London to Seattle

The last week has been a bit of a whirlwind. Our last few days in Scotland were spent in Glen Coe (where we finally caved and got a B&B for a couple of days - glorious!) then a night of camping in Loch Lomond (it's all about balance). Lots more beautiful valleys and mountains and lochs but many more tourists than we'd been seeing before so I still prefer the remoteness of the north highlands.

We then stayed at a cool little hostel on the southern end of the Yorkshire Dales and spent part of the next day in York, mostly at the York Minster, the largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. It was pretty amazing and just oozing with history. Sadly we didn't have much time to explore the city as we had to hit the road to get down to Oxford, home of the most expensive hostel on the planet. Oh, there's a university there as well. I actually really loved exploring Oxford. It's a really beautiful town, and all the colleges are designed inwards so it leaves the onlooker constantly curious as to what life is like inside those walls. I did tour a couple of the colleges... Magdalen, Pembroke (alma matres of Eugenie and Nici respectively) and of course Christ Church with the big famous cathedral and formal dining hall. All in all a really cool day, and we had eaten at the Eagle and Child for dinner the night before, the pub where C.S. Lewis and Tokien would meet to banter ideas about back in the 40s and 50s.

The next day was our last day to get lost trying to find highways and once again we fufilled that expectation in spades, but finally made it to Heathrow and dropped off the little Ford Escort. Some quick calculations came back with a total of about 2400 miles driven in 2 weeks. Needless to say I was very happy to be trading in the keys for a bus ride!

I got lucky on Thursday and was able to spend all afternoon leisurely having lunch and coffee (the traditional burrito and flat white!) with Nici due to a power outage at work. Then, despite said power outage that should've sent everyone home, I had a wonderful gaggle of friends show up for my "hello again goodbye" drinks dinner drinks night. It was a really really fun night and it was quite hard saying goodbye to everyone. Thanks to all those reading who were able to come out that night!

Up stupidly early the next morning to catch my flight back to the states. The first leg to LA was as pleasant as an 11-hour flight in coach class could be. My flight from LA to Seattle took off right as the sun was going down. I was on the left-hand side of the plane so I was treated to 2 hours of amazing sunset. The horizon was a beautiful blend of deep red, orange and yellow to dark blue that slowly got deeper and deeper over the flight and finally got dark as we were approaching Seattle. Perfect timing and a fitting end to a long journey back to Seattle!

It's wonderful being back. I spent the weekend playing in the sun with my adorable little 2-year old niece, eating plums and pears out of my brothers mini-orchard in the back yard and generally just enjoying the idea of not going anywhere anytime soon. On that note, this will probably be my last post for a while. I promise to pick it up again when I start traveling again, or if anything exciting happens in the meantime!

Until next time, peace and hugs!