Travel Tuesday

So since I already covered our travel into London and its Tuesday (I started this post on Tuesday, so I sticking with it) I figured I would reveal where we are headed for our first big out of the country trip - Ireland. We are headed to Dublin at the end of May for a 3 day weekend! We are both excited, this will be Steve's first time outside of England & I will get to see my childhood nanny who lives in Ireland. We are going to Dublin so we don't have to rent a car, but in the future I want to rent a car and drive all over the country and explore castles and sites. But that will be the next trip.

My family & I went to Ireland right before we moved back to the US, so somewhere around 2000. I don't remember a whole lot, we saw the Book of Kells and mom & dad drank some Guinness, but that's about all I can remember.

We're going to try something different as far as where to stay, since its a bank holiday weekend there as well hotels are very expensive. So we keep seeing adds for Air B&B on the TV here, its like normal people who rent either a bed, a room or their entire home out for a fraction of the cost of a hotel in the same area. So Ive found a few places that will work, for about $75/night. If it goes well we can keep doing the Air B&B thing, if not its back to earning lots of Hilton points.

We took this tour company around London and loved it, so we will do the hop on hop off buss tour on Saturday to get our a good overview of the city. 

Howth is a bay just outside of Dublin, a its a part of the city that I have never seen. I'm hoping for some great sea food, beautiful views & some shopping!

What would a trip to Dublin be without going to the Guinness brewery? We got a tip from a friend to go strait to the tasting for the free beer and do the self tour backwards. Beer first? Yes please!

This is my only real memory of my previous trip to Dublin so I'm excited to take Steve to see this beautiful piece of history. Plus we get to see all the cute Irish college boys ;)

Steve is a huge scotch fan, but in Ireland we drink whisky so visiting the Jameson distillery is on our list of must sees. 

One of my favorite kinds of tours are these land & water ones so if we have time we will take one of these around Dublin. 

Platform 9 3/4

Friday night we arrived in London and needed a quick activity to fill some time before we went to dinner. One thing I had never done in London was anything Harry Potter related. When I left Europe in 2000, Harry Potter was big but not huge because the movies hadn't started (first one was in the summer of 2001). So there was little to no hype about it in the city. Obviously things have changed drastically since then, there are studio tours and walking tours and of course, platform 9 3/4.

Since it was pouring rain we grabbed a cab to Kings Cross station, about a 10 minute drive from the hotel. After walking around for about 10 minutes we found the short line where a few other HP fans were lined up to take photos with the famed wall.

Here are some of the photos we took:

Steve rocking a Gryffindor scarf

Steve on his way to Hogwarts 

After doing our obligatory Harry Potter fan photos we went to The Parcel Yard - the British pub right there at Kings Crossing station. They had excellent food and and fun atmosphere. The service was a little slow but the food was outstanding. From the appetizer to the dessert to the beer, it was an all around excellent meal!

Reading Abbey

The House Hunt

Yesterday Steve and I went and saw some potential flats (apartments) here in Reading. It was a bit of an eyeopener to say the least. Remember we currently live in a 4 bedroom 2.5bath house in Buford GA. Needless to say any apartment would be a big change for us, but nothing truly prepared us for what we saw.

Small. Tiny, Minuscule. I didn't know families could live in apartments as small as the ones we saw. But they do. Not organized, they could do with a few trips to the container store in my opinion - but who couldn't (my mother - she owns the whole thing as it is).

We're looking for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath furnished place here within walking distance to the Reading train station - its close to Steve''s office and town center (aka mall/shopping/drugstores and such). A property in a similar area/size city as close to major transport in the US probably would cost us about $100-$1300 depending on how nice it is. The places we looked at yesterday started at 1200GBP or the equivalent to $1800 & that's starting! We saw a place that was 1495GBP / month, which is $2300 a month! Can you imagine what that would get you in the US?! A small mansion in some cities. Maybe in NYC it would just be a run of the mill apartment, but that's NYC.

Reading isn't even a city - though they've petitioned a few times, so they just a town. With a population of 160,000 people it is growing everyday. The closest city size comparison would be Columbus, GA / Aurora, CO / Syracuse, NY / Winston - Salem, NC. They're all around the same size as Reading (I cited a variety of cities based on potential locations of readers of the blog - aka friends and family).

Our favorite place is 1295GBP which equates to $2000/month. Now that does include furnishings, aka beds, dressers, tables, chairs, things like that. But it doesn't cover council tax ($230/month) or utilities. Its available in mid march so we are hoping we can get the go ahead and speak to the landlord to try and work something out (fingers crossed!). We saw a few others for about the same amount, also really close to town but they weren't as nice.

Unfortunately if we don't get one of the ones we saw we may have to fly over again to look at places before we go or stay in a hotel when we move till we find something we like. Judging by our current hotel room we would last maybe 3 days. We would have all of our luggage (5-8 suitcases a piece) with  the things we brought over with us.

All Things UK

Its been a long time since the US split from the UK to become its own country. You would think we would have more in common with our friends across the pond then just language. This expat is here to tell you that's not really the case.

Starting with something super basic- Doors! In the US we pull open 90% of the doors we go into. Shops, super markets, salons, most of them have pull doors. Here they're all push! I stand out as is being an American but when I can't even get a door open... the looks of pity are astounding!

Starbucks is different and not in a yummy, the coffee is all fair trade (maybe it is, I haven't been to one) but here in the UK they don't pay taxes!!! What?! That's crazy! So aside from a mug or 6 we will be going elsewhere for our coffee fix - which might be hard considering in Reading alone there are 6!!!! That's more per square mile then a lot of bigger cities!

Smoking! Everyone does it, outside, on the streets. Its weird! Ive not seen this many people smoking at once since I was at the bars in college!

Walking! Everyone here walks, which is nice. Its a super walkable town center - very hard to get used to for a girl who LIVES in her car - driving everywhere. My legs are so sore from just yesterday - tho I did walk 6.3 miles! But those walkers are rude! They just bump into you, they never apologize for hitting you with their bag, nothing. That's defiantly something to get used to.

I'm headed off to explore more of the city today. Wish me luck!

So Much Travel

It's 9.30am here in the UK. That means in GA its 4.30am.... It's also 10.30 in Belgium and 1.30am in AZ. Hello jet lag! It actually wasn't that bad now that we survived it. So from being up at 8am Saturday, our 8 hour flight here and staying awake all of yesterday we were going for 31 hours with no real rest and only 1 cup of coffee. Just call me super woman! Just don't tell my dentist or my optometrist - yuck!

Now that we've had a walk around town, Steve has found his office & 4 Starbucks within a 5 minute walk from the hotel we're starting to feel normal. Mind you we did go to bed last night at 8.30 our time, 3.30 GA time!

Can I just tell y'all how small our hotel room is! Its MAYBE 30 sq ft! The toilet is separate from the shower/bath and the closet is maybe 2 ft wide! The bed is like a rock and the two measly pillows they gave us are awful. I typically don't complain about hotels but I am kicking myself because it has terrible YELP reviews & now I know why. Hopefully my back won't kill me after a week of staying here.

Last night Steve wanted a beet so we popped into a local pub. Now I don't mean like the Americanized "British pub". I'm talking low ceilings, mismatched chairs, 5 beers on tap and no menu. As soon as we walked in everyone was sating at us & not in a friendly way. In a "who the hell...?" kinda way. Well Steve sauntered up to the bar and ordered himself a cider and myself a beer. Then he handed the guy an American Express. Que face palm! D'oh! The guy had no idea what it even was! And of course we didn't have cash. So we trudged to a nearby ATM and got cash. Not sure Ive ever drank a pint that fast! Plus we paid $17 for 2 beers!