2024 travel roundup

Hello my dear followers! How are things? I think this is the part where I make my excuses for how little I’ve posted in 2024 and vow that 2025 will be much better but is that actually likely? I suppose we shall see.
It’s strange to think that once upon a time I used to post here on a weekly basis, how did that ever happen!?

but maybe 2025 will be better?

In all honesty, 2024 was quite a strange year. Those of you on other social media platforms (“there are others beyond WordPress Jason!?”) will have seen me talk about this at the beginning of the year but life has kind of stood still for most of the year.

We decided back around March time that things weren’t working in England and that Haleigh would move back to the States permanently, which happened in the summer, and now we get to go through all the fun of the immigration process again to get me over to the US permanently.

I don’t envy the process on anyone and we’ve found ourselves doing it in both directions. It’s frustrating, it’s time-consuming and it’s expensive. To the American’s credit, it seems much cheaper going in that direction but the process seems like it’ll probably take longer to get me over there.

I’ll touch on the epiphany moment of making the decision later in the post but we made the decision much earlier in the year and I think because I’m naturally an optimistic and positive person, mentally I’d kind of placed myself in my new life across the pond. My genuine feelings were those of excitement.

The problem with placing yourself somewhere mentally is that in actuality, nothing has changed almost nine months later. I’m conscious people have it much worse and we have no real cause for complaint but life does feel like it’s a bit on pause at the moment. We’re sitting waiting for a stranger to make a decision on our case – “is this person going to be a good ex-Pat or a bad immigrant?” – fine line, isn’t it?

In the meantime I’m living a day-to-day that feels a bit arbitrary and the knock-on effect is that 2024 has been fine at best. It’s a struggle making longer-term plans when they lay elsewhere but you don’t know when that’ll be.

Anyway, getting back on track with the topic of this post. I figured I’d make my overdue blog return to stick with a yearly tradition of an annual roundup of all things travel. Despite a “doom and gloom” feel to this post so far, looking back at my 2023 travel roundup I’d like to think that we did much of what I’d expected and hoped that we would do this year.

We can always hope for more travel and more adventure but during 2024 we managed to see a little more of the UK, visit somewhere that neither myself or Haleigh had been to and naturally we also returned to Washington – one of us with a one way ticket but I’ll get to that shortly!

Here’s a little glimpse at 2024!

February – York
With both of us working the Monday-Friday life, it felt nice to take a Friday to have a long weekend somewhere. We considered a few different options, some more budget-friendly than others and we eventually agreed upon going up to York for a long weekend.

In theory this was a great idea, York is an incredible city and one that everyone should visit at some point. I was keen to show it off to Haleigh but truthfully our timing wasn’t the greatest!

Firstly it fell around that time of the year that kids had a week’s holiday here in the UK. I’m sure I appreciated it plenty during my educational years but do we really need to let the little rascals have so much time off throughout the year? To further exacerbate our woes, I’d neglected to realise at the time that our little weekend away in York actually overlapped with the annual Vikings festival in good ol’ Jorvik.

You could make a case for that being excellent timing or terrible timing I suppose. On the one hand you could make a case that a Vikings festival is the best time to visit York – the city was inundated with Vikings and entertainment throughout the weekend but simultaneously it was horrendously busy everywhere we went so also a pretty crazy time to be in York.

Despite the crowds and the typical English weather, we made the best of our time in York. It’s still a phenomenal city and the likes of the York Minster and York’s Castle Museum are worth a visit at any time of year. However it’d be lovely to go back and explore more peacefully when the likes of the Shambles aren’t.. well, a shambles!

We also had the misfortune of the weather. One of the things I’d hoped we could do was take a river cruise along the River Ouse but with the torrential downpour, all fucking year, the city was flooded and consequently we had to settle for a city bus tour instead.

However it was still nice to get away and show off one of England’s finest cities to Haleigh on her furthest trip North in the World!

The Algarve – Portugal
“It’s not that bad” is how I’d often find myself describing the weather here in England. I think it’s vastly exaggerated how bad the weather is in England, much in the same way people speak about Seattle and yet every time I go to Washington I arrive to find blue skies and beautiful sunsets. Where’s this mythical Seattle weather people speak of?

I leap to England’s defence, I promise people it’s not that bad and how is my patriotism rewarded? With endless rain. I think we had about 500 days of rain last year!

“erm Jason, I don’t think a year has that many days?”

Well, I stand by it. The weather this past year has been bloody miserable. You hear extreme headlines of there being “too many people in boats” and yet it’s not the pesky immigrants they’re writing about, it’s your every-day commuter that have abandoned their cars and started rowing to work because of how much rain we’ve had in the last couple of years.

“Who’s exaggerating now?”

Look, it’s not just me saying it. Here’s an article suggesting it was the wettest 18 month period since records began or this article suggesting England was preparing for its wettest summer in 100 years or how we suffered the wettest September for a century. The facts back it up! It has rained and rained and rained and rained and.. you get the point.

Rained!

For a multitude of reasons, we went in to 2024 wanting a holiday. A proper holiday at that. A long distance relationship has meant a lot of our annual leave has been taken up by Transatlantic adventures to visit the other or family or whatever. We squeezed some small, local trips in to 2023 but one of my hopes for 2024 was to visit somewhere that wasn’t Washington State. I love it but I was desperate to just go anywhere else.

Haleigh herself was in much need of a break and we decided we’d chase the Winter sunshine and get away for a full week of sunshine (“what’s that!?”) and relaxation.

We pondered a few options. Well, actually, I mostly narrowed down the options as my knowledge of European getaways was naturally a little more extensive than Haleigh’s. There was a temptation to look further flung than Europe but with just a week’s holiday I think Europe made sense.

It’s surprising how many coastal destinations aren’t necessarily good beach destinations. We eventually whittled down our options to a few select destinations but the Algarve looked increasingly more appealing plus friendly to the budget.

Haleigh had never been to Portugal before. I’d been to Lisbon ten years prior and loved my first impressions of Portugal but I was excited to visit a part of the country that I’d never visited either.

I’ll blog about it in more detail at a later date but we picked really well. The Algarve is beautiful, the beaches are out of this world and we had the perfect week of relaxation! I’d thoroughly recommend it and this was sadly, probably one of the happiest weeks Haleigh had living in England.

Yeah, not an encouraging sign given we were in Portugal!

Norwich – Easter weekend
With other plans for later in the year, we decided we’d celebrate an early anniversary by taking a trip over the Easter weekend rather than using up annual leave for a midweek anniversary.

Norwich is another nice English city to spend some time in and weather-permitting we might have even squeezed in a trip to the coast for a day. It might not quite be the Algarve but the Norfolk coast is alright, isn’t it?

Alas, Haleigh got sick in the run up to our weekend away and we sadly ended up staying at home. In some ways this epitomised Haleigh’s time in England and felt much like the beginning of the end as far as English life was concerned.

London – May
However firstly, Haleigh had family from Utah coming to visit. Well, truthfully they were taking a cruise that mostly toured other places nearby but they set aside a few days to see us in England too.

Trip-planning for this probably wasn’t as smooth as we’d have liked and there were a few different things to consider which kind of left things more last minute than we’d have liked. Haleigh’s family based themselves in London and one such consideration was whether rather than fork out on expensive London accommodation, we actually travel back-and-forth between London and Peterborough each day.

However we didn’t really want all that faff so committed to spending a full week down in good ol’ London!

Again, this might be a trip I blog about in more detail but if you set aside the cost it’s a phenomenal place to spend a week isn’t it? I was born in London, it’ll always be home to me to some degree and I’m completely biased when it comes to judging London objectively but there’s nowhere like it.

I compared New York City to London in an older blog post and whilst NYC rivals it, I joked in that post that the one thing that gives London the edge is that NYC isn’t London – a completely fair ruling!

It was great to be able to show off “my city” but it was also great to just have some significant time there. The one downside to living so close to London still is that it rarely ever needs more than a daytrip to visit. I can go to the football or the theatre or go to see family or whatever and still be tucked up in my own bed the same night so why pay for accommodation usually? I can catch a late train home and be cosy in my own home.

This was a trip that really allowed us the luxury of enjoying London in all its glory – something we hadn’t really done since Haleigh’s first trip to England.

I didn’t see much point in basing ourselves on the outskirts of London, if we were going to spend a week in the capital I didn’t then want to be spending an age commuting in and out of the city. So we plumped for accommodation in central London – the Paddington area to be precise which proved to be a good base for our time in London.

From there the possibilities were endless. You’ll never run out of things to do in London but a week is also a long time to actually really enjoy it. We experienced a few different things over the course of a week that I’ll write about at a later date but the most important thing was my extended family had enjoyed their time in England.

Whitby – June
We had one final adventure left before Haleigh said farewell to England. Myself, Haleigh, my parents, sister and brother-in-law had made plans for a weekend up in Whitby in Yorkshire! It’s not somewhere Haleigh had been before and additionally wasn’t somewhere I’d been before either so we were looking forward to a nice summer weekend up in Whitby.

Naturally, summertime in England doesn’t really count for anything. You’re just aswell booking in December or January and hoping for blue skies. We’d got quite lucky in London for the week but it was mostly grey and overcast skies up in Yorkshire!

Nevertheless we still made the best of it and it wasn’t too bad (“you keep saying that!”) weather wise. Truthfully dreary days by the coast are the best times to visit, for some reason they appear to be much more popular on sunnier and warmer days?

Anyway, Whitby’s lovely. We made time to visit the Abbey whilst we were up there, brushed up on our knowledge of Dracula and Bram Stoker and also took a rather anti-climatic boat ride out to nowhere but it was a nice weekend away with the family and a good opportunity to spend some time together whilst all six of us remain in the country and perhaps it’ll be the last time we’ll do such a trip.

Washington State – August
There was a touch of irony and coincidence in the timing of this trip but we moved “the immigrant” back home on the 1st of August. In the very same week the UK were hosting country-wide anti-immigration demonstrations and just generally losing their damn minds. Riots and lootings and just general destruction spreading across the country from the *checks notes* patriots.. ?
Nothing says “I love my country” more than wreaking havoc on your own doorstep!

It’s such a weird mind-fuck having Haleigh’s family asking her what it was about England she didn’t like and simultaneously sitting there myself thinking I’ve never been more ashamed of my country. England is a lovely country but it’s harder making that argument when the growing number of Reform racists are running riot.

I wrote a satirical blog post over a year ago joking that myself and Haleigh would be crossing the Atlantic on a dinghy and somehow both countries hatred of immigrants and foreigners seems worse now than it was when I wrote that post.

Anyway, I’d done my civic duty and helped remove one immigrant from the country for good. My reward for such patriotism was getting to spend some time in Washington State. You might potentially call it a holiday of sorts.

It was nice to be back in Washington temporarily. We didn’t do anything particularly exciting but 2024 saw the return of the annual family BBQ and it was nice to see so many of Haleigh’s family again. We did some of the more mundane “moving home” kind of things that needed doing now Haleigh was back but overall it was a nice time away and I even got a glimpse of what a summer looks like in places other than rainy, little England.

Unfortunately only one of us were making the trip back to England as Haleigh began to re-settle back in Washington and we began the arduous immigration process all over again.

One day we’ll eventually be in the same place at the same time but alas that chapter isn’t written yet!

Washington – November
Now this was obvious, wasn’t it? Thanksgiving number five! With the exception of 2020 for obvious reasons, I’ve managed to make it to Washington for Thanksgiving every year since my first in 2019!

An extra holiday is an absolute perk to marrying an American. Obviously it shouldn’t be the sole reason you marry someone but it doesn’t hurt to have extra perks. I always love returning to my second home for Thanksgiving each year.

Unfortunately my annual leave seemed to disappear quite quickly this year and looking back it’s hard to see where it went exactly but this was the hand I had been dealt, I could only return to Washington for a week. Nowhere near long enough but it is what it is.

Weirdly, having applied for a spousal visa at this point I’d anticipated a much more interrogative arrival in Seattle for this trip but no.. Naturally I’d given myself plenty of time in the layover I had and it was one of the quickest ever arrivals I’ve had Stateside.

“Why are you here?”
“I’m spending Thanksgiving with my wife and her family.”
“Where’s your wife?”
“She lives here?”
“Where do you live?”
“In England”
“Why…?”

I don’t know mate, for shits and giggles. What do you mean why?

Seriously, there was just something in the tone of his question that was almost comical. “You’re apart? I mean that makes no sense dude. You should just be together!”

If only it were that simple! Who do I speak to to make this guy the head of immigration?

Pleased with a suitable answer less sarcastic than those going on in my brain, he waved me on through and I was back in Washington!

As ever, the week went far, far too quickly but it was nice to be back in Washington and of course good to be reunited with Haleigh even if only temporarily. Hopefully Mr Border Patrol officer receives his fully-deserved promotion but until such a time we continue to wait.

Local stuff
That just about sums up the bigger trips of the year. I’d say Portugal was the highlight, it is a really special part of the world and certainly one of the best trips we’ve taken together.

I feel like my online presence was much less in 2024 across all platforms but beyond the above, I’ve still been trying to make the best of the year and living my life in England. There were bigger plans for the year that perhaps didn’t pan out as planned but this was a year where I squeezed in more volunteering. I rediscovered a love of some hobbies and discovered others that really aren’t for me.

All in all, my year wasn’t bad and I know others in the world have much more to worry about but fingers crossed for better things to come in 2025!

So.. 2025 plans?
Look, some of this is visa-dependent. We submitted our application in mid October so we’re almost three months into the process. We’ve been advised it could take anywhere up to two years so it’s impossible to say when it’ll happen for us, we’ll keep hopeful that it’ll happen in 2025 but it’s out of our hands.

One goal is obviously to save some money. Whenever it does happen, I don’t want to be heading to Washington penniless but there’s that fine balance between saving all of my money and dying of boredom in the process.

I don’t want to be financially irresponsible and reckless but whilst we are waiting, I still need to maintain a life here in England.

As far as travel is concerned, I’ll obviously visit Washington at some point this year. Haleigh is hopeful to visit England later in the summer too so we’ll still see eachother albeit not as much as we’d like.

More ambitious travel plans, I’m craving a bit of Winter sunshine again. I need to figure out if there’s wiggle room in the budget to take a holiday but I’m tempted nonetheless. Haleigh doesn’t have the annual leave / PTO to join me but I want a little bit of sunshine. I’d be tempted to return to the Algarve again but if I return without Haleigh, that’ll likely end in divorce so I’ll have to consider other alternatives!

I’m also really, really tempted to get back to Finland. I want to see more of the country and it’s calling my name.

Truthfully though, I have no plans other than visiting Washington at some point but I’ve been to Washington so many times that it isn’t quite scratching that itch and desire to travel and see the world.

I suppose watch this space!

Anyway, I’ll hopefully blog more this year so watch that space too. Until next time!

Jason