Lake District Orientation

Well, we’ve survived our first “international” road trip to England. It was a pretty easy going 5 hour journey, except for this one little tid-bit where our GPS got us lost in Glasgow. Getting lost in a foreign city is never good for your marriage. But after some yelling, tears, and negotiations over who would get the dogs in a divorce situation, we each apologized and tried to recapture our initial road trip excitement. I set my sights on trying to capture the “Welcome to England” sign as we crossed over the border. I figured there would be plenty of hubaloo surrounding the border between these two countries, but it ended up being pretty anti-climactic, with just small roadside marker which you’d miss if you blinked. And since my i-phone camera blinked, I pretty much failed at capturing the moment.

Honestly though, I felt like as soon as we were in England, the landscape instantly changed. Gone were the pretty rolling hills and sheep dotted valleys, and instead they were replaced with scraggly flatlands. I began to panic that I planned this 5 hour car trip for scenery that wasn’t half as good as what we could find 30 minutes west of Aberdeen. It wasn’t long before the majestic mountains of Cumbria could be spotted in the distance, and my anxiety was laid to rest at the sight.

Planning a vacation to a place you’ve never been is always hard. You usually invest a lot in a trip and you don’t want to get all the way there and find that you’re staying in the wrong places, eating in the wrong restaurants, and hiking up the wrong mountains. Sometimes, I really enjoy re-visiting a place, because you get to skip ahead to the good stuff without fumbling your way through a new location and trying to get your bearings.

Planning our Lake District trip was especially hard because there are so many options. Hotel, Bed and Breakfast, Self-catering cottage? Small town, quaint village, countryside? Derentwater, Windermere, Ullswater Lake? Since I had never been there before, it was hard to pinpoint exactly what I was looking for. My interests weren’t helping me to narrow it down either. Our main goals were to stay somewhere relaxing, with good hiking, and breath-taking scenery, which is basically covered by all of the options mentioned above.

Eventually we settled on Highfield Hotel in the town of Keswick, situated on Derentwater lake. I would definitely recommend this locale for any Lake District amateurs. It’s a larger town with plenty of shopping, nightlife, and restaurants, and it’s a very easy walk down to the lake, which is honestly just about the prettiest thing I have ever seen.

There is a theater situated on the Lake and also an old-timey movie cinema in town. On the Lake, you can rent motorboats and rowboats, and there are plenty of beach areas for picnics, dog fetching, and swimming. Yes, swimming. Brits are crazy, y’all.  

Derentwater, Ullswater, and the rest of the Northern Lake District are more mountainous that the more southerly lakes. That means the hiking here is more like climbing, and a bit more challenging all around.

Jonathan and I were game for about one summit hike, and after that, our tired feet were kind of limited in our area as far as more leisurely strolling goes. After spending 2 full days in Keswick, we decided to venture out to the other lakes and towns to see what we were missing and do some research for future Lake District trips (because we are so going back again). Once you are in the region, it’s pretty easy to drive between the other areas. First we headed south to Grasmere which is rumored to be a great jumping off point for some of the best hiking.

The town itself is stinkin’ adorable. I fell in love at first sight. It’s much more quaint than Keswick, but still has adorable shops and a good selection of eating venues. The architecture is all comprised of slate buildings which just add to the English charm of the town.

I even found my dream house, which I snapped a photo of in case I ever need to show it to an architect to draw up some plans. After briefly exploring the town, we continue south to Ambleside. Ambleside is very similar to Keswick, though even bigger. It seemed like a very happening place while we were there, and full of shopping and restaurants. The town lies just north of Windermere which is the largest lake in the region. It’s a great home base to explore several of the Lake District’s many charms.

However, since it reminded me so much of Keswick, I would actually choose Keswick over Ambleside, simply because when you’re standing in Keswick, you are surrounding by mountains. Once you get a bit more south, the mountains round up and become lovely hills, and therefore aren’t as imposing and noticeable from within the town. But that’s just me being really nit-picky. You honestly can’t go wrong wherever you land in this stunning place.

On our way back to Scotland, we made one more stop to visit the lovely Ullswater lake.

The scenery surrounding this lake definitely gave Derentwater some healthy competition. The mountains were steep and rugged, the setting was otherworldly, and the towns were hardly specks along the winding country roads.

It was a very photogenic area, and we enjoyed periodically pulling off on the side of the road to snap some pictures. These pit stops also helped to curb my car sickness, since this area is a bit “off the beaten path” and therefore consists mostly of tiny mountain roads. It was also dotted with walking trails, though the 50 mph wind gusts that morning kept us confined to our car. 

After we drove around the entire lake, we decided to head back home to Scotland. And this time when we crossed the border, I was ready.

This post is just a Lake District taster. Come back throughout the week for stories of summits, mountain passes, and of course, lots and lots of farm animals.

What to do in Warsaw: Part II

I sure hope you are hankering for a history lesson today, because it’s impossible to explain the significance of the Warsaw Rising Museum and Warsaw’s beautiful Old Town without delving into the dark times of World War II.

Warsaw Rising Museum. Warsaw’s tourism district is full of museums, if that’s your thing. Since we were only there for a weekend, we only had time to visit one, and we were told it should be the Warsaw Rising Museum. This collection of artifacts pays tribute to those Polish citizens who lost their lives before, during, and after the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation during World War II. To brush you up on some world history and give you some context for the revolt, here’s a overly-simplified recap (for a more detailed version, this is a good resource).

After losing in World War I, Germany was economically and militarily crippled by the allied victors. The depressed state of the country provided a vacuum for the Facist Nazi party to gain popularity. Essentially calling Britain and France’s bluff, German leader Adolf Hitler begins to re-militarize and annexes Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. Not wanting to get into a violent conflict, the allied nations decide to appease Hitler and allow his troops to remain in these areas. However, in the months preceding WWII, Hilter signed a non-agression pact with the allied forces that Germany would not seek the annexation of further territory. Shortly after, Hilter ordered the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, resulting in the Britain and France’s declaration of war and thus World War II begins.

In the first few months, German troops executed several Polish officials. Wanting the Polish territory for themselves, and working in cooperation with Germany,   Stalin and the Soviets executed several more on the Eastern front in their march towards Germany. As the war goes on, Poland continues to be occupied by Germany and the Soviets, though the Soviets switch sides along the way to fight with the Allies.

In 1944, the Polish underground government decided to stage an Uprising against the German occupation, with the supposed support of the Soviets who were stationed less than 5 minutes flying time away. However, as the Uprising went on, the Soviets ignored the Poles plea for help. Since Russia controlled the airspace, the other Allied countries didn’t want to cause tension by swooping in to help the Polish civilians fight off the Germans. It’s widely speculated that the Soviets ignored the Polish pleas for aid in order to ensure that the Polish leadership was destroyed and the country was as weak as possible so that they could exert their communist influence on them after the War ended.

After about two months of fighting the Germans, a good portion of the Warsaw population had perished, 200,000 were sent to concentration and labor camps, and 85% of the buildings in Warsaw were in ruins. Remembering Poland’s passive yet geographically strategic role in World War II, made visiting the Warsaw Rising Museum a very emotional and somber experience for Jon and I.

First we toured outside the museum, spending a lot of time in the Memorial garden. Similar to the Vietnam memorial, the names off all the Polish citizens who died in the struggle and written out on a black wall. It’s hard to ignore the sheer numbers when glancing over the names.

On the opposite side of the wall lies a rose garden with photos and narrations taken during the Uprising. It was horrific to read about a photographed person’s role in the Uprising and then go on to read that they were killed 7 days after the picture was taken.

The Holocaust is certainly one of the most horrific events of modern history, and the German and Russian behavior towards the country of Poland is nothing short of pure evil. Yet, visiting Warsaw you got the sense that they’ve moved on. That they are optimistic and hopeful for the future. That they’ve forgiven, quite literally, their trespassers.  

After paying our respects in the garden, we headed inside. At first we thought we lucked out, because the museum is free to the public on Sundays. This turned quickly into a negative however, because when we got inside and could hardly move around for the sheer numbers of visitors.

Since we both get a bit claustrophobic in crowds, we hit the highlights on the museum quickly before making our way to the exits. Fortunately, the museum has handouts throughout explaining the different displays. We were able to gather these up and read about the Uprising from the comfort of a wide open park bench. And of course, we felt ridiculous for feeling so uncomfortable in a crowded museum when we reflected on the fact that the Polish people had to live in tortuous and overcrowded squalor for years on end.

Old Town and New Town. In order to cripple Warsaw during the 1939-1944 Occupation, the Germans targeted the historic, residential, and business center of Warsaw known as Old Town. When the Poles later revolted in the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans retaliated by leveling what was left of this medieval architecture. After the war, Old Town was meticulously rebuilt based on pre-War drawings and photographs of the area. Today it is Warsaw’s most popular tourist attraction and stands as a worthy tribute to Poland’s long pre-War history.

Walking through the winding cobblestone streets, it’s easy to imagine stepping back in time to a bygone Polish era. It’s easy to forget that you aren’t in one of the more glamorous European capitals, because this section of Warsaw is as pretty as anything I’ve seen in Paris or Rome.  

Adjacent to Old Town is what is known as New Town. In my opinion, ‘New Town’ seemed a bit less touristy and it was filled with shopping, diverse eateries, and Warsaw locals. The architecture is still true to the historic style, and we had fun exploring both neighborhoods.

I love pedestrian friendly European cities where we can just follow our noses and eat our way from one must see sight to the next. And of course, the minimum 6-8 miles of walking we clocked per day made the gelato and doughnut stops a little less guilt-ridden.

I’ve still got lots more to say about Warsaw, but I’ll save that for another day. For now, I need to conclude by giving a shout out to my honey on the 7th anniversary of his 21st birthday. Happy Birthday Jonathan! I can’t wait to celebrate it this weekend in England’s beautiful Lake District. I’m super glad that you were born 21 + 7 years ago!

What to do in Warsaw: Part I

I really struggled with putting together an itinerary for our weekend trip to Warsaw. Though I sat and stared at tourism information for hours, nothing was really jumping out at me. So my usual super-organized and planning self left for Warsaw without a real inclination for what I was about to witness.

Honestly, I think it was better that way. Yes, I usually like to know what a city has to offer so that I make sure not to miss out on anything worthwhile, but at the same time, it’s nice to wander aimlessly around a beautiful city and follow whatever whim catches your eye/nose/ear.  Warsaw is a city full of sensory information, and I’m afraid that if we had a detailed plan mapped out, we may have missed out on several memories. Over the next two days I will outline just a few of the things that we stumbled upon in Warsaw.

Parks. Warsaw is known as Europe’s greenest city due to the amount of parks and designated green spaces in the city limits. Our hotel was situated right across from the largest of these, Lazienki Krolewskie (Royal Baths). Since the park was so close to our hotel, we headed there on Saturday morning for a quick jog. I was surprised to see a ‘no dogs’ sign on the park gate, and thought that seemed rather unfriendly.

We had dinner that night with Warsaw residents and work colleagues of Jonathan's, and we asked about this restriction. Apparently, Warsaw designates between parks for recreation and parks for relaxation. Lazienki is evidently for relaxation, and not only are you not allowed to walk your dog in the park, you are also not allowed to run in it. Oops.

Sure enough, when I went back to look at the restriction signs, it seems that there is an X through a jogger. You are also not allowed to roller blade, sit on the grass, listen to music, bicycle, or do tai chi.

So what are you allowed to do in the park? Sit on a park bench and read a good book. Stroll hand in hand with your sweetheart on a sunny day. Admire amazing sculptures placed throughout the gardens.

Listen to piano concerts. Watch opera performances.

Visit a floating palace.

Feed red squirrels.

Eat gelato. Drink beer. Gaze at peacocks.

And take lots and lots of pictures.  

Over the weekend, I managed to do all of the above mentioned activities and I could see Lazienki Park becoming a favorite spot of mine if we were ever to move to Warsaw, though I’d still be bummed to have to leave my dogs behind. 

Not all of Warsaw's parks prohibit dogs. We also visited the dog friendly Saxon Gardens which is the oldest park in the city and houses the tomb of the unknown soldier. 

Eat pierogis. When I first started asking advice for our Warsaw trip, I kept hearing over and over again: “You have to try pierogis!”. It wasn’t until the day I left for my trip that I actually took the time to look up what a pierogi is. It’s basically a traditional Polish pastry stuffed with various goodies, mostly meat- though you can get vegetarian and dessert ones as well. They come boiled or baked depending on your preference. Within an hour of arriving in Poland, I was seated at a restaurant staring down my first pierogi.

This one was boiled with minced beef and cottage cheese. It was pretty delish, and what I like to classify as “soul food”. Not satisfied with just one variety, we decided to stop later in the night at this restaurant we found in Old Town in order to try some baked pierogis.

Though I preferred the baked crust to the boiled one, I made a mistake in ordering something with ‘pickle’ listed in the ingredients.

The Poles are fond of their pickles but I am not so keen and found the minimal ingredient to be a bit overpowering. And that was the end of my brief and intense love affair with pierogis.

That's all for today, but come back tomorrow for a recap on the big ticket tourist items of Old Town and the Warsaw Rising Museum. Here's a sneak peak:

Warsaw Preview

It’s been a long day of taxi rides, airports, planes, and road trips to pick our pups up from the kennel. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll have regained enough energy to recant some stories about this underrated Polish capitol. However, I am simply too tired to do justice to Warsaw tonight, so for now I’ll leave you with this sneak preview of what’s to come this week.

Spoiler alert: it involves a lot of eating junk food and strolling hand-in-hand through sun-filled parks. But also some history learning and architecture gazing as well. We even managed to make some new friends along the way. I promise to tell you all about it, but for now, I’ve got some puppy snuggling and Big Brother watching to do. Oh, and about 15 loads of laundry.

Goals

When I first told my mom about our decision to put in for an overseas assignment, she gave me this advice: Make sure you both have the same goals in doing so. Before ‘draft week’, we were asked to compile a list of the top 5 assignments Jonathan would like to be considered for. When narrowing down our list of five, we re-evaluated our goals based on each potential job location.

 Jon’s company distinguishes between ‘hard-ship’ and non-hardship locations, and a few places like Thailand or Indonesia fall somewhere in between. Depending on where a location is on that scale determines the magnitude of employee benefits. For instance, taking a job in a ‘hardship’ like Angola would include a substantial pay increase and two “Rest and Relaxation“ vacations.  Not to mention we’d have virtually no living expenses since the company pays for housing and vehicles.

Our goals for an Angolan assignment would be primarily to save enough money to pay cash for a house when we returned stateside and also to take some spectacular vacations to Europe and South Africa. Our goals for a location like Angola looked drastically different from a place like Aberdeen. 

Non-hardship expat locations like Scotland, Canada, and Australia still have their perks but are more minimal in terms of benefits. Therefore our goals while in Aberdeen are a bit less financially ambitious; mainly we hope to travel Europe and somewhere along the way, start a family.

By going Ex-pat, Jon automatically gets 4 weeks of vacation, plus every other Friday off. Scotland also has several ‘bank’ holidays which will allow for long weekend trips around the country. There is a European Airline, Ryan Air, which offers unbelievably cheap airfare. Seriously, they make Southwest look ridiculously overpriced. I looked up a round trip flight to Dublin and it was 50 pounds (roughly 80 dollars) including luggage. With several cheap, direct flights it will be easy to take 4 day trips to Paris, Rome, London, Amsterdam, etc. Europe is our oyster.

Since we don’t want to take any big trips immediately after getting to Scotland (and because there is nowhere better to be in the summer months than Scotland) we are planning on using our first few months to travel in-country. By the end of the Summer we hope to have seen the Isle of Skye (Jon’s choice) and the Orkney Isles (my choice). 

Scotland vs. Texas

Since Scotland is roughly the size of South Carolina, we should be able to accomplish these in long weekends, especially since during the summer months the sun goes down at about 10 pm allowing us plenty of time to get out of dodge on a Thursday afternoon. Other Scottish things we’d like to do this Summer are visit St. Andrews, hike part of the West Highland Way, and see the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Military Tattoo

As far as big Europe trips, it’s going to be harder to whittle those down. Europe is my travel dream and narrowing down my extensive wish list will be quite the feat. We are so grateful to be in Scotland for the next few years, but the fact is there is just not enough time to see it all, especially when you factor in trips back to the States. Jon’s highest priorities are Germany, Italy, and Skiing in the Alps (France, Switzerland, or Austria).

My biggest wants are the Brittany region of France, Portugal, and Croatia.

And Belgium.

Oh yea, and Prague. And Budapest, Istanbul, Wales, Spain, Slovenia… And the list goes on and on and on. Which must see European sights are we missing?

Starting to Hit Me

Sometimes it hits me: this is really happening.

Jonathan received his official job offer last night which will set in motion a chaotic chain reaction of events including: visa applying, house selling, house hunting, car selling, and shipment readying. For each move, we are assigned a relocation agent who guides us through every step of the process. Hopefully we will hear from them today so that we can get a move on (pun absolutely intended).  

The first order of business is applying for visas. We also both need to have a medical exam to ensure we’re fit for an international assignment. Once the doc verifies that we are healthy we can move forward with putting our house on the market.

I’m mostly anxious about setting up our Scottish vacation house hunting trip to Aberdeen. Once we have an idea of where we’ll be living, we’ll know how much furniture to bring and how much storage to expect. Also, I’d like to be able to put the house hunting dates on my calendar so that I can take care of some unfinished business in the US.

One thing on my “before we ex-patriate” bucket list is to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter so I’ve got to squeeze that in soon. Fortunately, my sister just moved 2 hours away from Orlando so I’ll also get to spend some time with her and her boys before leaving the States. I’ve been holding off on giving her definitive dates until our house hunting trip is booked, but it’s looking as though I’ll get to visit Scotland and Hogwarts within a single month of each other.

Sometimes it hits me: I am seriously blessed.

Hogwart's Castle, Orlando, FL