Week 83 - My Sunday Photo - The Crematorium

Visiting the UK and making time to visit my Gran.

Sadly my Granddad died 4 years before I was born.

My Gran would have loved to have heard about our travels and life abroad. 

From time to time I pick up a post card or a small gift to give to her, then I remember she's not here anymore.

Week 30 One Daily Positive and Project366 Travel around the UK

It's been another busy week of travel, but this week I've been joined by Peter who flew in Birmingham on Monday for 3 weeks and we've been visiting family and friends. 

The blog has been neglected again, and I keep meaning to get round to uploading my photos from my trip to South Africa on my Facebook. 

Monday afternoon we drove north to Hyde to visit Aunty Kathy. Tuesday we called in at Bury to drop off the Tim Tam order with Kylie @kykaree then arrived in Cumbria to stay the night with Amanda and family @mulledred. Wednesday we drove to Leeds to collect child 3 of 5 from where he lives, he'd traveled down from Newcastle to meet us. Thursday we pottered around Monmouth, sorting out banks, wills and other paperwork. Friday we headed off to Gloucester with child 3 of 5 to see child 1 of 5 for the day and in the evening we went to the music festival with child 2 of 5. Saturday with friends for a BBQ in Newport @welsh_si and @ladywl 

Next week is just as full and includes Bath, Malvern and Lyme Regis. 

I'm hoping to meet a few more twitter people on my travels, starting with Pat @halfwelshdragon and Chloe @Indigochlo on Monday.

My photo prompts for the week

Cake-Mugg and Bean in South Aftica with a friend.

Working Hard-fish and chips in Hyde

I Remember-Peter reminiscing about his childhood

What I'm Wearing-My pjs

Now-Monmouth Music Festival

Aeroplane-KFC advertising on the road to Mozambique

Cook-BBQ at friends with Peter and Olivia 

HDYGG in Wolfratshausen - A town in Bavaria, Germany

I've traveled a fair few miles in July, from Dubai to South Africa to Dubai and the UK and a trip to Germany to visit my South African friends who moved there earlier this year.

Wolfrathausen is a town with just under 20,000 inhabitants and is 19 miles South West of Munich. 

It's summer in the Northern Hemisphere so the town is in full bloom, with over flowing window boxes, flowers beds and gardens, it would appear though that from my photos I focused more on the highly decorated houses and building and green open spaces.

Of course there were the mandatory hydrangeas at the local garden centre.

Not so friendly signs warning you about the cat in this garden which translates as Battle Cat.

Plenty of information boards on the local area.

Yellow post boxes which took me a while to work out weren't dog poo boxes.

And random cigarette machines which require you to swipe your German ID to prevent underage sales.

#AnimalTales Cat sitting in St Albans

Traveling around the UK as an expat, seeing family and friends involves a lot of sleeping on sofas or staying in over priced accommodation due to it being the school holidays, for 6 weeks and it's not a lot of fun, lugging suitcases around and packing and unpacking and traveling around by train, bus and on foot.

I was offered the opportunity to stay in a friend of a friend's house in exchange for feeding her cat during our stay.

I was joined by my son who collected me from Heathrow, so I arrived fresh and had a relaxing few days, rather than the usual 7 hour flight and a 3 hour coach or train journey via the London Underground with a suitcase and hand luggage. There was no queueing for the bathroom, worrying about leaving all my stuff lying around or just getting in the way of everyone else getting ready for school and work and I didn't have to get dressed to have breakfast in the morning like I would've done had I been staying in a hotel.

On the 2nd day I did message the woman who owned the house with a picture of the cat we were feeding to check we were actually feeding the right cat, thankfully we were.

I'd like to explore doing this again in future, cat and dog or house sitting.

Week 82 - My Sunday Photo

I'm on Aunty duties.

Sadly it's raining in Monmouth today so I'm glad we got to do this yesterday while the sun was still shining. 

Week 28/29 One Daily Positive and Project 366 with SnapHappyBritMums

Other than having a record of the past year and a half I'm really starting to question if it's worth my time and effort writing up a post each week, in fact I'm falling out of love with blogging in general. I just feel my life is on repeat at the moment and I'm just writing the same type of blog posts about life as an expat and travel.

On the blog
#MySundayPhoto We saw the Queen
#AnimalTales Day Safari at Kruger National Park and Fostering a Pit Bull
#HDYGG Driving from Germany, through Austria to Italy and Kruger National Park
#PoCoLo Supporting vulnerable children in South Africa 

In the past 2 weeks I've been in 6 countries, in fact I managed that in one week. From South Africa, Dubai, UK, Germany, Austria and into Italy. I've been visiting friends, Peter is joining me on Monday and we're heading off to Manchester to visit family and Leeds to collect child 3 of 5, before heading off back to South Wales, Gloucester, Bath and finally to Lyme Regis where I can add travel by boat to the 5 flights I've already taken and the miles I've walked on foot, traveled on train, buses, taxi's and cars.

Day 192 #Brilliant Kruger National Park.

Day 193 #Yellow Dinner with hubby in Dubai after a paddle in the sea.

Day 194 #OpenWindow Leaving Dubai.

Day 195 #Mum London with child 4 of 5.

Day 196 #Toy St Albans.

Day 197 #school Cat sitting is hard work.

Day 198 #Exercise Enjoying being outdoors.

Day 199 #Stripes The sky in Italy.

Day 200 #LookingUp A maypole in Munich.

Day 201 #TheLetterM Munich.

Day 202 #ImDoing Drinking coffee in Germany.

Day 203 #Treat Drinking coffee in St Albans.

Day 204 #Holiday Traveling to South Wales.

Day 205 #ImReading On the train.

HDYGG? A drive from Germany, through Austria to Italy

Although the landscape didn't change much, driving alongside and through the Alps, the weather and the buildings changed, especially noticeable was the difference in weather, cloudy and grey in Germany, sunny and bright in Italy.

 Germany

 Leaving Austria behind us

Arriving in Italy

The churches in Germany with their rounded domes and in Italy with a more traditional spire.

The country side was green throughout, the rivers and lakes a bright turquoise, lots of trees and splashes of colours in the towns from the flowers planted everywhere and of course the vines in Italy.

Every village we drove through was decorated with paintings on the buildings and flowers in pots galore on balconies.

When leaving Germany and before entering Austria you need to stop at the border and purchase a Vertrieb card to display on your windscreen, it is picked up by radar as you drive and without it, there are huge tolls to pay.

You need to pay great attention to the road signs to know when you're entering each country, as without borders and the landscape being the same, it would be easy to miss other than the phone companies sms.