Blogs from Romsey, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Looking out of the hotel window this morning we were greeted with our first rain since arriving in England. This surprised us, as although we have generally had cool cloudy weather with some promising days, there has been no rain. In the hotel dining room we enjoyed breakfast as “morning after” wedding guests appeared, feeling quite good but with the occasional ache in the foot and leg department. It was now time for farewells. This is always the hard part and we suppose this is the sign of having experienced a wonderful occasion the day before. Before we drove back to London we had to say farewell to our daughter at Romsey railway station because she was off to Wales to take part in opera master classes. On the road it seemed everyone was heading back ... read more

After a quiet morning preparing our wedding clothes we headed on a mid-afternoon drive to the wedding venue, Romsey, near the south coast city of Southampton. When we were planning our trip we decided it would be a very good idea to be in the UK for our daughter’s birthday. This year it coincided with our daughter’s brother-in-law’s wedding and we were invited. So with all our wedding clothes carefully packed in the car we headed out of town. It seemed as though everyone else had decided to head out of town at the same time. We were assured the traffic is often even busier. The rest of the drive south went relatively quickly although there seemed to be occasional slow periods as we passed off and on ramps that lead to other motorways or large ... read more

Well, today is the day that we finally moved out of our house in Chandlers Ford, it has been a long time in the planning, yet all of a sudden it seemed to be upon us and the pressure was on to vacate and allow our tenants to move in. Although we had done a lot of packing, throwing away and selling in the previous months I was still shocked about how much we had left to do in the last couple of days,not to mention making sure that the house was perfectly clean for our tenants to move into. I even washed the towels and hung them on the washing line. Last night, Dad took the family out for a meal at the Balmoral (Nursling), it has been exceptionally difficult to get everyone together because ... read more

Saturday, June 7, 2008 Amiens, France to Romsey, England Today we planned to cross the Chunnel into England. We had a reservation for 9:50am, but had to arrive at 9:20. By my calculation, we had about one and one-half hour drive from our hotel in Amiens. As we checked out, I complained about the state of the hotel. It was being renovated and we felt that they should have either closed the place or at least given us a big discount. So, the desk clerk gave us free breakfast. Wow! Free cereal and hot milk. Anyway, we walked a couple of blocks to the parking garage and got the heck out of Ameins. I think this city was location of war battles and a college. Nothing else is happening in Amiens. We were out of there. ... read more