Monday, March 25, 2013

contemporary selfies

Traveling as a pair requires some creativity in obtaining photographs that include both persons. Throughout Z's visit, my camera found itself balancing (sometimes precariously) atop park benches, trash cans, tree limbs, stone walls, hand rails, and even random [parked] car hoods—timer at the ready—in attempts to snap some pics of our travels.

Because of the weather, and our venturing sans-suitcases, we look....pretty much the same in all the pics. Ignore that. I promise these were all taken across the two weeks and not on one day!

Note the occasional blue skies!
In Gloucester, at the historic docks.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Z's visit

Okay, with all that silly engagement excitement behind us, I reckon I might as well post a few photos from the rest of Z's lil UK adventure.

We started with a few days in Oxford--
Highlight: Kazbar. This fab tapas restaurant on the edge of Oxford's ethnic hub served up some seriously satisfying grub. I probably shouldn't call it grub. But I will.

Before:

...and after:

It was goooooood.

On one of our afternoons in Oxfordshire, we ventured to the nearby village of Woodstock. [Did I just take that line straight from JRRT?] We goofed around, laughed at toilets on Browns lanes, visited not-very-secret gardens at Blenheim Palace, and with all the Canada geese and Baptists running around, it almost felt like home.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Adventure time!

Z starts the AT today!

He's been pretty excited about it lately. When he was in the UK, we did even did a little bit of warmup hiking to get him ready. It was really rugged.



We even made sure to wear our sturdiest hiking boots, just to be safe.



In all seriousness though, he's been super tuned-in to anything hiking related these past several months. For example:

Monday, March 18, 2013

A modest proposal

It is upon my return to Oxford, after seeing Z off to the airport, that I finally have access to a computer and time to write this update. Unfortunately, his departure means we won't see each other again until July, but he's off to amazing adventures through Appalachia, and there remains much work for me to accomplish before my own exit from Ox, so it's probably for the best. Besides this, I can't complain too much because his visit was a pretty great one for several reasons, not least of which being....

WE'RE ENGAGED!
(to be married, more specifically.)


I'll spare you the satire and get on with the story:

After a few days together in Oxford, Z and I did some train-hopping that brought us to a few towns/villages in the Cotswolds, west of Oxford. [I'll post some pictures+stories of the actual trip later; we've got more important details to cover.] On our third day of trekking, we found ourselves in Bath (minds out of the gutter, folks) and with our thin wallets preventing us from paying for fancy tours or special exhibits, we needed to kill some time...

Thus we ended up in Henrietta Gardens—a lovely place, even in the cold—and proceeded to take silly pictures as we wandered through the park. The whole trip, we'd been using my camera's self-timer to snap pictures of the two of us together, and sneaky little Zachary used this fact to trick me good: In one corner of the park, he set up the camera to take a bunch of consecutive shots for what I thought was going to be a goofy little way to pass the time. He got me.

....without further ado, here's the frame-by-frame:
[And I promise, folks, it's authentic. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have acted this out if I tried.]