Say Cheese!

Adam & I took a weekend trip to Cheddar, the original birthplace of Cheddar Cheese. Adam, needless to say, was looking forward to this trip all week; maybe month.

Cheddar is a small village about an hour south from our house. According to the official village website, the population is about 5,000. I would say on a nice Saturday like the one we went on this level swells to about 7,000 and the parking lots don’t get any bigger! Things to do in Cheddar, we were told, were to go to the cheese factory (a must in our book!), rock climb (maybe, but not this weekend), tour the caves, and climb up to the lookout tower.

We started our morning at the cheese factory. This place was fascinating to me. Maybe just the cheese making process is fascinating to me. The factory still makes cheese by hand without an assembly line or large machinery. Milk is delivered at about 8am every morning from the local dairies and by 5pm, Andy the cheesemaker is loading the cheese wheels into the warehouse to mature. There is a viewing gallery where you can watch the whole process. They have a video which condenses the process from 8 hours to 20ish minutes, but they also allow you to leave and come back throughout the day so you can see various parts live.

Have I mentioned lately that this place is kinda hilly? Cheddar has a large gorge which basically runs through the village. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), it is the largest gorge in the UK. Our experience thus far has been that we climb a really steep hill – those in Abilene would call them mountains – and we complain the whole way up to the top, swearing we’ll never do this again. Then we get to the top and we see the view and we fall in love with it and we decide the hike wasn’t really that bad. So, we decided that we wanted to do a picnic lunch along the top of the gorge so we could see the valley below while we ate. So after we left the cheese factory the first time, we decided to walk up to the lookout area & see if we could picnic. After turning the corner on the sign that said “steps to lookout point” we were greeted by this:


After the 274 steps up, we were rewarded by this:


Pretty wonderful. We spread out our blanket, pulled out our sandwiches, raisins and ready salted crisps (it was just like a field trip!) and sat down to enjoy our lunch.


After lunch we climbed another 50 steps to the lookout tower. My calves really regret all of the climbing today! But just look how beautiful the view from the top.




After climbing back down all the stairs, we stopped by the cheese factory again then walked up to the cave. I wasn’t overly impressed by the cave tour. It was an audio guide with a really, really corny presenter pretending to be the cave explorer finding all the rooms of the cave. I was also a bit disappointed that there were no employees or guardrails to keep people from touching the formations within the cave, so a lot of the pretty neat areas were blackened from skin oils. One area I did like was a tunnel under some of the stalactite/stalagmite formations that you could walk under and look up to see them grow above you. Okay, so you can’t really see them grow unless you have a couple hundred thousand years to stand there & watch.


We went back to the cheese factory again. I really would have sat there all day. Well, I would have walked through the tour all day; there are free samples at the end. A word to the wise, have your water bottle ready when you try the chili cheddar. They’re not kidding when they tell you it’s hot.

We then walked through town on the way back to car. Adam snapped a few pictures of the waterfalls – he really was fascinated by them.



Oh, one last non-cheese related thing. Friday night we decided to try out our local chippy take away (that’s a fish & chip take out shop for you non-locals). We came home from work, I changed, and then we walked over to the shop. We got our meal (I had the sweet & sour chicken for anyone who thinks I might have actually eatten fish) and we started home. About half way back, the skys opened and it started pouring. I’ve decided Adam & I are officially Brits now. On a Friday night, we got take away in the rain from the fish & chip (& Chinese) shop.

What we’ve been up to

In case you’re wondering what we’ve been up to around the house, I thought I’d share a few pictures from the last two weeks. If you’re not wondering, go ahead & stop reading now because I’m going to share anyway.

If you go back a couple of posts, you’ll remember me talking about all the people who were supposed to help us move. There were three main contacts; the short-term housing group, the long-term housing group, and the group to move our (for lack of a better word) stuff. Though the location that the short-term housing people selected for us was great, but many of the other aspects we weren’t too impressed with. We all know the problems we had with the long-term housing. I really should tell you someday how Adam found this house. It’s a pretty amazing story.

So, my last hope of good service was our moving team. Our experience in Texas had gone really well. The team we had there were extremely polite and protective of our house. They took great care of our items in packing which is evidenced by no items being broken at the end of the move. We were also impressed by our Move Coordinator’s level of service and communications. She was very clear in her instructions as to what the timing of the move would be, the responsibilities that we had and what services she was going to (and did!) provide. So I had pretty high expectations for them when they scheduled our delivery for between noon and 2pm on July 12th. I went to work as usual and Adam stayed home to await the arrival of the moving lorry (we’re in England now, trucks have become lorries). About 2:15, Adam called me. The lorry hadn’t arrived. Nobody had called. Great. I called our coordinator who was also not aware of the delay. She said she would contact the crew and determine the status. She returned my call about 30 minutes later stating that there had been a delay at the first delivery of the day and the crew would arrive at our house between 4:30 and 5:00 that evening.

I need to interject a few more non-day of details here. I can drive over here. I’m not great at it and I’m pretty nervous about the whole ordeal. Adam loves driving and isn’t nearly as bothered by the whole left side of the road thing plus traffic plus bikers and walkers on their daily commute. So until September when he starts school, he has agreed to drive me to (and pick me up from!) work. I’m taking some driving lessons soon and he says I’m going to start driving with him in the car in August so I can get comfortable. But, at the moment, I’m quite happy with my personal chauffeur. Secondly, our office hours are 9am to 5:30pm. If I get to work at 8:45 it’s a ghost town. Maybe by 8:55 you’ll see people file in. And at about 5:20 you’ll start to hear the closing of laptops and at 5:40 it’s crickets all over again. It’s really quite amazing (and awesome!).

So, because I had no car and Adam couldn’t come pick me up at 5:30 if the movers were unloading or unpacking after having just arrived at 5, I decided to leave work early and work from home until they showed up. We got back to the house about 4pm. And waited. And waited. About 5:30, I received a call from the delivery driver that there had been further delays and they would be at our home in about 30 minutes. The crew finally arrived at 6:15. Not quite between noon & 2 or 4:30 & 5, but they were here! I was so excited. I grabbed my camera to take pictures of the process. Managed to get one of the opening of the crate then the battery died. Ug. So, enjoy the photo below, and imagine our new house from the pictures in the earlier house post, just with boxes in every room.


We’ve also purchased some IKEA furniture. For those not hip to the IKEA way of life, you have to assemble everything you purchase and there are no words on any of the instructions, just pictures. So you have to pay pretty close attention to what you’re doing. You might laugh at this next statement, because I would too if I hadn’t seen it myself. Adam is pretty good at this process. I love my husband so much and he is amazing at so many things. The following of detailed instructions and small inanimate objects are usually not his strengths. However, please see below for the meticulous nature of which he has undertaken his responsibility to assemble the furniture.



And nothing has fallen apart after I sat on it.

The one piece of furniture that we did bring made it too. I’d like to say we brought it over for purely sentimental reasons. I do love this piece, don’t get me wrong. It was made for me by Adam’s grandfather and I treasure his woodworking skills. But I also kinda wanted to see if the Earth’s axis would shift by bringing our coffee table across the ocean. I don’t think it did. I’m not sure. Does anything feel lighter over there?


The afore mentioned tardy moving company was most excited when I stated that the table was to be unloaded on the ground floor and not upstairs.

We’ve started unpacking and we have more paper than I will ever know what to do with. The picture below is just from 4 of the 6 kitchen boxes. None of the other rooms. I didn’t get a picture of the entire stack paper as Adam managed to take care of it all before I had a major nervous breakdown about the “unfinished” state of the house.


I posted this next picture on Facebook earlier this week with the note “We’ve hung some pictures on the walls”. To which I was quickly told that none of the items in the photo are pictures. Okay, point Deborah. I don’t know why I keep score anymore, you win every time. Like EVERY TIME. So I’d like to correct the statement. We’ve hung things on the wall with a very motivational placeholder for future things to be hung on the walls.


So that’s our last few weeks. More excitement to come!

My Day Alone in London

While Amanda was off learning how to not be a loud and obnoxious American I spent my day alone in London wondering the corridors of the Imperial War Museum. I love military history! Not the death and destruction associated with the actual event, but rather how the nature of an individual is revealed during times of peril and more over how humanity deals with conflict on a vast scale. I read a book a few years back concerning Napoleon’s Russian campaign. It described in vivid detail the struggle his soldiers faced as they battled both the opposing Russian defenders and the brutal effects a winter campaign has on a soldier far from home. The emotions those soldiers felt centuries ago are transcendent with those who have experienced conflict throughout history which is one of the reasons I believe places like the Imperial War Museum are so vital.

During my visit, I was surprised to learn that the exhibits only date back to the years leading up to WWI to present. I must admit I was hoping to see exhibits from early English history however the exhibits that were on display were very impressive.

As you approach the Museum you are greeted by two 15” naval guns which are pictured above. The guns were taken from two different battleships, the Ramillies and the Resolution, and saw service from 1915 until they were scheduled to be scrapped prior to 1968.

Upon entering, I was greeted by an array of military equipment of the WWI, WWII and Cold War Vintage. A few of my favorite pieces are pictured below. The first is a portable bomb shelter employed during the Blitz. Civil Servants who were responsible for ushering citizens to the bunkers around London could take cover in these tiny metal shells to protect themselves from shrapnel and falling debris. The second photo is of a U.S. M4 Sherman. While not as big as its German or Russian counterparts, it was by far the most reliable and versatile tank of the war. The last photo is of the P-51 Mustang. A long range fighter this aircraft essentially won the air over Europe.

While the equipment on hand was interesting, especially when the museum took the time to track down were each piece was during key moments of the respective wars they still weren’t as interesting as the actual exhibits depicting WWI, WWII, the Holocaust and 1946 to present.

After spending the first hour rambling through the military equipment, I headed towards the WWI and WWII exhibits. A lot of the information within the exhibit is covered in grade school history books. What I didn’t recall hearing about during my time in school were the battles that occurred in places like the Ottoman Empire, Siberia and across Africa during WWI. It took me about two and a half hours to work my way through both exhibits and still felt like I rushed through it a little bit. Telling Amanda this I think made her glad she’d gone to work and left me alone at the museum. Hours of military strategy are just not her style.

At this point I was beginning to feel a little peckish, so I left the Museum and walked across to The Grand Union Pub for a burger and chips. I still haven’t gotten used to English beef yet but it was one of the better burgers I have had over here.

Satisfied with my dining choice I returned to the Museum to check out the MI-5 exhibit and the Holocaust exhibit. I began with the Holocaust exhibit mainly because Amanda and I had visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. a few years ago and found it fascinating and moving and I knew that once I got into the exhibit I knew I would be there for awhile. It turns out I was right. It was around 1:30 when I entered the exhibit and three hours later it was time for me to leave so I could meet up with Amanda for dinner.

As it was the 4th of July, Amanda had found us a place that would realize what an important day it was for us. So we went to the Texas Embassy. We met quite a few people who were doing the exact same thing. Many from Oklahoma, a few from Chicago and even couple wearing SMU t-shirts. Some fajitas were just what I needed to cap off my exciting day.

And we're back

We're online again!

Lots of things to tell you about. Here's a few tid-bits to keep you entertained.

We have (some) furniture. A combination of a couple trips to IKEA, a few co-workers leaving the UK at the end of their tours and an amazing website called Freecycle has helped us get the basics at fairly reasonable prices. A note on Freecycle - it's like Craigs List (but everything is given away). People post what they want to get rid of & their post code and if you want it, you can email them & arrange a time to pick up. I'm a huge fan so far. We'll continue to look for stuff to round out furnishings as we go.

Credit cards over here have gone to "chip & pin". Every card has a microchip in it, so you put it in a machine (like a hotel room key) then type in your pin number instead of sliding it. Most places look at our US card funny, then we explain that they have to swipe it. If it's someone new, they often have to go find a manager to explain to them how to swipe a credit card. A bit annoying, but not that big of a deal. We went to Asda (Walmart) last weekend -- the sign outfront actually says ASDA / Walmart -- they refused our card. They said it's their policy not to take swipe cards. I pointed out to the cashier and both managers who came to discuss the situation with me that they had a swipe port on the key pad and they could take my card. They were undetered. We are eventually going to get a UK card, but decided to wait until we had some UK cashflow to make sure we could pay it first. I just couldn't believe that Walmart wouldn't take my US credit card! I wrote them a letter on their customer service website. They wrote back today & said that it is their policy to take both chip & pin and swipe cards. I'm going to print it out & take it with me next time we go. I'm pretty sure throwing a fit in Walmart is what gives American's bad names over here!

The weather over here has been really mild. Those of you in the 100+ record summer in Texas should come visit! Here's our 10 day forecast:



Adam has finished & submitted his scholarship application, but has gotten a bit distracted this evening by planning our vacation. I got a note at work the other day that I had to take 6 days of vacation (err...holiday) before September 30. How have I already accrued that much vacation? I've been here just over a month!

First weekend in London

I’m on a train, heading home from London. And I can get on the internet and blog here, but not at my house. Odd the way technology works sometimes.

Anyway, this is actually my second return trip from London this week. It’s tough being such a high powered executive as I am. <--That was a joke, really - I’m not that big of a deal.

Today’s trip was just there and back all in one day. Not too terribly bad really, it’s about 1:45 train ride from Bristol into London Paddington. Comparatively, it’s like driving from Fort Worth to north Plano in rush hour for work...which I have also done. The difference being that you can do things (like type a blog) while you ride which I’m sure TxDot or DPD would frown upon if I’d done on I-635.

Monday’s trip was much more entertaining, so I want to talk about it. Monday, as many of you in the US might remember, was the 4th of July. It is not really a big deal over here. I didn’t find any true Brit saying, ‘thank you for not wanting to be part of our country anymore and declaring your independence from our rules.’ Nope. Didn’t happen. There wasn’t even a story on the 10pm news about US Independence day or fireworks or hot dogs or baseball, oh I missed those things a bit on the 4th. So what did we do on the 4th? Well, PwC required me to go a training class entitled ‘Living and Working in the UK/UK Business Skills’. I renamed it. It will for now forward be called ‘How not to offend the Brits.’ Come to think of it, renaming their classes might be on the list. The irony of them sending me to a class on how to be British on American Independence Day was not lost on me. It was on many of my co-workers when I tried to explain it. Since I had to be in class all day Monday, Adam & I decided to go to London on Saturday and spend the weekend visiting the city. We knew this would be one of many trips, so we didn’t try to do too much. So the highlights. We took the train in and then the tube to our hotel. Both bits of transportation we managed to handle without getting lost or getting on the wrong train. This is a personal victory, I believe, because especially on their trains, they are not great at labelling which train is which. We stayed at the Club Quarters – Trafalgar Square. The hotel was okay. We were on a corporate rate, which made the price great especially for the location, but the trade off was this made the view from the room not so spectacular...
  
After checking in, we went to eat at St. Martins in the Fields church. They have a cafe in their crypt (incidentally called The Cáfe in the Crypt) that serves full hot meals for very reasonable prices. We had a roasted chicken thigh & leg, squash, potatoes, rice, a roll, and a coke for £7 each. Once we were fully sustained again, we headed to our walking tour. I’d read about in one of Rick Steve’s travel guides, but then also saw an advert for them at St. Martins. We took the ‘This is London!’ tour. It was billed as the highlights of the city tour which we thought was a great one to start off with. We walked along the Tower of London (which is more of a fortress than just a tower!) and saw Tower Bridge then we got to take a boat tour down the Thames and walk around the house of parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and it ended back at Trafalgar Square. It was really interesting. Definitely worth the £8. They have about 100 different tours. I could see us doing another one sometime. A barrage of photos of the sights from the walk below.

We then attempted to go to Evensong at St.Pauls Cathedral. As we walked up to the church, there were hundreds of people coming out of the church. Many dressed in much nicer clothing than Adam & I. We stood there for probably 10 minutes just waiting for some sort of interpretation as to what was going on; guessing maybe a wedding or graduation ceremony. Then we saw someone with a program and were able to ascertain that it was the ordination ceremony for new deacons in the church. Because of the ceremony, they cancelled Evensong so we didn’t get to go into the church and enjoy. We opted instead for dinner...

Sunday, we had a scone, jam & hot chocolate breakfast. It’s become our new weekend morning routine. I think it could be one of my favourites :) Then we headed for some cultural learning at the National Gallery. I’m pretty sure you could spend a week in this place and still not see everything. After about 6 hours, however, our feet were tired & we’d gotten hungry so we took a break for lunch. In the afternoon we decided to go to the National Portrait Gallery (see a theme in our tours?). A couple of interesting differences. The National Gallery pieces are there because they are painted well or are ‘classic’ pieces of art where as the National Portrait Gallery pieces are included because of who they’re of or who painted them. We took a guided tour of both museums and interestingly, the NG tour focused on how the works were created (oil paint vs tempura; canvas vs wood; fan brush vs round brush, etc) and the NPG focused more on who the people were in the painting or photograph and how they were important to British history. Even more interesting -- to me...probably not to you...you know you really can stop reading at any point when you get tired of my rambling. I digress. Even more interesting was that Adam enjoyed the NG museum better but the NPG tour whereas I was exactly the opposite. I loved hearing about the art in the NG – they talked about things that I’d never heard of & probably never would have noticed. For instance, there is a piece with some trees on the left side of the painting; a few leaves of one tree are a slightly lighter shade of green than the other leaves in the tree. Why? Because the frame that was on it for the first couple hundred years of the painting’s life covered that area. When it got reframed about 80 years ago, they could see more of the tree. First of all, I never would have noticed that there were different shades along one side of the trees and secondly, I never would have figured that out! But believe me, when you come visit, I’m going to point it out to you!

After we decided we were thoroughly cultured, we decided to go to Harrods. I referred to the store, when Adam asked what to expect, as Nordstrom’s on steroids. I still don’t think he fully comprehended what was about to occur. We walked through the £1,500 men’s dress shirts before he gained some insight as to how expensive this place actually was and why we weren’t actually going to buy anything there but I kept saying I wanted to go.

When he got tired of my window shopping (from inside the windows), I told him I wanted a picture out front of the building then we could go eat dinner. Please note the extreme excitement that he is displaying in these photos.


Monday rolled around and I went to my 'Don’t be an Ugly American' training. Things like, stand in the queue; mind the gap; don’t talk too loudly; say please and thank you alot were just a few bits of wisdom I’ve taken away from this day. Adam had a much more exciting day at the Imperial War Museum. After he’s completed his scholarship application for his MBA program, he’s allowed to tell you about it. Sorry, but the task master has commanded that he has to complete that by Monday so he’s got a few more days until he can have fun again.