Photos from 2015!

Hey friends and family!

For those of you who wondered, I finally got the rest of our photos from our 2015 trip uploaded! You can now find them in our Photo Albums link area: Pai Thailand, Chiang Mai part 2, Vietnam, and Japan.

Enjoy, and apologies for the extremely long delay! Wouldja believe me if I said it's been an extremely busy year?

Back Home Again

Phew! It was so busy at the end of our London & England trip, that I am now writing the last post for the trip from Eugene.

We stayed with an absolutely lovely Hungarian couple in Basingstoke. Thank you to Emese and Bence for a super warm welcome and visit, despite the fact that they had just moved to their new apartment in the last 2 weeks! They are amazing people.

From Basingstoke, we drove up to the Cotswolds area on Friday the 25th. The weather was incredibly beautiful - blue sky with not a cloud in sight. We were lucky! We stopped in the lovely little towns of Bibury and Lower Slaughter, then finished our daytrip in Chipping Campden in the north.

One of the things that always is difficult when traveling - it takes forever to get places! We left by about 10:30am from Basingstoke, and we barely reached Chipping Campden before sunset at 4pm. Of course, we did take a nice long walk along a public footpath & bridleway in Bibury. I would love to go back and just do a trip hiking from town to town on the footpaths.

The town of Chipping Campden was particularly lovely. There are still houses with preserved thatched roofs, which I was delighted to see. The town is also the birthplace of the Arts & Crafts movement. One artisan shop is still going strong - Harts Silversmiths, which still lets visitors come right in to the workshop area. It was really amazing to see a working silversmith shop - so many tools and so much work!

From Basingstoke, we drove to return the car back to the Redhill car rental on Saturday the 26th. Then a long series of buses and subways (the train was undergoing strikes - whoops!) up into London, where we had an AirBnB booked near to Heathrow airport. We planned to load our bags down with chocolate and other treats, so a close hop on the subway to get to the airport was perfect.

Monday the 28th, we found our chocolate to take home at a nearby Lidl (after much searching!). And, we also found a whole leg of prosciutto! I am looking forward to slicing that up soon.

That afternoon, we had a last chance to do some sightseeing. We walked past St. Paul's Cathedral, then over the Millenium Bridge to Globe Theatre. And a final stop at a lovely knit and hand-dye shop, before we took the subway back.

All in all, a great trip! London is an incredible, though massive, city. Check out our photo album of the trip! Thanks all for reading. Cheers, and toodle-oo!

Not in London!

Ok, sorry it's been a few days since I updated this. But we've been having so much fun and have been so busy, I haven't had time! Truly.

We spent another great day in London and visited the Tower of London, looked around jewelry stores, fought the Christmas crowds in Soho and on Oxford Circle, and toured the beautiful old department store, the Liberty London. The Tower was really great - I had visited as a child, but I mostly remembered the gigantic jewels and the ravens. It was fun to re-visit as an adult and to really dig into the history. The Royal Mint museum in particular was fascinating.

We are now in Reigate, a lovely town south of London by about an hour. Our hosts here were Karla and Javi, and we had a wonderful time visiting with them. Yesterday we went down to the city of Brighton for the day.

This is way too short, but I'm out of time for now. We're picking up a rental car soon to drive to our next destination, Basingstoke, to visit and stay with a couple there. The next few days we will get a chance to do some countryside touring, which will be fun. Off we go!

In London!

In case you were wondering, we made it to London! Devlin was here for a week before I arrived on Friday, working working working. He picked me up at the airport, and we enjoyed a luxurious cappuccino and pain au chocolat once I had made it out past baggage pickup and passport check (long lines!).

We are now having a great time with a new Couchsurfer friend and host, Kam. It has been a great two days - and only 2 so far!. Yesterday we did some sightseeing at Westminster and Soho, walked through the National Gallery, and saw Buckingham Palace lit up at night with the Queen's flag flying from the central flagpole. (Means she's home in there, somewhere).  And lastly some really delicious Indian food at The Regency Club in Queensbury.

Today we had fun going with Kam and his two friends to a lake with a man-made beach, at Ruislip Lido. It was a lovely walk in the woods, which are so much like Oregon's, and then we warmed up with a cup of hot broth soup. Yum! After, Kam took us to the Sikh Gurdwara temple, which is the largest temple of its type outside of India. It was an incredible experience.

Tonight we've been invited by Kam to a charity benefit. It's a showing of a new short film which tells the story of farmers' suicides in India. I'll have more information to share about that event soon.

More updates and pictures to come! Stay tuned, cheers from London,
Tamara