Holiday On My Own - Part Two - What I did and learnt about myself.

I put lots of pictures up in my last blog showing where I went on my first solo holiday.  So what did I do with myself for 5 whole days by myself......





I dipped in and out the pool from morning till evening!













I did lots and lots of reading.

I did a fair amount of knitting, this was however abruptly ended on the third day by me dropping a knitting needle on the decking and watching it disappear between the gap!

There was a little bit of sketching

I did take my watercolours with me, however inspiration to pick those up did not strike.

I also had a few short walks around the grounds and in the village, though this had to be done first thing in the morning before it got too hot!

My husband had  lent me his MP3 player, so especially while I was knitting, I was also listening to music.  The music for this holiday was

1. Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
2. Song from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears
3. A selection of Robert Palmer tracks.

And that was about it, though I did also learn some more about myself.

• I find it very hard to stop planning out my days!  I wrote a little about my health recently here.  This post explains a lot about why I have to plan out my days when I am in the throws of family life.  What I hadn't realised was how hard it it to shake off the habit when I don't need to be considering anyone else's needs of me during the day.  It wasn't until day three that I clocked that I was still doing this.  I was sat by the pool and going over and over in my head  what my plan for the day was going to be, fitting in swimming and eating when I suddenly  realised that I didn't HAVE to do either of those things if I didn't want to!  More importantly I certainly did not need to plan for them.  It was such fun to find myself making the decision to do what I felt like from one moment to the next, rather than having it planned.  So meals happened when I was hungry, which was not much as I was doing so little!  Swimming happened when I felt like it.  I showered and went to bed when I was tired.  It was all so liberating.

• When I stop talking with people I seem to also be able to quiet the voices in my head.  Over the 5 days I spoke only to be polite or to acknowledge the presence of others.  Once an older chap tried to get me to sit and chat over food, but I was able to politely decline his invitation and stay by myself.  I can only believe that this is the reason the internal voices in my head (except the organising ones as explained above) stopped too.  In fact the negative voices that seem to often abound within me appeared to go on holiday too!  Instead I was able to watch folks, creating stories in my head about them - this was lots of fun!  I also spent a lot of time being thankful for the moments.  Like the moment when I was lounging in the pool and it suddenly dawned on me that I was so happy with that moment.  If I never got to have that moment again, that would be fine, no one can take it away from me.

• I love the liberation of being independent.  I guess because of my health and the needs of my family in my day to day routines I am always dependent on help.  This might be in the form of husband or friends doing lifts in the evening for my children to attend their out of school activities.  Relying on my husband and children to keep the house clean and doing the shopping and sometimes the cooking.  Relying on others to get things for me (particularly from upstairs at home!).  These might sound like small things but they are things that I just cannot do independently.  While away, a lot of things were taken care of for me.  The room was tidied and cleaned everyday.  Breakfast only involved a short walk to the restaurant. Meals only required me to request them!  I now have a slightly better understanding of when my children used to get mad at me when they were little because they wanted to do stuff  'by myself'!

• The internet is fabulous.  Being able to have short written conversations with my family every day meant I never felt lonely.  I knew that I could skype or chat properly if necessary but just having wifi meant that I was fully in control of when I conversed.  

I have returned home with a great feeling of accomplishment as well as feeling very relaxed and ready to do 'normal' life again.  If I get the chance to do this again I will jump at it.  If I don't, then I shall know that I did it and loved it and will always be very grateful for it.

Many Blessings to you x.

Holiday On My Own - Part One.

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to go away last week.  My husband had holiday he needed to use up at work and I desperately wanted some more sunshine after the on set of Autumn here in England.  We had no one to watch the children so that we could go away together so I decided I would just have to go without my husband!  I put a request out on facebook to see if any friends fancied coming along but knew there was probably no one who would be able to because of family commitments.  So there was only one option left for me, I would have to go alone! 

Now I could have taken myself off to visit friends, I have done this is the past, but the craving for some sunshine was overwhelming and the thought of not having to talk to anyone and not disturbing any ones sleep (I appear to have a terrible snoring problem - so my husband tells me) was too appealing.  So I spent a whole afternoon and evening doing some research.

I started off by looking at some big tour operators at last minute package holiday deals.  Most of these were to Turkey and Bulgaria, these are longish flights for a short holiday and from airports some distance away mostly in the middle of the night!  So after a while I got disillusioned with this idea and decided to start looking at where I could go from our local airport - Southampton, it is a very small airport and one I know that with my reduced mobility I would be able to get around.  The only place that sounded appealing was Faro in Portugal.  Now I have been there before (about 20 years ago!) and knew the airport was small there also.  The flight is only 2 1/2 hours and I could get a return flight for under £200, this looked promising.   I looked at the 10 day weather forecast which went right up to the time I would be going and that also looked ideal.  Next I searched on www.booking.com for accommodation.  I have used this website lots of times, including for our big trips over the last few years and have never yet had a problem with anywhere we have stayed.

I love the ocean and so began my search along the coastline, but to no avail, either there were no vacancies or the accommodation had a low satisfaction score and the reviews were not great.  So I started to look in land a little, still near to the airport.  I needed somewhere small where I was going to feel safe.  I found a lovely little B&B in a small village called Estoi, this seemed to fit the bill and there was a very nice review from a lady who had stayed there on her own.  So as it had free cancellation available I booked my flight and then booked this accommodation after my hubby had come in from work and given his approval.

I was so excited that night, I couldn't sleep and decided to switch my kindle on and look at the village where I was going to be.  It sounded and looked on the map very small and compact, quite perfect.  There was an old Palace which I researched a little more and discovered that it had been turned into a hotel - oh my, it looked beautiful!  I saved the page, turned off and finally got to sleep.

The following morning I looked again at this palace, I looked for it on booking.com, it was quite pricey but then I had got my flight much cheaper than hubby thought I would.  The reviews were great, I looked at trip adviser, here again the reviews were great.  I then checked out the prices on some other sites including the hotels own and decided this was where I was meant to go.  The small B&B's only downsides had been it only had a small plunge pool and I would have to find somewhere in the village to eat.  This other place had a lovely big swimming pool (plus a small indoor one to!) and a spa, bar and restaurant!  I was convinced so the Pousada Estoi was booked, the B&B cancelled, and I only had a week to wait before I set off!

Do you want to see some pictures?  

Within 6 hours of leaving home, I took this photo as I settled by the pool :o), I had arrived by 11am with no trouble at all with the journey, easily finding the taxi rank at the airport and giving them the piece of paper with the address on it.  I couldn't check into my room straight away but was able to take my swimming costume out of my case, get pool towels from the reception, leave my case with them and go and get changed in the spa.  Some time after two o clock I went back to reception checked in and got my room key, they had already delivered my case to the room :o).

That evening I booked myself into the restaurant and had the most gorgeous view, watching the sunset.  The service was the only thing that I would say let the hotel down at all, it was terribly slow.  Even that was not so big a deal when you were in such beautiful surroundings though.

I too, myself off on a little walk around the village a couple of times.  It has been a very long hot summer and there was very little colour around, but I did snap these beautiful trees and flowers, scattered around.

I also went and found the little B&B, it did look very nice but I was very satisfied with where I eventually chose.  This is the church in the main square opposite the B&B, it rang it's bell at five minutes too the hour and then again on the hour - I could hear this from the poolside!

The grounds of the Palace stretched over a large area and was separated in many places by small roads like this one....

 I loved how this place was surrounded by pots of plants, oil containers and all sorts were used for pots...

 more beautiful flowers.....

This would have been the main entrance to the Palace....

There is still a lot of work to be done and you cannot walk around a lot of the grounds you just get these glimpses....

This orange grove is what I had outside the balcony of my room....

 This is my favourite plant because it reminds me of my honeymoon in San Francisco, USA, bougainvillea....

The accommodation in the Palace is all in a new extension, however the rest of the Palace is also used, this is the large lounge......

This the smaller TV lounge/bar..

 And these are the beautiful gardens that you could walk around and are fully restored...

 There is still a lot of work being done and it is lovely to see that the trees are thriving....

These tea rooms at either side of the finished garden were full of beautiful fresco's and the colour of the glass was breathtaking.....

How clever to be able to use just a small variety of shrubs to give such vibrant colour is such a dry and arid landscape...

So would I do this again - you betcha!  I will let you know what I got up to with my 4 nights away (other than take these photo's) in my next post xxxxxxxxxx

Why New Zealand

So many people asked me before going away to New Zealand why we were going there and to be honest it felt quite strange saying that we were all going to stay with someone I had never met before!  I seem to be making a bit of a habit of this.  First I went and met a fellow blogger Katharine over in Boston MA, we had known each other on-line for quite some years before I went and met her.  We were friends before we met but this visit cemented our friendship which continues to thrive! In fact my husband is going to meet up with her in November this year, but that is a whole other story!

Next we (not on my own this time) went and met another blogger that Katharine introduced us to, Susanne over near San Diego, CA. It really is so nice to be able to finally hear the voice that you read and share conversations with!

So back to the why New Zealand story.  First we have to roll the clock back several decades to when my husband was a teenager, he and a friend Howard decided to go inter-railing together around Europe.  I suppose in it's day it was the equivalent to taking a gap year, only this was done during the summer holidays and was a very cheap way of visiting lots of places!  They lost contact and then thanks to the joys of facebook they were reunited a few years ago.  At some point the two boys had a conversation that led me and Howard's wife Lyn into becoming facebook friends and playing scrabble daily with each other.

Lyn and I started to chat more and more as we played.  I discovered they had both been mental health nurses and Lyn had spent a lot of time doing adolescent mental health.  This is obviously a subject very close to my heart with my kinship caring saga with my niece, and on more than one occasion Lyn helped me to work out what my next steps were.

Then last year Howard came over to the UK on a visit to his family.  My husband Brian went up to his home town and met up with him for an evening and it seems they just picked up where they had left off all those years ago.  Howard made some comment about us going out to visit them - that may have been his biggest mistake.  I wonder how many times people say that not really meaning it???????

So, the rest is history, we decided to go for it.  The photo at the top shows Howard and Lyn on the far left with their daughter and then their son is over on the far right.  Next to their son on the far right are two more friends Paula and her daughter Bethany who came over from Australia to visit us.  Paula also knew Brian and Howard back in the teenage days when they were in a drama group together.  So there were many more years to catch up on there!  We have been fortunate to spend quite a bit of time with Paula and her ever growing family over the years and it was a very hard decision to go to New Zealand and not Australia on this visit, however, NZ it was to be and we were just thrilled that Paula brought Bethany over.

The photo below is of Lyn and I (we are wine tasting which must be why I am a bit blurred!), it was so lovely to give her a hug and to be able to thank her for being the pillar of support that she has been to me.  I couldn't believe that they had been living in NZ for about 15 years and had never visited a vineyard to do some FREE wine tasting.  So pleased we have sorted that out for them and jolly hope they go on to visit lots more - we only managed to do two.

Another friendship that I was also able to rekindle on this visit was with my lovely friend Sara.  We used to go to church together when we were both studying in West London.  I vividly remember her wedding to the lovely Brett (a kiwi) at the Salvation Army head quarters in central London.  It was only about 6 months after that wedding when we were about to get married that they moved over to New Zealand.  Since then we have kept touch every Christmas, we have spoken when Sara has been over in the UK but had not seen each other in the flesh for far too long.

Meeting her, Brett and their lovely children was just so good after all this time.  We have both been through tough times that neither of us had particularly shared with each other so there was an awful lot to catch up on.  But catch up we did and when I got Paula and Sara together it was lovely to go back over how we met, how Brett and Sara met and all the early days stuff over again.  Another wonderful spin off from this is the deep and meaningful emails we are now exchanging as we continue conversations about church and family.

So that is basically why we went to NZ.  I confess to hardly knowing anything about the country before going, except that a few friends had been and loved it.  My amazing husband spent so much time before we went doing all the research to decide where we would visit.  And he came up trumps with a brilliant itinerary!
It really is a most fascinating country and I would definitely like to get back and cover more, we were only able to do a very small bite.  I wonder how often people choose a holiday by the people they want to see rather than the country they want to visit!?!

The photo below is of my daughter Annie and Paula's daughter Bethany, I so pray that their friendship continues over the miles and that they get to share lots and lots of memories into the future.