Holidays in England

After my issues at the border, my time in the UK has been fairly hassle-free.
Although not surprising since the majority of my time over the past few weeks has been spent sitting on the couch at Vickey's house. Some of that time was productively spent planning the next steps in my journey, updating my resume, and searching for jobs to apply to, but I'll admit a good amount of it was spent watching TV. I am now fully up-to-date on Downton Abbey, which I hadn't watched since I lived in Wellfleet so I had 2 full seasons to catch up on. I got just as addicted as I was before so it didn't take long to watch all the episodes. :P

Other than being a couch potato, I did actually do some things. I hung out with Vickey of course, and spent several fun evenings with her coworkers and friends. Since I arrived just before Christmas, several of the events we went to involved mulled wine and mince pies, which are very popular Christmas traditions in England apparently. I also got to try Christmas pudding, which I was very excited about because I had heard about it but had pretty much no idea what it was. I still only have a vague idea of what's in it, but it's basically a fruitcake type thing that is steamed and soaked in brandy. Apparently sometimes the brandy is set on fire when it is served, but sadly ours was not. Here is a picture I took from Google of Christmas pudding:

  I really enjoyed experiencing these new-to-me English Christmas traditions, although as much as everyone raves about mince pies here I expected to like them more than I did. I liked the Christmas pudding better than mince pies, which seems to be the opposite preference to most people I talked to. I also went to a carol service with Vickey at her church which was nice, but I was surprised to learn that there are some Christmas carols in England that I've never heard before. So maybe some of our favorite carols in the U.S. are specifically American too.

On Christmas Eve, Vickey and I went to London to stay with Vickey's cousin Janeen. Then for Christmas dinner, the three of us went to Janeen's mom's house along with Janeen's brother. Dinner was also different than I am used to for Christmas because Vickey's family is West Indian, so we had West Indian food. It was delicious, and Janeen's mom, Marilyn, made everything herself. There were so many different dishes, I'm not sure if I can remember all of them, but I will give it a try. We had steak, lamb, chicken, salmon, potatoes, stuffing, and several vegetable dishes (all prepared in varied and delicious ways), and for desert we had soemthing called Billioinaire's Shortbread, if I'm remembering correctly. That was not homemade like the rest of the food but it was really good. After dinner we chatted and had an impromptu trivia competition. It was a fun Christmas, except that I had a headache most of the day.

The next few days, Vickey and I did some sightseeing in London. I had been to London before and had seen most of the top tourist attractions, so we didn't need to do those again, but there was still plenty to see. Our first day of being tourists, we went into Westminster Cathedral, walked past Westminster Abbey and through Trafalgar Square (both of which I'd seen before), walked around the Covent Garden area, and just wandered around a bit. It was raining a little, which is not unusual for London in the winter, so we didn't stay out very long that day. The next day we went to a Christmas market in Hyde Park, which reminded me a bit of Oktoberfest because everything was German themed, and it made me really miss Germany and my sister. After that we went to Harrod's, which was definitely the nicest and most crowded department store I've ever been to. Our next sightseeing day we took the tube to near London Bridge, which we just saw from a distance since we had both been there before, and strolled along the Thames River. We passed by the Globe Theater and went into the gift shop (I would have liked to see a show there but it would have been too expensive for my frugal budget), walked past St. Paul's Cathedral, got fish and chips (my number one food bucket list item for England), saw Somerset House, and finished our walk by passing through a Christmas market near the London Eye and seeing the really long line to go on it.

Here is a sampling of pictures from our sightseeing:

Westminster Cathedral. It was not as ornate on the inside as some other cathedrals I've seen, but the dark wood on the ceiling made it almost seem like it went much higher than it actually did or that the ceiling disappeared into a dark night sky, which was a cool effect. 

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Blue Rooster statue in Trafalgar Square...very random so I had to take a picture. 

Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square

It doesn't show well in this picture, but this is a phone booth turned into an ATM. 

The Shard, the tallest building in Europe

The Globe Theater

St. Paul's Cathedral

St. Paul's

The next day I decided to leave London and go back to Vickey's house because the headache that started Christmas day had been lingering for days and I just didn't feel well, and I knew that I wouldn't have the energy to go out for New Year's Even in London like we were planning. I needed time to just sleep and relax and not have to worry about doing anything, so I figured Vickey's house would be the best place for that. I also had just not been feeling great mentally or emotionally either. December was a bit of a difficult month for me because I was really starting to feel the exhaustion from traveling so much, and I had started to get homesick and spending Christmas away from home and my family made me feel that homesickness much more. So I needed to recuperate mentally as much as physically.

Over the next few days I started to feel better, and it helped that I had a low-key New Year's Eve. I just went to a pub, had a drink, chatted to a guy from New Zealand who I met there, and stayed just long enough to ring in the New Year. Then New Year's Day I felt much better than I had, and I decided that it was time to start getting a move on with my travels and to snap out of the funk I was in. I guess it was an unintentional New Year's resolution because it just happened to be that day that I decided I was going to stop dwelling on the things that were making me sad and focus on being happy. I definitely believe that a large part of happiness is just deciding to be happy (other than clearly unhappy circumstances or situations that you have no control over), because once I decided that, my mood improved drastically. I had lost sight a little bit of how lucky I am to have the opportunity to do all this traveling and how many things in my life there are to be grateful for, and once I remembered those things, I got my motivation and energy for traveling back.

So that was a week ago, and since then I have been busy looking for jobs and making travel plans. I now have an itinerary for the rest of my time in Europe and a set return date to the U.S. I arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland yesterday, and in a few days I will go to Inverness. Then I fly to Belfast, Northern Ireland, and from there I will go to Dublin and probably another as yet undecided city in Ireland. After Ireland, I'm going to Bucharest, Romania, for a few days, and then spending a week in Istanbul before flying back to the U.S. on February 11. This is about a month earlier than I was originally planning to return, but I think it is the best decision for several reasons. I am still slightly homesick and travel weary, so I think the number of places I have planned is just the right amount to not wear myself out completely, and I realized I should probably try to have some money left over when I go home so I'm not completely broke. The exchange rate with the pound is much worse than with the euro so the UK is using up my money faster than the rest of Europe did, so hopefully I can budget well enough to have a little savings left to get myself through a few months of unemployment when I get home.

This turned into a way longer post than I expected so I'll stop there. Thank you again to everyone who has been following my blog and supporting me in my journey. Hopefully I will see many of you when I get back to the U.S.!