Hello! I have not posted on here for an extremely long time, it has been quite a hectic few months since RAGBRAI, I had a amazing holiday in France and back home in the UK (I'll add some pictures for you at the end of this blog!) before as some of you may know I got hit by a car and knocked off of my bicycle (yes! for a second time!) and had some pretty nasty scrapes including a broken collar bone, shoulder blade and sternum. The bugger who hit me scarpered so I have no idea what happened except one minute I was merrily cycling along and the next I was trying to get comfy in a bed of leaves while feeling rather sorry for myself and my bicycle! Anyway almost 6 weeks later and it seems that I am relatively unscathed, I don't know if I am lucky or unlucky but I don't think there are many people who survive two traffic collisions, especially while riding a bicycle and live to tell the tale! When I say relatively unscathed I must say that I am suffering some financial scars, the overall cost of the healthcare has soared to over forty thousand dollars (!!!!!) with no end in sight, interestingly something I was unaware of is that even with health insurance you still have to foot some of the bill and so I have out of pocket costs of over 3 thousand dollars which seems insane to me coming from the UK where the same care would cost exactly nothing! I think America is a great fun place to be so long as you don't get sick, I guess I'll have to be more careful in the future!
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| My bicycle after the accident. A write off :( |
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| A super cute picture of little Luna before our holiday, sitting in my bag wishing she could join us! |
The holiday season is upon us and Amanda and I have been busy putting up our tree and decorations while Luna our beautiful cat has been busy tearing it down - one decoration at a time! We spent a lovely festive evening at Stan Hywet hall - A large mansion formerly owned by the founder of Good Year tires that is decorated beautifully for Christmas and attracts quite a seasonal crowd, just look at the cramped hallways!I think the main reason people like to venture there for the holiday season is actually not the the magnificent house or beautiful decorations but for the gingerbread cookies, they are toasted when you order them so they are all gooey and melt in your mouth! yummm! On a side note an interesting fact about North East Ohio is that at one point it was known as the Rubber capital of the world with Goodyear, Bridgestone and Firestone all founded and headquartered in Akron, just up the road from Cleveland. If you happen upon some free time I really can't recommend enough the PBS documentary 'Firestone and the warlord' which follows Firestones time in Liberia during the Charles Taylor era. On a similar note another amusing fact about Liberia that I found rather ironic is that after the freed slaves arrived in Liberia they soon got to work on enslaving the native population for their own benefit!!!
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| The festive dining room at Stan Hywet Hall |
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| A festive evening with the Minute family! |
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| The crowds in Stan Hywet Hall, all made worth it by the gingerbread cookie at the end! |
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| Christmas lights in the grounds |
Another seasonal tradition here is of course my yearly trip to the post office to send off my Christmas goodies and I am happy to report that this year 3 out of my 5 packages are now winging their way around the world. That leaves just two packages remaining, one containing motor oil (with my previous post office record, understandably refused!) and one containing nothing but a small standard size Mally's (a Cleveland delicacy!) chocolate bar which the lady tried to charge me $15.50 to send to Canada! I was close to calling the police to report a attempted robbery but instead simply carried the chocolate bar home with me to replace it with something smaller, lighter and even more amazing! So Iris if you are reading this I am sorry for the delay but you will be receiving something exciting in the mail soon :D
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| Luna eyeing up our mini tree |
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| Our festive dining room |
I have more exciting news for you! Amanda and myself are anticipating a brutal Cleveland winter and so have booked a little winter getaway to Mexico, we're going to be going in February where the temps should be sitting pretty in the 70s visiting Puebla, Cholula (hehe this word came up as an auto correct, the computer seems to think the correct spelling is in fact 'Cholera'!) and Mexico City so if anyone has ever been and has any insider tips email us we would love to hear them :D Everyone else will have to wait for my Mexico blog post which will be due at some point after our return at the end of feb!
Below I have included a few pictures of our holiday back in September to England and France! Have a Fabulous Christmas and I shall speak to you all soon :)
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| NICE, FRANCE - this is the local delicacy called 'socca' a chick pea pancake that I was excited to try, so excited in fact that I decided to trip over the bench and deposit it all over the floor instead! |
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| Here is Amanda enjoying her Socca! |
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| I cycled up to the top of the col d'Eze, a category 2 climb that is often used as the time trial in the Paris Nice race, it was a lot of fun but judging by my strava numbers I have a way to go before beating the pros, I have the 4000th ish fastest time out of 5000 attemps! |
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| cycling back down on one of the three corniches between Monaco and Nice with the azure blue Mediterranean sea on my right. Beautiful! |
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| MONACO, FRANCE |
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| We walked the F1 circuit, it is neat as they still leave the red and white paint on the corners to help you find your way! |
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| NICE, FRANCE - the famous blue chairs of the Promenade des Aglais |
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| GRASSE, FRANCE - a cat |
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| Grasse is where the worlds first perfumerie was located, it is a really pretty town up in the Alpes Maritimes. |
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| MENTON, FRANCE |
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| Menton is famous for it's lemon festival, so it is only right that I enjoy a lemon sorbet :D |
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| A nice photo I took from the cemetery at the top of a hill in Menton. |
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| The TGV train we took to Paris, it is incredible it travels so fast you can feel yourself getting pushed back in the seat when it 'takes off' |
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| PARIS, FRANCE - A clock from inside the Musee d'Orsay, a art gallery located inside a old train station that is home to literally hundreds of Impressionist paintings. |
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| The Champs Elysee |
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| Great Dixter house and gardens |
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| A painting inside the National Gallery, look at the incredible detail on the arms! |
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| The Citreon 2cv used in the James Bond film 'For your eyes only', it was part of the Bond in Motion exhibition which contains cars and props from all of the movies! |
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| My Uncle Mike in his element showing us around Eltham Palace, a property he has inside knowledge of as he used to work there :D |
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| My Mum and Amanda enjoying a day out at Sheffield Park while I went for a cycle ride with the lads! |
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| Looking out over Ide hill with Marc |
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| Enjoying the Sunshine with Tim |
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| This is really cool, while flying home our plane overtook another 777 flying 1000 ft below us! Quite a rare sight! |
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| My uncle David travelled all the way down to Kent from Stratford upon Avon to make me a delicious Fry Up! Yummm! |
