Hello dear readers! Happy New Year! I hope you all had a lovely time over the holidays and hopefully you’re excited for the year ahead?
I didn’t blog a great amount in 2023, I don’t really know why but I just didn’t find motivation to do so regularly. I looked back and it appears that I only posted seven times in 2023!
You’d be forgiven for thinking that’s because I was traveling so frequently but that wasn’t really the case either. Haleigh finally got her visa and moved over to England in February 2023. Consequently I think much of 2023 was spent trying to help Haleigh get adjusted to life in England and the majority of our travels this year were largely spent back-and-forth between Washington.
Nevertheless, let’s have a little look at some of the adventure we did have this year!
Washington State – January 2023
This was a pretty whirlwind trip. As I said, Haleigh was finally moving to England in February so at the end of January I went over for what was little more than a long weekend.
My flight to Washington was on the 28th of January and on the 31st of January we’d be flying back to England (arriving on the 1st of Feb). It’s a long way to go for such a short trip and isn’t something I’d recommend haha. I don’t think I even really suffered from jetlag because it felt like by the time I’d arrived I was going home again.
I flew in to Seattle and Haleigh was based on the East side of the state in Walla Walla. It’s a long drive and not advisable in the Winter months if it can be avoided, the public transport is rubbish so my only option to get to Walla Walla was to fly. Sadly at some point Alaska Airlines dropped one of the two daily flights between the two cities (they’ve since re-introduced them) which meant the only flight out of Seattle on the 28th was before I’d arrived.
It meant I couldn’t get to Walla Walla until the 29th (to then leave on the 31st!) but the upside was I had a night to myself in Seattle. I like Seattle, it’s a fun city and somewhere I always enjoy having a layover. I booked myself a hotel downtown and decided I’d go and watch a NHL game for the first time. The NHL recently introduced a new team based in Seattle and it just so happened the timing would work out nicely for me to watch the Seattle Kraken for the first time!
Alas, my luck with sporting events in the US is pretty rubbish. Something inevitably almost always goes wrong and usually after I’ve already paid extortionate amounts to buy a ticket. Honestly, it is so expensive to go and watch live sport in the USA – not helped by every professional sports team in America seemingly selling tickets exclusively with ticket sites rather than selling them in-house (curse you Ticketmaster!).
It was only three months earlier I’d bought tickets to see the Washington Wizards in DC and my plans changed and similar misfortunes meant I missed this game too. My flight was delayed and meant I was going to arrive in Seattle later than planned.
How much of the game I would have missed is guesswork, maybe a minimal amount. At a push I might have even made kickoff but it was unnecessary stress and with baggage in hand it wasn’t worth all the fuss. In the end I bailed on going to the game and just met up with a friend earlier than planned for food and drinks which was a fun way to spend my night in Seattle.
The next morning it was back to the airport for a quick flight over to Walla Walla and a just-as-quick weekend before returning to England. It was a whirlwind weekend that barely counted as an adventure but still, it was nice to see a few familiar faces in Washington and of course those mountain views.
London – February 2023
Sometimes the “fun gods” are with you and sometimes against. My misfortune at missing the NHL game in Seattle was offset by some fortune here, albeit at my parents expense.
They’d been gifted tickets to do a tour of the Houses of Parliament in London but as the weekend drew near it became clear they wouldn’t be well enough to go. Consequently we went instead!
We’re fortunate to live close enough to London that it only needed to be a daytrip so not the longest of adventures this time around but it was nice to go and spend a few hours in London. The actual tour was also pretty good. It’s the first time I’d seen inside the parliament building and it’s particularly impressive with some incredible displays of artwork throughout.
It’s a good way to learn more about the history of the building and government in the UK. Definitely a tour worth doing and made for a fun afternoon in London.
Lincoln – April 2023
Myself and Haleigh finally got married in April 2022. A lot of the wedding planning, honeymoon included, was made much more difficult because of Covid. We got married in Washington and ended up spending our honeymoon down in Oregon.
One of the places we visited during that trip was Lincoln City, Oregon – a coastal town which we visited on pretty much the only good day of weather we had whilst in Oregon (we arrived to snow and returned to Walla Walla to find more of the white stuff in Washington too!.
So having visited Lincoln City, Oregon in April 2022, it felt a little fitting that our one year anniversary was then spent in the “other Lincoln” – the better known one perhaps!?
I’d personally been to Lincoln before, although given its proximity it’s perhaps a little shameful that I’ve only visited the once and a daytrip at that. However it was Haleigh’s first time visiting Lincoln and therefore an opportunity for some adventure in a new city on this little island.
We were only in Lincoln for a little over 24 hours. Short and sweet but it was nice to get away and enjoy all that Lincoln had to offer. Haleigh’s overall feelings about Lincoln were positive, probably helped by exploring its castle and seeing the Magna Carta – Lincoln housing one of only four copies!
Our anniversary meal was a bit of a bust – visiting a nice rooftop bar. The setting itself was lovely but largely letdown by the food and the slow service. We’d probably have been better off somewhere less fancy but it didn’t take the shine off an otherwise lovely time in Lincoln – definitely a city we’ll return to, although yet to do so.
Washington State – June 2023
You can’t keep us away for too long. One of Haleigh’s cousins, Jessica, was getting married which gave us a good excuse to return to Washington, celebrate and catch up with family and friends.
The wedding itself was up in the Spokane area. I’d been to Spokane once before, solo infact, but it was nice to go back and see more of the area. The highlight of the trip was getting together with everybody for the wedding of course, set in a beautiful location on the outskirts of Spokane.
After a weekend in Spokane, the rest of the trip was much more relaxed. It was nice to get back to Washington for a bit, see some of our favourite people and forget about work and other such responsibilities back in England. Eventually it was time to go home and we said our temporary goodbyes knowing we’d catch up again later in the year.
London & Peterborough – September 2023
Haleigh was now living in England which presents a great opportunity / excuse for many of the American folk to come and visit. We had our first visitors in September as Haleigh’s Aunt Gina and Uncle Rob planned for a short-stop in England at the end of their 3 week Italy adventure.
Having previously visited them in Portland, Oregon it was nice to switch roles and play tour-guide for the pair of them on their first visit to England. We didn’t have a huge amount of time together but we squeezed in an evening in London (for drinks), a day in London and then a day in Peterborough.
I love getting to show off England to people and having seen a little of London with another family member, I was keen to then show off some of the more touristy parts they hadn’t yet seen. After breakfast and a quirky house / museum visit we ticked off Covent Garden, Westminster before rounding off the afternoon with a river cruise from Westminster down to Tower Bridge. I’d seen and done it all before of course, as had Haleigh with the exception of Covent Garden but I truly never tire of exploring London and even revisiting the more touristy parts of London retains its charm.
The next day the four of us caught the train up to Peterborough – just shy of an hour its an easy daytrip and the rest of my family were keen to reunite with Rob and Gina too so eight of us got together for the afternoon.
Peterborough isn’t what I’d call a must visit by any means but having lived here for 25+ years now it’s still nice to show off its best bits. I gave Rob and Gina a brief tour of the small city centre before wandering over to the 900+ year cathedral – the jewel of the city and one with a tremendous amount of history.
You quite often hear of travelers suffering cathedral fatigue when on a long European trip such as theirs but their enthusiasm for Peterborough’s still shone through which was particularly pleasing after visiting the likes of Florence’s Duomo.
Our plans somewhat changed from that point and rather than go explore further we settled for an afternoon sat by the river enjoying the company, beers and food to follow. It was a short and sweet catchup but lovely to have American guests on English soil – hopefully more follow in their footsteps and we can show off even more of the country next time!
Jersey – October 2023
Speaking of cathedral fatigue, I’ve largely reached that same point with the USA. My parents took us on four family holidays to Florida growing up. Spanned over eight weeks between 1997 to 2008, I was certainly luckier than most in my childhood to get the opportunity to visit the USA but over 11 years it wasn’t overkill by any means. One state, largely based in one area of Florida and spread out over 11 years.
It was another eight years before I returned to the USA after that last Florida trip. In February 2016 I made the return to the USA and my first trip doing so solo – beginning my own American adventures and stories.
Since then there’ve been many trips to the USA. I have no regrets, it’s a wonderful country and I’m fortunate to have seen so much of it. The Pacific Northwest in particular is stunning and I’m lucky to have seen so much of it but one of my goals in 2024 is definitely to visit somewhere that’s “not the USA”.
Add it all up and I’ve now spent 45.5 weeks of my life in the USA – roughly, Given eight years ago that figure was only eight weeks it tells you all you need to know about how much time I’ve spent there in recent years. It works out as an average of between four and five weeks every year in the USA which is absurd really – particularly given I only receive five weeks of annual leave most years.
In that same period I’ve still visited Scotland, Ireland, Gibraltar, Spain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland & Greece so with the help of public holidays I’ve absolutely maximised my annual leave to get the best out of my travels but I’d be content with fewer trips to the USA.
There’ll always be a reason to go back and I expect we’ll visit at least once a year but I’m hopeful we’ll have more time to see other places too. Our only overseas trip this year that wasn’t to the USA was to Jersey.
Overseas when talking about a place so close to home and a British territory also feels a little exaggerrated but we did leave our little island so I guess you can call it overseas. We flew from Gatwick and by the time we were up in the air we were pretty much descending to land in the small island of Jersey.
This was a little similar to my plans for the Gibraltar trip in 2020. The reasons for that were largely Covid inspired leaving me little other options, on this occasion it was education. Haleigh started teaching in September which meant we were restricted to school holidays to go anywhere and we also didn’t plan anything particularly far in advance which further limited our options due to cost.
I was a little resigned to going away somewhere within the UK. Haleigh hasn’t actually seen much of it so that wouldn’t have been as negative as it sounds. However having given up hopes on a cheap European getaway I pondered if there were any alternatives to the UK and considered how expensive the Channel Islands might be and luckily found cheap flights and accommodation in Jersey – aided by an Easyjet voucher I’d been holding on to for a while.
Like Gibraltar, I’d never given much consideration to visiting Jersey before but the more we looked in to what it had to offer the more tempting it sounded and so we enjoyed a few days away on the little island of Jersey.
The only downside to an “island getaway” so close to England is that the weather in October isn’t too dissimilar to home. We actually lucked out with the weather being dry for most of our trip but it had been miserable in the days leading up to it so most things closed for the season and some of those earlier than scheduled which scuppered a few of our plans.
We still had fun though. Jersey was a nice place to escape to, we managed to see quite a good chunk of the island and it really is a pretty place – the beaches in particular are gorgeous.
It’s somewhere we enjoyed enough that we’d go back to but I think that’s partially because of some of the seasonal things that we missed out on. I think if we’d done more we’d possibly feel less inclined to go back, if we’d gone a month earlier for example I think it would have been a better trip but we still had a nice time away. Visiting somewhere new was particularly pleasing for me given our other adventures this year were all in places I’d visited previously.
Washington State – November 2023
and of course, we rounded off our year with a third trip to Washington! Before accepting her teaching job, Haleigh ensured we’d get a week away for Thanksgiving. I did joke I’d go with or without her – why should I miss out on Thanskgiving because of those pesky kids?
Fortunately as a one-off it wasn’t a problem and Haleigh was allowed to take unpaid leave to join me in Washington. All that talk about USA-fatigue is kind of disregarded for Thanksgiving. I don’t know that we’d ever do Thanksgiving and Christmas and it may be that some years we’d prefer to do Christmas stateside but I think this is a week I’d always make an effort to get back to Washington for.
This was Thanksgiving number four for me. With the exception of 2020 for obvious reasons, I’ve been to Washington every November since 2019. Good food, great people – what more could you wish for?
It was lovely catching up with everyone and of course returning to Washington itself. I’ve visited a lot in recent years and it is very much a second home for me – why Peterborough doesn’t have any mountains yet I don’t know.
As ever the time in Washington went far too quickly and then it was back to England for the festive period. I took Haleigh to her first panto which was something she had to experience for a first time (“oh no I didn’t” Haleigh cries).
Yeah, it didn’t go down particularly well unfortunately but where else are you going to get tap-dancing pandas performing on stage, right?
Anyway, that just about rounds up our year of travel!
2024 plans?Â
Honestly, I could probably repeat word for word what I said in last year’s roundup. We have nothing concrete planned yet but we’ll undoubtedly return to Washington at some point in 2024. Whether that’s for Thanksgiving, Christmas or some other reason is yet to be determined but we will return in 2024.
Beyond that I don’t know where we will end up this year but I don’t want Washington to be the only place we visit. We have some family from Utah visiting in May so we’ll definitely make time to see them as much as we can. Ideally we’ll also explore much more of the UK ourselves this year as there’s still plenty that Haleigh hasn’t seen and lots of places on this little island I’d like to visit too.
As far as outside of the UK is concerned, we’ll see what happens. There are plenty of ideas but all of these are budget-dependent of course. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of adventure to come this year.
Lastly, non travel-plans for 2024? First and foremost I’d like to get back to blogging regularly. Seven blog posts last year was a pitiful effort and I imagine most of those were early on in the year. I want to get back to blogging weekly if possible but let’s aim for at least once a month, shall we?
I want to build up my savings a bit this year too. Finding that balance between saving and still doing fun things is always difficult but saving for bigger things is definitely on my mind.
Covid certainly helped but it’s unimaginable to me that I ever had savings for a wedding back in 2022. I know there are many people worse off than myself but I haven’t been comfortable with where my finances have been for the past 18 months – very much living from one paycheck to the next. By no means am I content with where I’m at but I at least ended 2023 in my best financial position in quite some time. I’m hoping to maintain that going forward and start getting back to the pre-wedding level of saving.
The only other hopes for this year are just to enjoy it – make time for family, friends and doing more of the things that make me happy.
Anyway, I’ll wrap this up. Have a great 2024 everyone and hopefully you’ll be reading more from me as the year progresses!
Until next time,
Jason
Jason likes to travel 