Since our move overseas in 2011, we have missed the chance to celebrate Thanksgiving in the US.  It's sad to miss out on our families (and the days off!), but we've taken the chance to bring this tradition with us to our new homes.  Once we moved to London, we discovered a great community of Americans and took to celebrating in a big way!

The tradition started in 2013 with a group of 25 of us travelling out to Dartmoor National Park for a weekend at Bovey Castle.  For 2014, we took it further and travelled to Cork, Ireland to celebrate.

While I had been to Ireland before, it was Paul's first trip and I think he may have been more excited about Ireland than the big Thanksgiving!

The first stop of the trip was a group tour and tasting at the Jameson Distillery nearby our hotel.  While I'm not a whiskey fan, it was interesting to see the process and the history there.








On our last day in Ireland, we both wanted to get in some proper sightseeing.  Paul had researched the area and the drive around the Ring of Kerry, but since we didn't have time to do it all, we picked the biggest sight - the Blarney Castle.




While the castle has an impressive history, including requests from Queen Elizabeth to take possession of the castle, it is most famed for the one stone within it - the Blarney Stone.  It's not entirely certain where it came from, but thousands (or more!) have made the trip to the castle to kiss the blarney stone in order to help them become more eloquoent speakers.  Before arriving, I was expecting a stone on display with a queue up to give it a quick peck.

Once we arrived at the top of the castle, I saw the reality.  The stone is built into the castle battlements - in the past, people were simply lowered to kiss it. Now, to ensure that everyone who kisses it lives to tell the story, they've built in protective bars and have a friendly staff member hold on as you give it a smooch!


So with great feast with friends and gaining the gift of gab, we called is a successful Thanksgiving. This year may not have been quite as exotic, but is certainly exciting as we enjoy it as a family, with my sister and a friend from the States visiting.  We certainly have a lot to be thankful for!

When we were planning our trip to Cambodia and Thailand, I kept hoping, hoping, hoping that our trip would overlap with the Loy Krathong Festival. This is the famous lantern festival, known to most only because of the gorgeous photos with thousands of laterns lighting up the sky. The hard part about visiting is that the dates aren't released very far in advance, as they are based off a lunar calendar, so it could be completely up to luck if you make the festival.

Our luck? The festival was the week before we arrived!! However, for tourists like us, they also do an international festival with a set date which coincided with our trip - unlike the normal festival, there are tickets which sell out months in advance and had sold out when we booked our tickets.  I put my name on a waiting list and hoped for the best.

Even without the festival, Chiang Mai, home of the Yi Peng (or Loy Krathong) festival, was full of excitement during our days there. On the first night, we wandered the streets, which were full of people, parades, singing and lights! We found our way to the river and purchased some floating lanterns, made wishes and set them free.  The night was raining, making it hard to keep the lanterns lit and making slush of the ground. We set up shop at an outdoor beer festival to take it all in.




Our friends were leaving the last day, while we were continuing our stay by another night. We decided to wake up early for a bit of a cultural exploration and took a tuk tuk out to see Wat Prathat Doi Suthep. In addition to the temple being beautiful, it is situated on top of Doi Suthep mountain, giving great views over the city, so we got an early start hoping to catch the sunrise over the city.










That evening we decided to skip the celebrations in order to better explore Thai food with a cooking class. For our first stop, we hit the markets to find the fresh ingredients we would need for all of our recipes.  The markets were busy, filled with people shopping for their evening meals, and full of unusual fruits and veggies. I had my eye out for the famed durian fruit (said to reek of fish and is banned from many hotels and planes), but it was out of season so I was either fortunate or unfortunate depending upon your stance on the smelly fruit.



After our shopping, we headed back to the site to cook up our evening meal. It was quite the feast! We started with spring rolls, headed over to soup (coconut and tom yum), then made our main meals (pad thai and stir fried hot basil). For our dishes, we even made our own curry, grinding up fresh green chilies to make the paste. With our enthusiastic grinding, Paul managed to get some in his eye, rendering him out of commission for the rest of the grinding, and making me a bit hesitant to finish up the job! The finished product was worth it though - so delicious. We tried recreating the pad thai at home once we got back, only to find it just wasn't as good. Was it our cooking or the lack of farm fresh ingredients? I'd like to think our cooking wasn't to blame!



Despite the commercialness (and even inauthenticity compared to the real event), it was moving and magical. I can only imagine sitting in on the real deal.  After we lit our first lanterns, we stood back to take it all in before lighting a few more lanterns to send our wishes and prayers up.  As the lanterns slowed, excitement began again when the fireworks started.  It made a beautiful display against the backdrop of a sky lit with lanterns. I don't think I could have asked for a better ending to our time in Thailand and it's an image that is etched forever into my mind - how could it not be?

While a new baby means I'm not getting as much sleep as I'm accustomed too, it means I get a lot more time to catch up on television and movies during all those late night, early morning, midday, afternoon and evening feedings.

In the first month, I'd watched all of How I Met Your Mother, Call the Midwife, and several movies including Pride and Prejudice (old and new).  It was then I realised it had been almost exactly a year since I had struck out like Elizabeth Bennet in the Peak District of England and I had yet to write about it. Call it baby brain, call it pregnancy fatigue, but either way, I've fallen seriously behind on the blog in the last year!

On to the Peak District though. I've always been an Austen fan, even in high school. I remember curling up on the tiny sofa at my friends house (3 of us on what was surely meant to fit no more than 2 people) and watching the best Pride and Prejudice, the BBC version of course. In those days it was VHS, so we had to get up every hour to pop in each of the five tapes. If we were short on time, we'd skip ahead to the 4th and 5th tapes since that's the best part anyways.

When a friend came to England to visit who is also a Pride and Prejudice fan, we decided to head north to see some of the stately homes for ourselves.

While a car is definitely helpful in the area, we decided to take the train first to Sheffield rather than fight London traffic getting out of town on a Friday afternoon. We stayed in the city and really only had time to hit up the pub, where we couldn't decide if we were insulted or flattered that they didn't consider us to look 18, so had to be IDed.  We were happy to get out the next day and start off in the country.



Our first stop was Chatsworth House, but we had a little drive to get there.  In the films, you see the beautiful, green rolling countryside and it didn't disappoint during our visit.  Whether it was sheep grazing on a hillside, beautiful rock walls along the lanes or oceans of grass, green from the rain, there was something beautiful everywhere we looked.  The lanes were a bit narrow though, so bravo to my friend for navigating the unfamiliar terrain on the other side of the road! She was such a trooper for driving the whole trip.




Chatsworth House dates back to the 16th century (although there was a manor house before that) with the Cavendish family who still reside in the house today as it has been passed down through the generations. It is odd to think of these as family residences, the objects as someone's prviate art collection, rather than the museum associated with historic homes.  The collections inside held everything from rocks, to plates, to the usual sculpture and paintings.



While the insides were lovely, we were excited to check out the gardens, especially since it was a lovely sunny day.  We successfully navigated the maze, past water features and then around to the back for a look down the long lawn at the familiar facade.




Except on this occasion, the facade wasn't so familiar. Chatsworth House is familiar as Pemberley from the BBC Pride & Prejudice, and you probably recall the fountain out on the lawn as you get a beautiful look at the facade.  Except during our visit, there was a temporary contemporary art feature on with rocks and teeny tiny little snakes, rabbits, birds and other creatures spread out amongst the area.  Slightly disappointed, we still circled around looking for the scandolous sculptures of men and women hidden among the rocks.



The next day, we headed further further west just to the outskirts of the Peak District to visit Lyme Park. This is a hunting estate also dating back to the 16th century, owned by the Legh family until it was donated to the National Trust in the 1940's. Can you imagine growing up in a place like one of these?



After seeing Pemberly, we figured this was a perfect way to round out the trip as the setting of the oh so imfamous lake scene from the BBC Pride and Prejudice (so famous in fact they erected a 12 foot statue in the Serpentine in Hyde Park for a short display). The grounds were beautiful and on a sunny day full of everyone with their dogs on walking holidays. We walked around the house, but decided not to trek out to the lake itself, which was a bit further set out from the house.





Then, like most weekend trips, it was over too soon and we were back to London, and like most of 2014, I was heading off somewhere else the next day.  The Peak District has plenty more to offer though, so it may require hauling Paul, Belle and the mini Tart back out there for a visit!