Indian Summer

They are calling it our Indian Summer - the sky is suppose to shed it's gray coat & the sun is going to creep out for the next 10 days or so. Totally siked for it!

Sometimes too much gray'ness gets into your bones & makes you dreary and thats no good.

Ciao Italy!

Definitely sad to see this trip come to an end :( It was so wonderful to be in the sunshine & warmth surrounded by water. We left Saturday and spent most of all the day traveling ...2hr car ride to the airport, 2hr plane ride to Italy, 1hr bus ride to Venice, 30min water taxi to Lido, 1hr of walking up and down Lido trying to locate our hotel...phew! Sunday we seized the day - getting up and out by 9am and jumping on the water taxi to the main island. We proceeded to walk until 9pm that night - no exaggeration. We conquered Venice. Lots of old buildings & tons of people. Monday we spent the entire day at the beach sunbathing and swimming in the Adriatic sea and just stayed on Lido for dinner that night. And our last day Tuesday we spent on the beach in the afternoon and then travelled into Venice for dinner before making the trip home.

All in all it was a great mix of touring and beaching :) we took a ton of pictures - lots more in our album.

Puzzling

Kevin & I recently invested in a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle London Looking North. Call us dorks, think it's lame - but we're having a pretty good time putting it together :) Perfect thing to do on a Saturday morning when the wind & rain is at hurricane force outside.

Hot Hot

This Saturday & Sunday was the Chilli Festival at Levens Hall...so OF COURSE we had to check it out. It paled in comparison to Connecticuts Chilli Fest but nonetheless we enjoyed a bite of chilli and some samples of beer, salsas, oils, jams and a pretty awesome raspberry frozen yogurt cone. They had some live entertainment in the form of a steel drum band and a fire thrower/juggler and they opened up their gardens for the public to explore. All and all for a rainy & windy Saturday it was a good time. Few more pics in our album to check out.

West to East

Dippin my toes in the North Sea

Kevin preparing for battle at Alnwick Castle

Me battling off a dragon
Kevin & Bamburgh Castle

This past weekend we drove from the West coast to the East coast all in the matter of 3hrs! We drove to a little town called Alnwick home of several castles - one, Alnwick Castle, is still inhabited and was the castle they filmed several scenes from Harry Potter in! When we arrived on Saturday we went straight to the coast and dipped our toes in the North Sea then went to explore Alnwick Garden & Treehouse. We were lucky to have a gorgeous day which made the gardens seem even more beautiful. We stayed Saturday night in B&B and so woke up to have a made-to-order English Breakfast yummmm.... then we were off! Sunday we spent touring castles: Alnwick Castle & Bamburgh Castle. Both pretty amazing...we weren't allowed to take photographs of the insides of either castle but we got a ton of pictures of the views and the outsides of both - check out our album!

Lots-o-Waterfalls

We set off today for Ingleton, a small town about an hour away to do a Waterfall hike. A 5 mile hike and 16 pretty impressive waterfalls later - you could say we were pretty successful in doing just that. More pics in our album :)

One of the 16 waterfalls & me standing over one on a tiny, tiny bridge - yowzer!

Who says money doesn't grow on trees? This dead tree was covered in coins!!

Kite Surfing National Championship

It's held right here on little ole' Walney Island about 2 miles from our house on Earnse Beach. It was the perfect day for it...windy as heck. Here are a couple snippity snaps from it.