June 5, 2011
June is here, and we have been very busy since I last wrote! We left for Italy for my cousin Meghan's wedding on the 18th of May. The wedding was taking place at a beautiful old villa just south of Siena, so everyone was staying there. It was great to see some family for the first time in 10 months! There were 21 people there, and aside from the wedding, which was beautiful, we spent most of our time driving around to various hill towns and exploring the local churches, museums and gelaterias! After everyone else left, we spent one additional day in Siena and visited Pisa before we flew home. It was a wonderful trip - pictures of our sightseeing are on Facebook, but don't include any wedding pics yet.
After working the week, it was time for a long weekend, and another trip! This time we took the train to Gloucester, and rented a car there to visit Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales. The weather wasn't great, unfortunately, but we still managed to see and do a lot of things, including visiting the book festival in Hay-on-Wye, doing a 12 km hill walk through the park, visiting 6 ruined castles and a ruined abbey, and exploring some caves in the park. Once again, pictures can be found on Facebook.
I got a little bit sick right after our trip, but had recovered enough to have a theatre night with the girls from work to see the London production of Shrek, which is currently in previews. The stuff that made me laugh out loud was the things that were new to the show, including lots of Broadway references - my absolute favourite was probably the Wicked reference. The cast was good, and overall the show was fun, though the movie is better!
We also did a lot of cleaning this week to prepare for our first house guests! Todd's parents and grandmother arrived on Friday, and stayed with us the night before leaving for the Cotswolds on Saturday. They will be back! But before they left on Saturday we took a nice little trip to Greenwich to walk around the market and Naval College a bit. Today it has been raining, so I've stayed in and worked on catching up on a few things, and even re-designing the main pages of my theatre site, which has been sadly neglected for the past several years!
June is going to be tied up with a fair bit of visiting with Todd's family (they are travelling around the UK, but stopping back in to see us now and again). Work is busy, and Todd is working as well now, which is great for our budget, but means I no longer have supper waiting for me when I get home. :)
I've been reading lots as well - most recently finished Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende and The Confession of Katherine Howard by Suzannah Dunn. I'm now in the middle of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, which I picked up at one of the second hand bookshops in Hay-on-Wye. It was mentioned to us when we toured Spencer House, and it's absolutely fascinating so far!