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Jul
6
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I'm using Sun's mandatory July shutdown to catch up with various things.
For example, I've just uploaded a selection of pictures from our May / June trip to the UK. We actually took over a thousand pictures so at some point I need to weed out the best couple of hundred and delete the rest.
We didn't really do much sight-seeing in the UK - we we're mostly there to see friends and family, that said we did see a side of England we've not seen for sometime (and our kids have never seen) - that is rural Somerset. We mainly stayed with friends / family but also rented two cottages. The second and the best was Nailey Farm (just outside Bath) which was spacious, very well decked out, had stunning views and a working farm for the kids to explore.
The farm is just across the valley from St Catherines Court (an impressive pad owned by Jane Seymour which you can rent for $24k a week!!).
I guess we were lucky with the weather - the first week was crap (wet, cold and windy) the remaining two or so weeks we're absolutely stunning (by any standards).
My next job is to download and burn our video (2 tapes) onto DVD.
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Jun
6
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I'm about 2 weeks into a 3 week vacation back to the motherland (England) - we've been staying in some fantastic cottages in Wiltshire and Exmoor visiting friends and family. I haven't spent more than a couple of days in the UK in the last 4 years so this trip has been interesting. Some immediate things I have noticed that have changed are :
- Cigarette smoke - Northern California is pretty much cigarette smoke free - you rarely smell it unless you go looking; it sounds like the UK is heading the same way in the future.
- Cars have gotten smaller - nearly every manufacturer has a range of minis - mini-MPVs, mini-hatchback, mini-minis, etc. They all look pretty cool and nicely designed - I'll try and take some pictures. Contrast this to the US where cars seem to continue to get bigger (and less efficient).
- Things are expensive - this isn't just due to the weak dollar - everyone seems to complain about he price of everything. See the picture above - that's a $100 tank of petrol.
- The beer is still way better than the piss served up in the US
I have started posting pictures of our trip to Flickr (as bandwidth allows).
