St Pete Day 2

I had a fun day by myself today. I walked around and saw some interesting thing:

Stumbled upon a tug boat display of prowess, synchronised moves and spouting water all choreographed to music!

 Then stumbled upon a Yachting Premier League award event, which was giving away free donuts!

 Then found a River Festival

 With fancy dress clothing you could try on and do 'blue steel' selfies!

Then i watched the final of the Women's World cup from my hotel lobby and took the taxi to the airport to fly overnight to Tyumen in Siberia.

Today was Chief's Day - would have been Dad's 70th birthday. He was with me all day, chuckling along at the tug boats, the free donuts, the glory of the gold towers, and the novelty of being in St Pete. I miss him so much, but today I felt especially close to him.

St Pete

And so, I'm off! I flew from Gatwick to St Petersburg and arrived at 10:30 pm, passed through immigration, baggage claim and customs without incident, and then took a taxi to my hotel in the city center. Such a strange feeling to be alone out in the wide world!

This morning I had breakfast and went straight out the door to start my exploration of the city. My friend Anastasia had given me a few tips, so I started with those... going up to the Colonnades of St Isaac's cathedral was the first thing I did after spying it through the trees in the park.

Then from matching my map to the landmarks I could see from my vantage point, I plotted my next moves. I made my way to the Church of Spilled Blood which is that crazy looking place. 

 Then as I was making my way to my furthest destination, the Museum of the Arctic & Antarctic, I found a thrift store! I bought myself a jacket as it was a little chilly this day, and I enjoyed looking through the rails of clothing while thinking about the Russian person that would have been wearing this garment previously. I was also surprised to find a whole rail of fancy dog clothing!!

When I finally got to the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic, it was closed for 15 minutes due to technical issues. I took the opportunity to buy myself an ice cream nearby, and sat on the steps of the museum enjoying it. As I was gazing over the road, I spied a cluster of people busily doing things with sacks. I went over to investigate and discovered that this is how the people in St Pete do recycling. They have to save their bags of recyclable materials and take the bags themselves to little spots such as this where they then separate everything into other bags which are parceled up and taken away.

Soon after I was in the museum where I spent over 2 hours walking around. I am normally not a museum goer, but this place was amazing. What a gem! Only bad thing was that Rhodri wasn't with me. 

I especially loved the paintings that were hung and also somehow built into the alcoves of the ceiling. What a place. Ok, nearly everything is in Russian, but with the camera help of Google Translate (you take a photo of the signage in Russian and it actively converts it to English!) and the audio pod in English, the info is probably 85% good. The maps are a challenge, though, since the place names are written in Cyrillic and referring to parts of the map that I have never taken much notice of (i.e. northern coast of Siberia). Anyway, it is a really cool place. I could easily go again.

  

 Then I was hungry so I stopped for some food at this lovely place

 Then I went on a boat cruise from one of the canals into the river. This is where my jacket came in handy! I loved that the boats provide blankets to snuggle with as well, and I had an audio guide in English to tell me about place I was seeing. We had some threatening clouds and even a few spots of rain, but they were welcome.

Eventually I made my way back to the hotel where I secured a choice table by myself on the roof terrace looking out at St Isaac's cathedral with a beer and then a lovely dinner.

 I wasn't quite ready to settle down after this, so I went walkabout through the town. I followed a group of Germans for awhile and then stopped in the middle of a bridge and decided to be sensible and head back. Then I followed this exotic looking lady wearing an evening gown, high heels and carrying a violin.

It is so strange and funny to be alone like this. I found myself doing all sorts of weird things. There were moments when I just felt like running... so I did! Not for very long, mind, just to go faster than walking for a little bit. Glad that I have most of tomorrow here as well.

Off to foreign lands

I'm leaving today to go to Russia for a week, then Abu Dhabi for another week. Its all for work but should be quite good! Here is a map of my upcoming journey, although I'll be flying between places rather than driving. First I'm having a stopover in St Petersburg, then over to Tyumen for a week, then Abu Dhabit for a week, then home on Fri July 19th.

Boys mountain weekend in North Wales

Rhodri took some of the guys from the village up to North Wales to climb a few mountains. The group of them consisted of Adrian, Mark DF, Jules, Phil M, Dave P, Mac, Tim and Rhods.

They had amazing weather by the looks of it!

This was the same weekend that we had Rachel visiting, so it all worked out fine. Really glad they had a good time and nobody got hurt!

Here are 6 of the 8 of them - Rhods and Dave P are missing.

One Day Heatwave

What a treat to have a warm, sunny Saturday to wake up to! We started with waffles outside for breakfast.

Then we lounged around until 12:30 ish to then walk down to the Coach & Horses pub to meet up with our Danish friends. All the boys hung out together while we ladies sat in the shade chatting.

Then we came home and the kids set up a Slip-n-Slide on the lawn with 2 tarps and an outdoor table cloth

We made dinner and watched The Greatest Showman and went to bed! Meanwhile Rhods is out climbing mountains in North Wales with the guys from the village. Hopefully he will send some photos so i can update this blog as well.

Russian visa and Rachel

After saying goodbye to Lilly, I took the train into London (Farringdon) to go pick up my visa to be able to visit Russia. I submitted all the paperwork on June 11th, and it take 15 calendar days to process the visa, so I was told to come back after June 26th. I managed to talk cousin Rachel into coming to stay the weekend with us so I met her after I got my visa and we traveled home together. Rhodri is away in Wales taking the men from the village up (and down) some of the mountains in Snowdonia.  Rachel and I met at a Spanish restaurant, had some food and drink, and headed off. What a great feeling to reunite with a family member!

Bye Bye, Lilly

This afternoon I said goodbye to Lilly, who has been an intern with me since November 2018. She is Bulgarian and its been fun working with her, since the work we've been doing together has been really challenging and we've made it up as we went along. I'll miss her...

Sports Day

Today was our last Sports Day at Danehill school. It was a low key event with 'blegh' weather and not much hype or energy. But it was nice to be there and chat with other parents.

Blythe, Oscar and Tryfan - the 3 Amigos

Here are some action shots taken by our friend Gabi.

Rugby Club Summer Ball

Easy Saturday

Last night Rhiannon and Sophie stayed over here at our house, and Tryfan and Oscar stayed over at their house. It was a beautiful day, and we worked in the garden pulling weeds and so forth in the morning.

Tonight Rhods and I are going to the annual summer Rugby ball, which we have never been to but should be fun.

Winnie

We have all gotten quite fond of little Winnie.
She can be soooo annoying with the ball, but in a funny and endearing way. She likes to strategically position the ball (any ball, really) in the place where someone is most likely to pick it up or kick it so she can go chase it. If one is reading the paper on the couch, she will drop it just under the paper near one's leg; if one is cooking dinner in the kitchen, she will drop it in the middle of the kitchen near the stove; if one is mowing the lawn, she will wait for one to start a new strip of grass and position the ball just within a leg's distance from where the mower will go... and so on. She is relentless! It is pretty impressive, actually, just how obsessed she is about chasing balls. In this photo she has positioned the ball near my lap (I'm seated on the couch) and is trying to persuade me with her eyes to throw the ball for her.

Friday afternoon at A&E

We got a call from the school today saying that Tryfan had been accidentally stabbed in the foot with a pitchfork. What is a pitchfork doing out in the playground at a primary school, you ask? Well, quite.

Apparently the Year 6 kids are allowed to play in the garden part of the playground, which happened to have a pitchfork laying around. And one of the troublesome kids in the class (there is always one!) got hold of it and ended up stabbing Tryfs. It went through his shoe and sock and edge of foot. Ouch! Rhodri was on his way to an appointment so I got to take Tryfs to the emergency room in East Grinstead and then Rhodri joined us later. 

Tryfs ended up getting an X-ray (no damage to bone or tendon) and a tetanus shot, and of course spent quite a bit of time waiting around in the meanwhile.  Here he is saying, "Don't you take a picture of me here!". Ha. Too late.

Tall

This girl is now officially taller than me!

Riding lessons continue

Rhiannon has been having riding lessons every Sunday morning and sometimes on Saturday too. Here she is in action on Romeo...

Boys to France, Girls at home

After a full week where Rhodri was in London for a day and I was up in Edinburgh for 2 days, Rhodri and Tryfs left early on Friday to drive to France for a football (soccer) tournament.

Naturally we ladies have taken this opportunity to get takeaway for dinner, watch some girlie movies, go shopping, and meet up with friends! We've had a great weekend!




The boys left Friday morning really early and get back tomorrow night, so Tryfan will miss 2 days of school.  They've gone to France because the football (soccer) team that Tryfan plays for in Forest Row goes every year to play in a tournament with the town that Forest Row is twinned with, Milly-le-Foret.

 

All the kids plus Rhodri, Gordon and the other coach Mark slept on the floor of the school gymnasium while the other parents who came along stayed in hotels. 

Half term holiday

It has been a pretty quiet week here during half term. We did go out to dinner with Evie and her family at a nice pub in Chiddingly. Rhiannon, Evie, and their respective younger siblings had a fun time on the kid end of the table giggling about various things and looking at photos on phones. Then we left Rhiannon with them for a couple of nights and saw her again on Friday.

 During the time that Tryfan was home alone with us, I hatched a plan to paint a dead bush. Rhodri hates this particular bush and has been threatening to dig up the stump, but I quite like the artistic sticks that pop up from behind the little ex-pond feature. One day while Rhods was out, Tryfan and I busted out the paints and made these look a little bit happier.

Tryfan wasn't that stoked to be out here doing this, but too bad!