The. Best. Thing. Ever.

Ok, so that might be a slight exaggeration, but anyone who knows my love of classy and sophisticated knick-knacks (or what some philistines might consider cheap and tacky tat *cough* Omar *cough*) will understand my excitement upon discovering that the Taj Mahal snow globe that one of Omar's friends brought us back from India both flashes and plays music. And not just any music, it plays the Lambada. Oh joy of joys!

If this wasn't enough, this discovery co-incided with Omar's recent trip to Rome, from which he bought me a bobble-headed Pope to add to my collection of Catholic paraphernalia (seriously, they do amazing things with plastic 'gold' leaf).

Put these two wondrous items together and something amazing emerges:

I could listen to this all day. And I do.

The tune does have a habit of sticking in your head, but I'm hoping that it will pass

..... dooooo de do de do, do de do do do de do do dooooo.......

Our friends in the North

I've been in the midst of a flurry of writing activity recently, mostly academic in nature (papers, grants, job applications, all the fun stuff), and none of it blog-related. I realise that I am a bit behind schedule and haven't got around to putting up some pictures from our trip back to the Motherland in March. So here I am to rectify the situation. As it happens, I only took photos when we headed up to the northern reaches of the country - Newcastle and Liverpool. I guess after living in Southampton for seven years, I had enough images seared into my memory to not need any more :-) 

So with further ado.....

... we ventured out of the safe bosom of the south of England to ventured into the frozen wastelands of the north to visit the lovely Cara and Tom, fellow Wessex Lane survivors

(I'm not sure if Omar was wincing with cold here or just working the camera)

Ahhhh...... the seaside. Being in Tynemouth reminded me of how much I miss the British coastline (and being near the coast generally), which can always be relied on to be striking

If only Ohio wasn't so land-locked (lakes and rivers just aren't the same, in case you were wondering)

I think we're going to make this the front cover of our next album...

....although I think Tom's expression in this one would give the album a certain gravatas

And while I'm talking of things that I miss about the UK, here's another one.... cream teas, although I was prepared to overlook the poor choice of cream on this occasion. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

And keeping with the food theme (is there any other?) - Tom and Cara took us to an awesome restaurant in Newcastle called Blackfriars (this is their website). The building dates to 1239 and is suitably atmospheric. There was a liberal application of wine (and gin & tonic, and mead), so some aspects of the meal are a little fuzzy to my recollection, but I do have extremely found memories of what was definitely the best scotch egg I've ever had...

... I know that that isn't often saying much, but this hen's egg scotch egg with a duck scratching and mustard hollandaise was the business. Mmmmm..... *drool*

In between bouts of eating we also did a bit of sight-seeing, which included sights such as Earl Grey's column (apparently famous for other things than tea, who knew)...

... and a fine selection of bridges over the Tyne.

We also saw the 'New Castle', from which Newcastle got its name, although if I was being picky (unlikely, I know), we could debate the 'newness' of this particular castle

A particular highlight of our trip oop norf was a stop-off at Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North statue. The little guy at the bottom gives you a sense of the scale of the thing

And of course many photos were taken, from a variety of jaunty angles

And as the statue comes to life, Omar makes a desperate dash for safety. Ok, my imagination is getting a little carried away, but it would be funny if it really happened, right?

And of course no trip to the North would be complete without a greasy fry-up, which was provided courtesy of Matt in Liverpool and his local greasy spoon. Marvellous.

So that was but a brief snapshot of our trip back to England, which also incorporated stops in Leicester/Nuneaton, London and Southampton. It was a hectic trip but we both really enjoyed it (especially because I got my pimped-up visa approved) and relished the chance to catch up with people (although not as many people as we would have liked). So much so that we wish we could bring everyone back with us. Instead, I hope that adding pictures of Athens on this blog persuades people to come and visit us instead ;-)

But that trip feels like an age ago already, and now Spring is officially springing in Athens and everything is green and beautiful (and wet as Spring also seems to be monsoon season), which almost makes up for the Arctic Winter we had to endure.

So I guess it's time to get the camera back out and prepare the Spring instalment of my 'Athens through the seasons' series...... :-)

Winter in Athens

So with the sun (occasionally) in the sky and the temperature (occasionally) rising above freezing, I feel hopeful that Spring is finally on the way. Therefore, this is a good time to present Part Two of my four part series, 'Athens through the seasons'. In this episode: Winter.

Having barely recovered from the excesses of Thanksgiving (otherwise known as 'Christmas in November'), it was soon time for our second Christmas of the year. This ended up being a lot like our first Christmas, although this time we had a tree ... and a lot less green bean casserole.

 

We went for the full Christmas dinner, resplendent with brussel sprouts (my personal favourite) and pig wrapped in more pig. And of course, no British Christmas is complete without trifle (we even made our own custard)! Admittedly, after eating it for a week the novelty started to wear off..... but seriously....trifle!

So other than the excitement of two Christmasses in one year, and the small matter of an engagement (!), there wasn't too much else going on in Athens over the Winter. Except snow...... 

And when it wasn't snowing, it was birding...

So during the three months of almost continuous snow, and temperatures that rarely got above -5 Celcius, that wasn't a whole lot of stuff that could be done outdoors, unless you like the cold that is. We did, however, develop a fondness for walking on frozen lakes, like this one.....

And this one.....

Well, that weren't any other beach activities that appealed to us at the time

But don't worry kids, we took precautions to ensure we weren't at risk of a soaking - I had my best man on the case...

The lakes were solid all the way to the lake bed, which was pretty neat..... and reassuring

Even Omar couldn't break through it :-)

So that's about it for Winter in Athens. Not too exciting, but we did escape a couple of times, to Michigan in December (a few posts up from this) and to Vancouver/Seattle in January (see the photos via this link to facebook photos (no login/profile required)).

So we weren't completely overwhelmed by the Snowpocalypse. That's not to say we aren't glad that Spring is (might be) on it's way...

Autumn in Athens (not to be confused with Fall in Athens)

Looking back over the posts on this blog, you would think that all I've done since I arrived in Athens is eat. *Clearly* that's not the case ;-), so I thought I should redress the balance and add some photos from the last few months, split into 'Autumn' and 'Winter' posts. And with no food photos in sight! Well, maybe just one or two ;-)

So without further ado....

It was still nice and warm and sunny in October, so we tried to make the most of it by taking a canoe out on our local Dow Lake...

Luckily, I had my own 'outboard motor' with me, so I didn't need to exert myself too much...

Ahh..... sunshine, how I miss thee....

Southeastern Ohio is well-known locally for being particularly beautiful in the Autumn (or 'Faaaaaal' if you come from round these parts), which certainly appeared to be the case. Athens County sits in a large area of forest, and Athens in particular is located in the Hocking River Valley, so I see why these area is popular with Ohioans (yes, that is a word) when compared to the 'badlands' of Northern Ohio. Ok, 'badlands' may be a bit harsh, but it's pretty flat up there.

Anyways, during Autumn I felt quite sorry for this tree, across the road from our flat, as it seemed to be thinning a little on top...

But was still beautiful on the inside :-)

The grounds of the former mental hospital are now popular with walkers (it's that kind of town), and they give some nice views back over Athens...

And here's Omar demonstrating what 'taking in the view' might look like (and I resisted the urge to make a joke inferring that perhaps Omar had escaped from the aforementioned mental hospital. How very charitable of me)

But of course it wouldn't be Athens if there wasn't something random to see, like this chair, in the middle of a field....

And even the Walmart car park likes to get in on the nice views as well, which is certainly in stark contrast to the 'views' you get inside Walmart

So, I have already posted some photos about our slightly debauched shenanigans over Thanksgiving, but while Kieran was here we also managed to fit in some outdoorsy stuff, in between the hangovers.

First off was a trip to Old Man's Cave, near Logan, Ohio...

And very nice it was too

In addition to caves, there were also a number of waterfalls provided for our enjoyment, or mostly just to look at

How cold was it at Old Man's Cave? This cold!

Apparently the valley that we were walking through sees some serious flooding every decade or so, which shifts a lot of rock around and alters the landscape. Which I assume explains things like this...

Storms just knock over trees. Pah.

Either there are some big-ass spiders in this gorge that I didn't see, or I'm getting completely confused...

And here's another waterfall at the other end of the gorge (large American shouting "where you guys all from?" at us just out of shot)

The next activity in the Thanksgiving extravaganza was a trip on the Hocking Valley scenic railway. This would be a nice way to show Kieran around the area, or so we thought.

The scenic railway (there's no longer any commuter trains running in Ohio), starts in Nelsonville, about 15 mins drive from Athens

The train comes from old stock, bought up when the commercial railway was shut down

 And as an added, but slightly confusing (given it was November), bonus there was Santa!

Of course, because it was the Santa Express this meant that we were the only adults unaccompanied by children. But no parents complained and we still got our candy canes, so it was all good...


...until the journey started of course. The first 'landmark' on our journey was this lovely trailer. Can you spot all the spelling mistakes? I'm guessing they didn't go to Hocking 'Collage' themselves....

Nelsonville is also home to this charming 30ft tall sculpture of what I can only assume is a giant 't' (it lights up at night as well, which is a nice touch, because nothing says 'welcome' better than a flaming cross)

So I'll spare you the remaining photos from the rest of the trip, which consist mostly of the motorway, sofas left under motorway bridges, trailer parks and farmers fields. The highlight of the journey, however, was spotting this particular field... 




Perhaps the apocalypse has come early to Ohio.....

So all-in-all, not the best trip to take when suffering from tequila poisoning (see the Thanksgiving post). I guess we misinterpreted what they meant by 'scenic', although I think it gave Kieran an accurate picture of rural Ohio. The only thing worse than the view from the train was the fact that it only travelled at 10 miles per hour...... that was 2.5 hours to remember *sob*

Next stop on the 'Athens across the seasons' express...... Winter!