What We Did Last Summer

A little B&B in Porlock

Now that summer has officially ended and we are back at school in Bratislava, we can tackle the age-old first-day-of-school assignment--"Write an essay about what you did last summer."  We kept busy.  First, we met friends in England to tour around and stay in quaint little bed and breakfast places; visited parish churches;

braved the wilds of Exmoor and the fearsome Exmoor ponies;

 

Asthall Manor

relocated to Oxfordshire while scoping out our future home, meanwhile staying in another small B&B; and finally took in the "Oxford Experience" at Oxford University in Christ Church College, where we

Tom's Tower, Christ Church

learned about English cathedrals and Shakespeare, Alice Liddell and the Jabberwock, and Harry Potter.

Wells Cathedral

The Globe Theater, London

 

The "Jabberwock" Tree

The Hall (dining)

Off, then, to the United States, specifically Virginia, where we celebrated the marriage of our eldest daughter and her husband and rejoiced with Flounder, her eldest cat;

 thence to Colorado, where we hiked (walked?) in Rocky Mountain National Park with our youngest daughter and her husband, and went to the county fair with Paula's brother and his family;

4-H barrel racing!

 and then to Boston where we visited our middle daughter and trekked (well, drove) to Concord, Massachusetts to see both Orchard House where the Alcotts lived and Walden Pond, the site of Henry David Thoreau's cabin.

Orchard House

Thoreau's cabin site on Walden Pond

All in all, we had a great time, leading to all of those semicolons and dashes.  We send a big thank-you to all of the people who put up with us.  Once again we proved the old adage to be correct--too many places, too little time. Slovakia and Central Europe beckon us.  We would go back to Oxford and the UK again.  We have seen too few places in our own country.  And then there are all of those places the New York Times tells us about.  Sigh.  Satch, you're right--what a wonderful world!

Since we've returned, we've started a new school year, renewed acquaintances with students and teachers, met new students and teachers, had a visit from friends from Virginia and went with them to Prague, and started a new concert season with the Slovakia Philharmonic.  But all of that, friends, is grist for future mills!