Monday, 5 September, 2022 – Elias, Ian, and Kelsey traveled to Newcastle-on-Tyne today.
[2:29 PM, 9/5/2022] Elias: Hi we are Newcastle now. We have an Airbnb for the next 5 nights – different one for 4 after tonight – but all are really nice.
[2:30 PM, 9/5/2022] Me: How’s everyone feeling?
[2:31 PM, 9/5/2022] Elias: I’m not sure what we’re going to be doing but I think it’ll be nice to be in a smaller city and explore here. Ian and Kelsey are feeling much better, up and out at least which is nice. By the time we go to Amsterdam on the 13th they should be good.
[2:32 PM, 9/5/2022] Me: Good. I’m so glad they’re getting better. Thank goodness you are all together. And how nice to have a place to yourselves. I emailed a list of woofing sites. ❤️
Elias asked me to help find some potential woofing sites in Italy and I spent way more time than I intended scouring the farm pages. After the Nanterre debacle, I tried to find places that I could verify with a separate link, something to prove they are what they say they are. But it is hard to tell what is going to be a good fit. A small family or a group of families? Northern Italy, near Turin or Central Italy, near Siena? If it is remote, what they don’t provide every meal? Yeah, I spun out a little, trying to find the perfect place. I suggested to Elias that if he needs a desktop computer to search for woofing sites, he could go to the Newcastle Library. 😉
But before we leave London behind entirely, I am going to post Elias’s pictures of Westminster Abbey and Big Ben. As for the food, all I know is that Elias told David the “ethnic” food is cheaper than mainstay “English” food – and delicious, to boot.
The summer I turned 14, my grandmother took me to the Isle of Man, London, and Scotland. The trip was over a month long and memorable in many ways. Food was not among the highlights, I have to say. I honestly don’t remember a lot about the food except that the couple we stayed with in London, distant cousins of my grandmother’s whom I thought were VERY old, served mushy peas and some sort of tough, tasteless mystery meat at every dinner. Grandma and I bought peanut butter and crackers to eat in our room at their apartment in Whitechapel because the food was bland but also, there wasn’t enough of it! Mrs. Chamberlain served everyone from her seat at the end of the table and there was never enough for seconds. I never figured out how she could be so rotund and so parsimonious with our helpings of food.
