As most of my friends and family know I am half Welsh and most of my relatives reside in the UK. I was born in England but only lived there for a few short years as a child and therefore barely remembered it. I hadn't seen a relative from my mother's side of the family in almost 20 years, not because I didn't want to but because the opportunity just hasn't been there for me to travel to the UK and visit everyone. I always wondered what my family was like and have longed to have a personal connection with them all and that feeling of belonging in a big family. My mother comes from a large family of 6 brothers and sisters, each with their own children so when I saw the opportunity go to the UK last month and visit all of my family I quickly booked my plane tickets. What made this trip so great was the fact that my mom was meeting me in the UK from Florida so not only did I get to catch up with her, she was able to introduce me to everyone. It is hard to put into words how great of an experience this was for me, but I will begin with some pictures and we will start in England:
Cafes near my Aunt's house in Southend on Sea
A proper English breakfast sandwich :)
Shopping on Oxford St.
Mom near Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, the Queen was in!
Having a night out with my Uncle Matt and Mom in Southend.
More shopping on New Bond Street
Tower Bridge
Tower of London
At the Thames River with Big Ben and the British Parliaments in the background!
The next few photos were taken in Chirk which lies right on the border of England and Wales but I will include it in this series ;)
Mom, my Great Aunty Gwen and my Aunty Elaine
Mom with my Aunty and Cousins on the canal
Me with everyone on the canal
Walking to Wales! :)
Love the sheep
The back gate to Chirk Castle.
And finally some photos from visiting my mom's cousin Russell and family in Shrewsbury:
These pictures bring me so much joy and cannot wait to see all of my family in England again. I wondered what it would feel like to be back in England and to be honest it felt like I belonged there, I suppose this was partly because of my Welsh/British upbringing in America but I have never felt so comfortable entering into a "foreign" (to me) country.
Something I never thought I would say! Being in Korea and seeing the love the Koreans have for camping and being able to have so many camping options available really made me enjoy it. Our favorite location to go camping so far is the Taean-Haean National Park. It is a beautiful ocean side campsite on the west coast and in order to get a spot close to the shore you most definitely have to get there early! I am really looking forward to the weather warming up so we can get back out and visit Taean again. Here are some pictures from our last trip there back in October:
(My best Yeti impersonation)
Our friend Dan!
Fortunately the Koreans think of absolutely everything in terms of having a good time. I thought to myself, "wow it would be cool if we had some fireworks" and wondered off to a little store down the beach later to see what they were selling, sure enough they had a legit fireworks supply which I took full advantage of:
And much to our surprise the tide went completely out overnight and you could walk so far into the ocean! There were many people searching for clams to eat for lunch!
(This is how Pip likes to drive)
So there you have it, I miss camping. This princess and the pea actually misses sleeping in a tent. So glad winter is almost over!
As you know Zak and I celebrated my birthday at Tokyo Disney but my awesome friends came over after we got home from Japan and we celebrated some more with cake and wine! One thing I love about living overseas is being able to meet and make friends with people from all over the world. Having friends to spend birthdays and holidays with is great.
My ice cream cake!
And soon after my birthday comes Christmas!! I hope everyone enjoyed their's, we sure did! We spent Christmas Eve drinking some delicious mulled wine and playing games at our friend's house. It snowed the day prior to Chritmas Eve (Christmas Eve..Eve?) so we had a beautiful white Christmas!
And the only picture I have of Zak and I.. lovely I know..
For my birthday Zak and I made a last minute decision to use our flyer miles and head to Tokyo for a a few days. He asked me what I really wanted to do for my birthday and I said "TOKYO DISNEY!!" I am a big theme park enthusiast and have a very nostalgic love for Disney, so it seemed like the logical choice. :) We booked our flights and hotel about a week prior to leaving and it made me realize that it would be impossible for me to book a vacation any sooner than that because a week felt like a month!
So in typical Zak and Nikki fashion we wait until last minute to pack and figure out what we are bringing with us. If you remember in a previous post we had lost our beloved hard core sony cybershot while our family was in town so we bought another updated one to replace it. Well, unfortunately we realized that we had no idea where that one was either. We searched every nook and cranny for hours it seemed with no luck.. I mean the camera is BRIGHT yellow.. how could we lose it?!? Alas, people are thankful for our purchases because now we have given the city of Pyeongtaek not one but two shiny cybershots...for free. :(
Sadly we had to depart without the camera and headed to Incheon Airport. We decided to drive this time since we were only staying for a few days and parking was only 8000won a day (about 7-8usd). Thank goodness my husband knows how to drive like a race car driver because we almost ran into an idiot who missed their turn on the freeway that decided to STOP their car and put it in REVERSE at the fork in the road. I can't make these things up, I promise.
Upon arriving at the airport we picked up our duty free items that we purchased earlier in the week at one of the huge duty free malls here in South Korea (perk!) and made a last minute decision to buy another cybershot...sigh... this time though we didn't get the rugged one in hopes that it will turn up in a seat cushion one day.
So here are some test photos from our new camera on the airplane!
The flight is very short from Seoul to Tokyo, about 2 1/2 hours. At the airport I found something unique.. a smoker's room, outside! Way to keep the air fresh!
From the airport we took a bus directly to our hotel (The Hilton Tokyo Bay) it was about a 75 minute ride and cost about $30 per person.
When we got to the hotel and checked into our room we realized we had a beautiful view of the Tokyo Bay! Here are a few photos we got:
And what better way to escape the outrageous hotel food and drink prices than this:
At Tokyo Disney there are actually two parks, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo Disney Sea. They were both amazing!! Here are some photos from Disney Land:
The weather was more favorable the day we went to Disneyland but that didn't keep us from having a good time the day we went to Disney Sea! It did actually start pouring rain the day we were at Disney Sea (my birthday) so unfortunately the only photo were these:
But we did however have TONS of fun there. It was a more thrilling park than Disney Land, as it included the Tower of Terror (my new favorite!) and other rides that are only in Japan.
And for your viewing pleasure:
Overall it was a great trip, I wouldn't change a thing about it. My birthday was a great success, and we are now looking forward to Christmas.
I am sorry for not blogging recently, I just got done with an 18 credit semester so that had me pretty busy. For now we are just enjoying the Christmas season and I am still waiting for it to start snowing regularly around here... call me crazy. :)
Hope you all are finding yourselves in good spirits, happy holidays!!
Zak and I love to travel and be adventurous together! We are currently living in South Korea. Follow our blog to keep up with our many adventures and experiences from living overseas! xxx
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