long it lasts since I have to make sure I get enough protein in my diet but im at least going to try it for a week.  I just need to find good vegetarian recipes.  If anyone has any suggestions, id love to hear them!! 

I made my first veggie meal tonight and it was pretty good.  It had lentils, onions, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach and an indian dahl sauce.  It was pretty good for me making some substituions (didnt have veggie stock so i used water).  I did almost kill myself cutting up the red chili peppers since i rubbed my nose and thought my face was going to fall off.  Overall, I was pretty impressed with myself though!   

Well that’s it for me for now, im going to go yell at my neighbors to turn down their bass and then head to bed.