Visit to the "homeland", 20-Oct to 2-Nov

Chris and I flew to England on 20-October to visit our family and to catch up with friends. This was officially my FIRST proper vacation, "proper" defined as a 2 week break from work. It was slightly confusing to my system, "what, we're not going to work and live here for a couple of years, huh??"

It was a fabulous visit and very busy for 12 days:

• Vancouver to Manchester - 9 hour flight
• Manchester to Birmingham - 2 hour drive in nasty traffic
• B'ham to Yorkshire - 2 hour drive
• B'ham to Glasgow - 45 minute flight
• Glasgow to Fort William - 3 hour drive
• Glasgow to London - 1 hour 15 minute flight (except that we were early due to fabulous Scottish tail wind!)
• Healthrow to Walthamstow - 2 hour tube journey
• London to B'ham - 2 hour train ride
• B'ham to Manchester - 1 hour 15 minutes (little traffic at 5am!)

We stayed with Mum & Barry in Birmingham (they recently sold their house in London and moved closer to their first grandchild!) we were only 10 minutes away from Kevin (Chris' brother), his wife, Jenny and Joseph (our 11 month old nephew). Rob, Chris' close friend was also visiting family in England and took the train to B'ham to visit with us. Unfortunately, we missed Rob's wife, Anouk and their daughter, Zoe as they were back home in the Netherlands, as Anouk is 8 months pregnant! We met Rob in B'ham the night that we flew in and had a good chat at the pub and later over dinner at Wagamamas (Yummy noodles!). Needless to say we crashed than evening after having been awake for almost 32 hours.

Dad & Lyn drove up from London to visit with us for a couple of days as well. Chris celebrated his birthday the day after we arrived and we all went out to the carvery for dinner. Now the carvery was an experience in itself - it's like a Sunday dinner buffet. I was the last to walk up to the buffet and when I got there the chef looked at me and asked "Are you the vegetarian?" like, "lady, what are you doing here?? We said farwell to Rob that night and dropped him off at the train station, so that he could start making his way back to the Netherlands.

We spent the next day in town at the popular shopping centre called the "Bullring" except that it was an absolute madhouse as the schools were out for mid-term break. We made our way over to Kevin & Jennys' house to meet up with Dad & Lyn. We all had a great evening over beer & a curry dinner....I think that Chris is still licking his lips in memory of his chicken tikka masala (like many other things, it's not the same in Canada!). Dad & Lyn left early the next morning to return to London.

Kevin, Jenny & Joe drove us out to visit Jennys' family who live in Yorkshire. We enjoyed a lovely lunch with Jennys' parents, Jill & Pete and her brother, Simon.

We flew out to Glasgow the next morning, except that there was no one to meet us at the other end.....Duncan decided to show up after we'd had him paged:-) Pam was stuck at work so we went out for lunch(beer), visited the newly renovated Kelvingrove museum (no beer) and finally landed in the pub(more beer) where Pam joined us in the evening. We made our way back to their flat where Duncan prepared a traditional Scottish feast of Haggis (there was veggie too, thank goodness because the meat variety had lambs liver and lambs lungs!), neeps (turnips)and tatties. The next morning we jumped in the car and drove to Fort William (3 hours north to the highlands). It was a rainy day but the drive was gorgeous on the narrow windy roads with the fall colors, purple heather, the hills and the vibrant green grass, the small pockets of sunshine and rainbows.....truth be told it made us a bit homesick for Scotland! We enjoyed a stop over in Glen Coe at the pub (beer) and played pool while warming ourselves next to the coal burning stove. We finally made it to Fort William and our posh B & B, it was lovely but we dropped our luggage and went on the search for beer (surprised?) and dinner. We topped the evening off in Pam & Duncan's room with a bottle of red, cadbury's chocolate and the Jonathan Ross show. In the morning, the boy's enjoyed a full Scottish breakfast (meat, meat, eggs, meat, toast, meat) while Pam and I raided the fruit bowl and the yogurt dish! We went for a walk in the rain and packed up the car for our return journey to Glasgow.
To be continued.....(come on only my mother can write copious amounts at one sitting!)