Summer Mindfulness

 

Summer sometimes gets a bit too hot these days, but there is still plenty to enjoy. Summer holidays and Summer outings have long been highlights in the year, even when they have been a bit thin on the ground like they were in 2020. The postcard below celebrates the 25 holidays I enjoyed with my parents and daughter from 2006 to 2020.

Travel Therapy

Sometimes it's just good to get away. My favourite week in my life was my week alone in New York. I like travelling alone to cities. I travelled alone around Europe. My first taste of Paris was on my own, it can be lonely, but if you enjoy your own company it's great. I love my own company and love solitude, but often I am accompanied by my mother and daughter, who generally need a holiday, so they come with me. Often we are just travelling around Great Britain, but that's fine, there's plenty to see here. It's especially nice at the seaside, but also our cities and countryside are good too. Holidays are great for gaining a new perspective on life, for practising mindful meditation, for doing something different, for just having a break from the norm.

Eat Pray Love holidays revisited

 

I was attempting to go away at least three times in 2020, to Belfast, to Brighton and to Cromer. Needless to say planning any holidays in 2020 quickly became very difficult and what should have happened in one year, actually took three.

Eat - Cromer - August 2020

We were lucky to have got away anywhere at all in 2020, so the week we got to stay in Cromer was all that bit more special and I cherish that week away very much, even though we only had takeaway pizza to eat every evening.

Pray - Belfast - June 2021

This holiday was cancelled twice in 2020 so it was a great relief to get here in 2021. It was exciting to fly in an aeroplane once more and to finally visit this remarkable fourth UK capital city.

Love - Brighton - April 2022

We visited Brighton last in 2017 so it was exciting to find out how it had changed in the past five years. I have visited Brighton regularly since I was alittle girl, so it feels like visitng an old, dear friend everytime I go.

One thing the Eat Pray Love holiday saga has taught me is that it is much better to be just organising two holidays a year rather than three. I am aiming on going on two holidays a year, one far and one near, in the upcoming future.

 

Seaside Reflection

 

It occured to me, a few months ago, that if we managed to get to our 2021 holiday destination of Felixstowe then we would be able to celebrate twelve consecutive years of holidays by the sea. During these twelve years we also managed a trip to Brugge which included some time spent on the Belgium coast and my visit to New York City which included an outing to Coney Island. I love being by the seaside and it has been good to focus on these special times which help me through the darker, colder days of winter.

The Last Flight?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post celebrates my 33 years of air travel. As you can see, by many people’s standards, I haven’t travelled that much by plane, so all these visits are so much more vivid and special.

              1.      1988 – Athens, Greece

My Greek holiday was part of my European Grand tour, back in the late 1980s. I flew to Athens to embark on a Greek Island cruising holiday with Club 18-30. This was my plane and boat holiday, rather than my coach, bus or train holiday. I had an accident and got quite sick on this trip.

  

2.      1992- Egypt

In 1992 I travelled to Israel to stay on a kibbutz and from here my family had an interesting, culturally enlightening trip across the Sinai desert to Cairo.

 

3.      1993 – Paris, France

This was my second visit to Paris. We visited the Rodin museum, ate in the Iranian quarter and watched a French film.

 

4.      1996 – Prague, Czech Republic

Prague was the place on mainland Europe I hadn’t managed to visit on my grand tour. This was a lovely holiday and Prague was a beautiful city.

 

5.      1997 – Budapest, Hungary

My partner wanted to visit Budapest, so we did. It was quite hot.

 

6.      1999 – Israel

In 1999 I returned to the kibbutz in Israel to attend a wedding.

 

7.      2005 – The Dordogne, France

The noughties were a bit vague and messy, mainly because motherhood was very overwhelming for me. This holiday is a bit murky. I remember staying in a small French village and enjoying pleasant visits to the surrounding countryside.

 

8.      2017 – New York City, USA

We visited six foreign countries in the 2010s mainly via train and in particular Eurostar. I’m so glad I managed to fly to New York in 2017. It was one of the best weeks of my life.

 

            9.      2021 – Belfast, Northern Ireland 

It took one and a half years to finally visit Northern Ireland and Belfast, because of the pandemic. It was such a relief to get here, thirty-one years after visiting Southern Ireland and Dublin, which I travelled to via train and boat. The holiday didn’t disappoint, I really enjoyed our trip.

Belfast at last

 

I first thought of the idea of visiting Belfast in 2019. I booked our trip there and got Amy a new passport in Janurary 2020. Because of the pandemic it got cancelled in March 2020 and October 2020. We finally made it here in June 2021, two years since I first thought of having the holiday. I enjoyed the city, it was small and I felt it had a bit of a seventires and eighties feel about it. 

ALF by the sea

I crave living a simpler, slower life. I often imagine myself living a simpler, slower life by the sea, possibly on my own. We at least manage to get down to the sea once or twice a year. Below are some of my favourite pictures of our times by the sea. Cardiff and Brighton are possibly my favourite seaside places, but these holidays were all quite special.

 Cardiff

Cornwall

Whitby

  

Brighton

 Isle of Wight

Torquay

Eat Pray Love Holidays - a retrospective

With my future holiday plans still being very uncertain I decided to look back at my past Eat Pray Love holidays of the 2010s.

Eat-Llandudno 2016

The trip to North Wales was the first of our difficult holidays, it was also memorable for the lovely pizza restaurants in the town. The pizzas were so nice we ended up having pizza every evening. Cromer was also memorable for the amount of pizza we ate.

Pray - Whitby 2014

Our stay in Whitby was in the shadow of Whitby Abbey and the legend of Dracula. We attended an outdoor Dracula themed drama event in the ruins of Whitby Abbey and also have fond memories of folk week and the children's fairground our holiday apartment was situated by.

Love - Edinburgh 2012

Edinburgh 2012 was the last holiday I had with my dad, who I loved very much and who I lost in 2013. My dad was born in Edinburgh in the late 1920s and it was lovely to revisit the places that were so special to him.

Revised 6B460 Review

Revised 6B460 Review (written in August 2020)

 

My first 6B460 review was meant to include a review of a visit to Belfast, but because of the Covid19 Lockdown all my travel plans got altered. I still plan to visit Belfast, but my thinking has led me to plump for a prefered alternative travel goal instead.

1. Enjoy 25 holidays with mum and Amy

I organised our first holiday to Goring in 2006 following a family wedding. After that I organised one or usually two holidays a year for us. In 2020, for our 25th holiday together, we visited Cromer in Norfolk at the end of the Covid19 Lockdown. I look back with fondness at all our times away despite all the ups and downs.



2. Work in libraries for at least thirty years

I celebrated thirty years as a librarian in February 2020, just before the Covid19 Lockdown, by visiting the British Library’s Buddhism exhibition. I was pleased I celebrated my three decades of library work with some style. At the end of March I started working from home. I hope I will keep working well into this decade.

3. Keep a blog going for ten years

I started my blog in 2013, the year my dad died. My blog is now seven years old and I have scheduled posts until 2023. So hopefully, even if I don’t write so much in the future, my blog can keep going for a full decade.

4. Play classical piano pieces in public for ten years

I started playing classical piano pieces in public in 2010 shortly after starting as a semi-professional piano teacher, teaching my daughter’s friends. After facing a crisis of venues in 2018, I managed to keep playing until January 2020. I don’t know how much public (or private) piano playing I will do in the future.

5. Practice Buddhism everyday

Living through the Covid19 Lockdown has made mindfulness feel even more important to me. I am getting better at mindfulness, meditation and ‘il dolce far niente’. I go for a walk everyday and enjoy slow tea and food, listening to music, watching films, drawing, gardening, reading books and poetry. I find I am much calmer and try to be kind and patient.

6. Live a good enough life

Luckily we managed to celebrate my mother’s and my daughter’s birthdays in February 2020, before everything shut. It was a time when appreciating a slower, simpler life was becoming more of a priority. I feel that I have done what I could with what I have and hope that will continue.

Enjoying 25 holidays with mum and Amy

I organised our first holiday to Goring in 2006 following a family wedding. After that I organised one or usually two holidays a year for us. In 2020, for our 25th holiday together, we visited Cromer in Norfolk at the end of the Covid19 Lockdown. I look back with fondness at all our times away despite all the ups and downs.

Cromer 2020 - an eat, pray, love holiday

 

It was difficult getting away in 2020 because of the Covid19 Lockdown, so this made our week away to Cromer feel very precious. It was also special as it was the 25th time me, my mother and my daughter had been on holiday together.

   

Visiting the three capital cities of Great Britain

I have loved cities for most of my life. One of my big life goals was to visit New York City. It was one of my 5B450s, I spent a week there in 2017, it was one of the best weeks in my life. I have visited Paris five times in my life, it is always lovely, vibrant and exciting. A newish life goal is to visit Belfast, the fourth UK capital city, but unfortunately this has been postponed because of the Covid19 Lockdown. Therefore this blog post celebrates the delights of the three Great British capital cities that I have been enjoying in the years 2010 to 2020. I hope to visit the fourth UK capital city sometime in the not too distant future.


London

I have lived in London for over fifty years and my relationship with it is always changing. When my dad was around and my daughter was little I made a point of visiting all the major attractions, although Madame Tussaud's really was the last straw. From 2015 to 2019 I made a point of visiting London's hidden gems in Secret London and London Interrupted. I now put wellbeing first and seek out the most therapeutic places. Kew Gardens is great for nature therapy as are the great London parks and London Zoo. Art galleries and museums are therapeutic in their own right, I particularly like the V&A and Tate Modern. The Tower of London is great for time therapy and the Greenwich Observatory for space therapy. I find walking along the Thames path is also very healing.

Edinburgh

Our one week in Edinburgh in 2012 was the last holiday I had with my dad before he died. He was born here, near Edinburgh castle, he grew up in the Portabello district. Edinburgh is a wonderfully Gothic city, the weather was quite miserable when we visited, which I think is quite normal. The Fringe Festival was going on, there was a lot of street entertainment and that made our time here even more special. One of the most memorable things for me was me, my mother and my daughter going on the Edinburgh ghost walk, it was the ideal time and place for a ghost walk and was notably spooky and quite disturbing.

Cardiff

Cardiff was our fist city break after my dad died. We spent just over a long weekend here and had to get used to being three rather than four. Despite these difficulties we had a great time. I think it is a tribute to Cardiff that I have such fond memories of this holiday, it is a very pretty city, very green and blue, with the beautiful castle and park area and the barage and bay area, by the sea. We did a lot of walking here, I think we were walking our troubles away. The BBC is a big presence here and every time I watch Torchwood I am reminded of our lovely 2013 trip.

EPL Holidays 20/21 - third time lucky

It turns out that it was a really bad idea to try to organise my three EPL holidays for Spring and Summer 2020. As things stand I am still hoping to get to Cromer and Belfast this year. Our Brighton holiday has been postponed until April 2021, nevertheless I am really looking forward to it.