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. 

Big News out of London Today

Unless you live under a rock, which some of you might, twitter, Facebook, snapchat & every other social media I am too uncool to know about was a buzz today with the news from London, GB. Tweets, posts and "snaps" were coming in from all over the globe over the big news.

Yes, today was the day Steve & I went on our first day trip to London!

We visited the Science Museum 

Then we headed over to Covent Garden for some shopping and a quick bite:

Steve finally took to Shake Shack! It was amazing! They even have their own beer brewed for them! How cool is that? Mind you we spent $53 on 2 burgers, 2 fries and 2 beers but we were so hungry & they were so good! I highly recommend it - but maybe as just a one off treat :)

Here are a few more photos from Covent Garden - one of my favorite places in London. 

Street Performer

More performers

Next we took a short walk over to one of my favorite stores... ladies I'm sure you can guess where this is!

That's right - Kate Spade! I didn't buy anything but it was wonderful to look at see it all in person, not online :)

From there we took a quick walk to Oxford street, went into Primark, like crazy people & dropped by the food court at Selfridges. 

And in other news, Kate & William had their second baby! There is a new Princess in town:

Welcome to the new baby! Wishing the Royal family well :)

Moving Part 3

I'm sure everyone who reads this blog, all 7 of you, are on the edge of your seat waiting to read the next installment of the moving saga.

The truth is there isn't much else to say, we had one last meal with my parents and brother and took a car to the airport on a Tuesday afternoon with all 8 of our bags - that's 2 suitcase each, 2 carry-ons and 2 personal items... If you haven't figured it out yet - that's a lot of luggage! It all barely fit in the town car. After spending $300 on luggage fees (thanks delta amex) we got into the airport. The best part about flying on a Tuesday night in the international terminal is that we got through security in 10 min tops. After making a beeline to the delta lounge, where we each had one more much needed drink, we got called to our flight & boarded.

Steve would know exactly what plane we flew, but since I'm guessing non of you care, ill skip over the 9 hours flight (read couldn't sleep, watched a few OK movies and wished it would go by faster) we landed at Heathrow. Thankfully Steve had ordered a car service for us, so our 8 bags and ourselves got into a nice air conditioned mini van and drove the 35 min to Reading. We stayed at a hotel the first night because a) it was easier & b) we didn't get our apartment keys till later.

If all of this doesn't sound exhausting, both physically and mentally then I am not adequately conveying the stress this sort of move puts you through. Just before we left, sitting at my parents home in Atlanta, I just held onto my mom and cried and asked her if it was worth all the stress & second guessing & anxiety of the unknown. As she held me and reminded me of the grand adventure we were about to embark on, all I could do was cry. I don't mean a few tears, I mean a deep, heaving sobs - the kind of crying when your world has been turned on its side and all out can do is ride the wave & hope you survive. Yes - that might seem melodramatic to some of you, but I can tell you, unless you've done this, its very hard for you to even have an idea of how hard it is. Yes, we're around the corner from some of the greatest cities in the world. Yes, this is a once in a lifetime experience, but that's doesn't mean its not hard. Hard on your mind, body and soul.

That's enough soul pouring out for right now - trust me, there will be more. I haven't mentioned the washing machine or the oven yet, but there is also lots of good and funny to come as well - hot British men in my apartment carrying groceries. Need I say more?

Wordless Wednesday Food!

Beer & Magners

Fish n chips & mushy peas

$7 for a box of lucky charms!?

Pizza Express pizza

Much better fish n chips & mushy peas

Mmmm Starbucks

Sandwich 

British Mexican food aka nachos

British Mexican food burrito 

Travel Tuesday

Hello!

So here is the plan for the schedule for the blog:

Monday - anything
Tuesday - Travel Tuesday (I'll either write about a place we want to go, or if we traveled that weekend)
Wednesday - Wordless Wednesday (I'll try and keep it themed)
Thursday - anything
Friday - anything
Saturday & Sunday - I sort of hope to be to busy doing stuff to post but you never know :)

So for my first official Travel Tuesday I'm gonna finish up the moving saga.

Before we got all of our stuff packed into boxes and shipped off we had a bit of a going away party at Mellow Mushroom at Brookhaven. It was so wonderful to see all of the people we love and care about and are going to miss so much come out and see us before we left. I am super proud - I only started to cry but I didn't & if you know me that's a big deal - I am a serious crier! We got a coffee table book of Atlanta photos and asked people to sign it - still haven't read the messages in fear they will make me even more homesick :(

Here are some pictures from the party!

Everyone!

Me & Christine - we survived both SPX & GSU!

Me & Doreen, best Carter's trainer ever!

Jordan, me & Courtney AKA World Market Crew

Another really important dinner we had before we left was with my theater teacher from high school -  Bonnie Spark. She was and is like a grandma to me, in a old but not really old way. So she's more like an Aunt. Mom, Dad, Steve and I met her at her favorite restaurant in Atlanta - Violet. Side note - OMG this place is really good, expensive but if you're looking for a real dinning experience & good food for a nice date or anniversary I highly recommend this place! I hadn't seen her in a number of months so it was great to catch up with her... aka gossip like mad about people from high school. Bonnie's a sorority girl at heart, just don't tell her I said that. On a side note I did ask her to sing at the wedding in some capacity (yes she is Jewish and yes it will be a catholic wedding, but its mine and ill have a crazy NY jew sing if I like). She also filled us in on Father Dan, who is still in Atlanta and I need to find to ask if her can preform the weeding for us. Yes, its gonna be like a big Pius party but that's what I want.

So after we had packed everything we owned into storage, shipping boxes and suitcases we had one final evening with our closest friends to enjoy one last big group mean and laugh and not cry (again - no tears from me which is unheard of). We went to Taco Mac in Buford, big surprise there I am sure. We were pretty much regulars there without anyone like the staff knowing or recognizing us, that's ok. Its still kinda like our place. So the 8 of us got together and had one last meal together, which was really wonderful. It made the last night in the US happy, not sad, which I really needed because I was second guessing our decision to move at all, but seeing our closest friends be so excited and happy for us made all the difference. Here is the group photo we took that night - sorry the quality is shit, our waiter was a big supporter of 4/20 and couldn't hold the phone still (I tried to fix it). Lesson? Bring the DSLR and tripod when the photos are important!

Bryan, Laura, Andrea, Jake, Me, Michael, Steve, Matt & Rachel

Moving Part 2

Now that everything we we're going to be taking or storing wasn't sold (well almost - we have 2 large loads to take to the local goodwill & a donation of 150 lbs of food to the local food bank) we were ready to pack. Sounds easy enough - everything else is going to one of 4 places - suitcases to fly with us, storage - to sit and wait for us to return, goodwill - there's lots of little stuff left & shipping. Steve found a company which ships personal home items overseas for a reasonable price (read $1200 for 100 sq ft) which is pretty reasonable compared to some other shipping companies.

So 100 sq ft is about the equivalent of 33 medium home depot moving boxes, sounds easy enough right? Fit everything you need for the next any number of years into 33 boxes, and put them on a boat and wait 5 to 8 weeks to get them.... yes I am being super sarcastic.

So in an ideal world the house would be super organized and we would know exactly what to bring and what to leave behind. Unfortunately that's now how this went. It was more like a tornado, stuff everywhere, no origination, no going back and double checking to see if we packed what we really needed and not just stuff we thought we might like to have. It just all went into boxes, until we had way more then 33 boxes. We had golf clubs and shelves and art and computers and more clothes then we could ever where or wash and it all went into boxes. It took 3 days (not full days, but still 3 days) of packing to get it all in boxes. And after the dust settled and everything was in a box we had 2 full pallets.

Pallet 1

Pallet 2

After packing all this stuff in boxes, we loaded it all into a big box truck - that's everything we own fit in a box truck U Haul. If that's not a life altering experience I don't know what is. 

Now we were left with the task of getting the rest of our stuff into 4 large suitcases and 2 carry-ons & 2 personal items for the flight to the UK - let me tell you sir this kinda packing is an art! We even bought a scale. In the end we had one overweight bag (65 lbs for $100) and 3 50 lbs bags. Plus carry-ons weighing about 30 lbs a piece and personal items (backpack and a purse) coming in at about 35 lbs and 20 lbs respectively. 

Moving Part 1

So in full disclosure style we are actually already here in Reading, but the last 2 weeks have been CRAZY so I haven't had much time for anything, let alone blog posts. So I figured I'll just go back in time and write each step of the moving process, and at the end Ill do a final moving post about advice and "20 20 hindsight" kinda thing! Who's ready to relive the craziness? Cause you know I am :)

Lets take a look at the real basics of moving - IT SUCKS! Its one of the most stressful things you will ever do in your life. So if you think moving down the road or to the next city is stressful, think about moving to the other side of the country? Ya, you pack up all your stuff, sell the small "extra stuff" and drive across country. Sounds scary huh? Ya that's what I used to think, then I agreed to move to another country. Holy Cow! Hello STRESS!!

We started by deciding that moving overseas was a great idea! Right before thanksgiving we told our folks Steve had taken a job in the UK and we were moving! It all sounded so exciting! Moving to another country, me leaving my job. Let the madness begin!

I worked until April 3, so my health insurance would carry over until we left - that was important for last minute doctors appointments etc. I took the weekend to relax and let it sink in that we were moving to another country later that month. Monday I started to sort through the stuff as we were having a huge 3 day yard sale! I need to interject major props and kudos to our house keeper Amanda who came and helped me sort, label, tag and price (reasonably). She was amazing and I owe her a bottle of wine (I left her a few in the house so I hope that covers that debt ;) ).

Tuesday mom thought it would be fun to go and look at potential wedding venues - The Fox, The Piedmont Room, Ansley Golf Club & Rhodes Hall.

More on the venues later - I will have lots of free time to blog about wedding planning or lack there of while we are here :)

So the yard sale - sounds simple enough right? Put all the stuff you want to sell out in your garage/ yard and wait for people to stop by. Not so much - I posted everywhere, 10+ Facebook groups, craigslist and we put signs up around the neighborhood advertising this huge yard sale, starting at 9am Friday.  We opened the garage door at about 8.30 to start putting things out and low and behold we had customers wheeling and dealing at 8.40. Talk about being unprepared! We had maybe half the things out that we wanted to sell and people were bombarding us with questions.

Its a real eye opening experience - having things you spent years buying, on display in your garage with price tags for maybe 1/3 of what you paid for them - some even brand new. Its a lot harder then you would think, when someone takes a pair of shoes you remember wearing just a few times and tells you your $10 price is too high and offers you $2, when you know you spent $75+ on them. Or when someone offers you $5 on the dress you spent hour finding and picking out and haven't gotten a chance to wear because its too small and the price tag on it shows $45, its hard. It almost feels like a personal assault on you & your things. Thankfully I had my parent there to help as well as Steve & Amanda and Rachel. I know I couldn't have done it without them!

That concludes Part 1 of the Moving saga! Hopefully you enjoyed the read :)