2 posts tagged “england”

On Tuesday evening-ish we headed to Henley-on-Thames, on the recommendation of Angela.  It was an adorable little town and I kind of wish I had money to take advantage of all the cute shopping.  Mostly the rare and antique book shop.  And the boots.  Ugh!  The boots. 

We got there a little bit on the late side, having come by train from Paddington Station.  Our room was absolutely heavenly (especially after our smelly hole in London, which actually was probably a steal considering how much we paid for it).  We stayed at a place called Milsoms, which was another Angela recommendation.  It was sort of between a pub and a restaurant, like you walked through a pub and on the left was the reception area and straight ahead was this gorgeous restaurant.

Our room, and our bathroom which was up some steps from the room:

We ate at the restaurant downstairs that night, a bit pricey but totally worth it.  They catch everything in the river about a hundred yards away, or at least that's how I understood it.  Also enjoyed a whole bottle of house wine and this orange chocolate tart that was fantastic.  I forgot to take a picture of my fish until it was half eaten, and nobody wants to see that.  Well ok, you get to anyway:

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And then that night we watched a bunch of silly BBC stuff and slept SO well in our quiet little hotel room.  Next morning was breakfast at the same little restaurant:

and YES that is butter in a seashell.  A real one.

So when you walked out the door of our hotel, to the right was this view (1st picture) and a bit down the street on the left you'd hit the river:

So we walked around a bit and went to this park, which was so nice and the first quiet place we'd seen since being in the UK, really.  They had an obstacle course thingie and a big wide field with a great view of the town.  It was also the first place we'd been in days where I could set my camera timer thing and not worry about somebody grabbing it and running, so yay for pictures of both of us:

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From there we walked around a bit more, through some adorable residential areas and past a secondary school that was letting out or in or something, we couldn't quite tell, and some more shopping, and then we got back on the train and went back to London. 

That night we stayed near the airport at a really American-y hotel that had a full restaurant, a pub with pub food, a full cafe, a playground, a projector screen with the Manchester U game on, and a convenience store all in the lobby.  Some British HGTV and this awesome sort of talk-faux-quiz show with Emma Thompson and Stephen Fry, and then to sleep.  Next day we tried to blow the last of our pounds in Heathrow (which is totally not hard, btw), and then HOME! 

And that is the end.

P.S. Dane has a lot more (and some much better) pictures here. And also tons of pictures of me, including whole action sequences of me doing riveting things like putting my hair in a ponytail or reading a book or going up an escalator. 

Lately I'm just dying to travel again.  Why does it have to be so EXPENSIVE????  I guess so that people don't do it 48 weeks out of the year.  I guess. 

We recently bought our tickets to go to Britain in the spring (and possibly Ireland, not sure) so at least I have that to hang onto for dear life.  And planning that trip might be enough to tide me over until we actually go, looking at places to go and hikes (hopefully) and hostels and stuff.  I think we'll do Edinburgh, London, and possibly some other little coastal towns in England that were recommended by some friends who live there.  Can't be sure if we want to do Ireland, I've already seen so much of it and it's just a lot of time spent in transit.  We will see.

And THEN when I was looking stuff up, I also found this hiking tour that basically goes all the way around the entire coast of Cornwall, on foot.  Which my mom and I are already planning for possibly 2010. 

But I wanna go NOOOOOOW.  And something is telling me lately that my lovely husband could seriously use a trip like that right now as well.  He doesn't quite know how much, but he does. 

I'm not one of those people that thinks Europe is like infinitely unbelievably magically greater than the US, I just think it's good for the soul (or something) to be a foreigner every so often. 

Oh, and I also get to go to Ecuador in like a month!  Good thing I almost totally forgot about that.  Altogether different kind of trip, but I'm super excited about that, too.