#125 Nomad Diary. 11-17 March 2023. Denton, Texas with Family. Our 2022 Briefly. Leaving Friday Night to Fly to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

 

Mural in downtown Denton, Texas

Back of the sign: “Morrison’s Corn-kits”  Internet says this is: baking mixes including pancakes, cornbread, biscuits and Texas cornbread. Downtown Denton, Texas.

Saturday. 11. Morning routine. Long walk to Denton square. Fancy coffee. Fabulous bakery! Time with Cyndy and Mom and Dad today.

Us with Darrell’s parents (ages 89).

Walking downtown to Denton.

Sunday. 12. Church with family. Thai restaurant for lunch. Cyndy, Mom and Dad have had Chinese food a few times, but never Thai. Kylee, Cyndy’s 15 year old will help them order! Lol.

We go back to our airbnb after lunch, rest. The time changed today, springing forward one hour. Then we take a 2+ mile walk to Denton square for ice cream.

Monday. 13. Our wifi is out at our airbnb. We plan to go over to Cyndy’s a bit earlier today. 

Tuesday. 14 Over at Cyndy’s today. We went to the grocery to get more salad, fruit and veggies. We are winding down our time and our groceries on hand here in Texas. Our flight to Ft. Lauderdale leaves Dallas Friday night at 8:30pm. Darrell went with Cyndy to get a load of dirt for her flowerbeds. We also had calls from grandsons Quinn and Owen today upping my smiles and happiness factors!! lol.

Wednesday. 15. Morning routine. No wifi still. Walk to Denton square for a mid morning cappuccino. Lunch at our place, then over to Cyndy’s through dinner time. Darrell took his Dad to a doctor appointment. I called my friend Sharon who is beginning the life of traveling and itinerant living. 

Thursday. 16.

Friday. 17. Today we pack up and check out of our airbnb. We are going to spend the rest of the day at Cyndy’s. She’s keeping our truck for us and will help us by driving it as often as she wants. Cyndy is taking us to the airport for our 8:30pm flight to Ft. Lauderdale. We get in after midnight, take a taxi to our Holiday Inn. We plan to sleep in, have breakfast at the hotel and take a taxi to the cruise port.

Nomad Notes.

With wifi going in and out we have steady service with data at great prices through Ubigi. We had issues last year in England with Google Fi and their 3 month limit for using data outside of the US. It was a search and find when Darrell found Ubigi, a South African data provider with great service and prices! Now we use both Google Fi and Ubigi depending on our needs.

Spending time this week: 1. Culling our items. We still came up with a few items for donation. Even though we have not been keeping track of donations for our taxes, Darrell told me today that we are going to get the receipt. Why? Because it can be beneficial for our state taxes (Alabama). The biggest item we donated was our clothing iron! One less item to carry and exists at most places we stay.  

2. Getting specific about packing for the cruise and England by looking at the weather forecasts that fall between 50-65 degrees. Spring weather packing with wet weather protection added in. 

3. Time booking hotels and trains that we still have to do. Talking about options for some travel days within England. Also still thinking about New Zealand travel beginning in late September as Darrell is keeping an eye out for pet sits there.

Our last year (2022) in brief.

4 months in England, 2+ months on cruise ships, 7 months outside the US. 

Jan-Mar: Darrell’s last weeks of working before retirement on March 6th. These months we spent in the Huntsville area. We were savoring our days and goodbyes with our family members, church family and other friends.

April-May: Travel from Alabama through Georgia and down to Ft. Lauderdale. Stopping to meet and stay with long-ago friends along our way. Fly from Ft. Lauderdale to Portland, Oregon where we visited our son Jeremy with Andrea and Quinn closeby in Vancouver, Washington. Fly from here to San Francisco and stay 3 days meeting with long-ago church friends, then getting on an 18 day Panama Canal cruise. 

Lots of stops in Mexico. Foodie Taco tour in Puerto Vallarta. Meeting new friends from Australia, Tricia and Gary. Through the ‘new’ canal locks and ending in Ft. Lauderdale. Staying with a family friend for 12 days in Ft. Lauderdale. 

June: Leaving on 34 day cruise to Halifax, 3 stops in Iceland, Shetland Islands, England, and the final 16 days up to Norway with multiple stops and into the Arctic Circle! Our Australian friends, said good-bye before our sail to Norway. My brother and his wife and a colleague from Darrell’s work came along for the Norway cruise! What an amazing trip! Wow! Over and over again Wow! To all of our stops in Norway. The pleasure to have dinner each night with Chad and Wayne and Chris was extended over two plus weeks together. We enjoyed our adventures and our excursions that sometimes overlapped and sometimes separate. My most exhilarating Norway memory was renting electric bikes and riding up and down the hills on a beautiful day! 

Back to Southampton at the end of the Norway cruise. My brother Wayne and Chris spent another 2 nights with us driving up the coast to Seaford where we could walk to the Seven Sister’s chalky cliffs. We also toured some amazing museums and towns including Fishbourne Roman ruins, Alfriston, Battle, and more. They drove us to our airbnb in Tonbridge while they were going on to the airport and home.

July: 12 days in Kent with new church friendships at Tunbridge Wells church of Christ. Touring the area including: Chartwell, Dover Castle, Dover Cliffs, St. Margaret’s beach thanks to Paul from church. We moved to Ash for a couple of days to tour Canterbury on our way to London. In London we had our first house sit. We lived in a London flat for 16 nights in exchange for taking care of the resident cat. While in London, we enjoyed visiting the Kings Cross church of Christ where we had been a couple of times in 2019. We all remembered each other at church! Yay! Our tourist sights included: the British Museum and Library, the guard show at Buckingham Palace, walking around outside Westminster Abbey, Kenwood Mansion, Cutty Sark tour and the Mariner’s Museum, Hackney Downs Park, Dalston Kingston neighborhood with good Turkish foods, amazing fruit and veg market and an almost forgotten cemetery that led us to another cemetery and the house of John Wesley. 

August: Moved on to Bitton between Bath and Bristol. Loved it here even with our self-imposed inconvenience of using only buses, trains or walking to get around. I absolutely loved our time and sights in Bath and the surrounding area. The restaurants were excellent. One of our favorite sites was a mile+ long train tunnel that is now a bike and walking tunnel. There are lights inside and classical music pumped in. We met up with cruise friends Barry and Marcie for a meal in Bristol. We moved to Milton Keynes for our next house sit and a chilled cat. We stayed here for a week+. We enjoyed the easy walking paths through many neighborhoods and parks. Our highlights were: visiting an 80 member and 20+years old church of Christ with all the members from Ghana, a day long rental bike ride, a full day at Bletchley Park Museum (wow!!), our neighborhood brunch restaurant, and hanging out at our nice townhome.

End of August to the first of September we lived near Newcastle on Tyne at North Shields. We were just a couple of blocks from the North Sea and where the river Tyne flows into the sea. We had 2 Sundays with the church of Christ here. There was a family of 6 who moved here from Alabama as a different experience for their kids. The wife, Katy, just happens to be friends of our daughter in law Andrea’s family. It was like meeting family, and we wanted to stay with them longer. We loved the sights along the coast: Tynemouth, South Shields, as well as walking 14 miles of Hadrian’s Wall! Stunning scenery, amazing history.

September: We rode the train along the coast to Edinburgh, Scotland. We did a week long pet sit and then a week in an old style apartment closer inside the city. Our highlight was being here during the Queen’s passing and funeral procession through the Royal Mile. Our niece, Casey and her friend Hannah, just happened to also be in Edinburgh for this event. They got closer than we could and got pictures of the Royal family! We enjoyed the great food, amazing walks often by the river Lief, an all day bus tour to the Highlands, church on Sundays. Loved, loved, loved this town. Our shoes were worn out and we shopped for new walking shoes here.

We moved on to Ulverston in the Lake District where we spent time around Lake Windermere and learning about Beatrix Potter, going to a Herdwick sheep show via scenic railways, and more. Moved to Lancanshire the hanging town for 3 nights. Took a taxi because of the railway strikes to Liverpool. We stayed near the sea and walked to it from our vintage and comfortable hotel. We walked to church and had some great meals. 

October:  Next we took the train to Conwy a small walled town with castle in north Wales. Conwy was quaint and unexpectedly enjoyable! We walked on top of the walls surrounding the town. We stayed inside the walls in a very nice updated apartment. The streets are cobblestone. Across from our apartment was one of the finest 15th century restored museum homes. We also toured Conwy castle. Our Welsh friends Pat and Clive, who we met years ago on a cruise and have visited at their home, came to see us one day and take us on a day trip to a beautiful scenic spot a few miles away. We also took a bus to Snowdon Park and attempted a tourist train up a mountain peak. The heavy winds sent us back down and they gave us a ticket refund. As the train strikes were still going on, and we had another pet sit date in southern Wales, we took a bus for our next two stops going down through Wales. It was a memorable and scenic ride. 

We stayed a couple days on the sea in Aberystwyth in a lovely apartment overlooking the beach. We enjoyed walking up and down the cool coast, up a hill, over to abbey ruins and watching the polar bear swimmers in the cold waters! 

On our way traveling south through Wales, we took the bus and then were able to take the train again. We stayed in a nice pub with really good food and walked around the town and the castle ruins at Carmarthen. The next night on our way to our pet sit we stayed in Bridgend at a hotel run by Wetherspoons which is a big chain in England, and we were gladly surprised at the quality of it. Then our house sit host picked us up in town and drove us out to her house in the burbs! We had a nice stay with loads of walking and especially enjoyed Ogmore castle ruins. During our stay we took the train to Newport for church on Sunday. We enjoyed our walk and seeing amazing tile art in the city that isn’t on the tourist circuit! 

From south Wales we went across the country to the English Channel and the town of Deal. On our way we stayed one night in Eastbourne at a very old pub. We met up with our cruise friends Tricia and Gary (from Australia) and ending their time in England (where they have family and have worked and lived in the past). They had bought a car for their months here and picked us up at the Eastbourne train station, and had dinner at our pub stay. The next morning they came and got us and drove us to our stay in Deal. Along the way, we stopped for lunch and a little sightseeing in Rye. Such great memories together. Once we arrived to our pet sit, we said our good byes and they were off to sell their car and make their way onto their next adventure. 

We stayed in Deal for a week up to the end of October. We enjoyed daily walks by the English Channel with pebbly beaches, Deal castle and Wellington Castle, chalky cliffs, and fabulous restaurants, most surprising restaurant was a tiny Polish one. We left Deal by taxi to drive us 30 minutes to Dover Ferry where we could cross the channel to Calais. Once we arrived in France, we took the train to Belgium. We arrived to Roeselare where we stayed for 2 nights at a lovely flat near the station and near to church. Here we met with the church because Darrell had some connections with the preacher about 10 years ago, but had never met in person. Now we got to me him and all the other members. The group was very nice! They had dual language for us and gave Darrell a time to preach a second lesson with the regular preacher. 

November: The train to Lyon, France where we stayed for 3 nights. We walked to many of the sights around the city. Then took the train to Barcelona, Spain. It was a bit of coordination to get to Barcelona because the trains were full and tricky going between countries. We made it during daylight and even had time to sit and wait before checking into our lovely apartment. We stayed here 3 days and enjoyed sights in Barcelona and one bus tour to the big monastery. We would love to go back to this city. We got on cruise ship Regal Princess for November 6- December 2nd. Our first part of this cruise had amazing stops in the Mediterranean including: Toulon, France; Livorno, Italy; Kotor, Montenegro; Dubrovnik, Croatia; Corfu, Greece; Messina, Italy; Naples, Italy; Civitavecchia, Italy; La Spezia, Italy; Genoa, Italy; Corsica, France, and Gibraltar, Spain.  As we sailed into the Atlantic Ocean we made one last stop in the Canary Islands at: Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain. Then our ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 7 days arriving to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Our first time back to the US after months away. Our first time to drive in months. 

December: We arrived back to the US on December 2nd. We spent the weekend in Ft. Lauderdale, getting our truck, going to church with friends there. Then taking our time to drive up to Alabama by the 7th. We took the scenic highway going up through farms and some western gulf coastline. We spent a lovely night in Crystal River, Florida at a boutique hotel. We enjoyed our drive to our Hartselle, Alabama airbnb, and our 6 week stay here. We reconnected with family and friends. We enjoyed the holidays and especially being with our 1 year old grandson, Owen! What an amazing year!!