Pears at Painswick Rococo gardens
I have mentioned before that one of the difficulties about blogging is that I am always behind in telling you about what we've done . In actual fact, we have now been traveling through Europe for nearly three months and the dogs have visited five (!) countries with us. There are now old hat at this whole traveling thing . . . . but, three months ago, when we walked off the Queen Mary 2 onto English soil, it was our first experience traveling with the dogs and their first international adventure. Everything was new, confusing, and sometimes difficult.
Pears hanging over a fence
I'm telling you this because our travels have changed and, in some ways, the writing in this blog will change, as well. We have quickly figured out that we can't stay for three days here and three days there, as we did when we traveled through Africa and Asia. We go slowly, settling down in one place for weeks at a time, driving only one to two hours beyond our vacation rentals, and spending some of our days walking the dogs, making dinner, grocery shopping, doing laundry (a seemingly neverending task), and all those other mundane things that we all must do to live.
Berries on a tree
My dad is visiting us right now and he said that we are turning into "homebodies" though our home changes every few weeks. That's not a bad way to put it because we have realized that we can't zip through all the biggest sites in a country while we're traveling with the dogs. We spend a lot more time wandering through fields and forests, taking photographs of berries on trees and flowers set near brooks and rivers.
Sunset near Salisbury
We are still seeing a lot, touring around many of the big sites, and eating so much that sometimes we have to stop and take a "salad break" to keep our stomachs from expanding beyond their normal state. But, what we are seeing is different, closer, and more in depth. As you will see over the next few weeks as I write about our stint in the Cotswolds, England, it was there that we began to glimpse the joys and limitations of our new lifestyle.
