I Don't Want a Holiday in the Sun (so I'll go to England instead.)

Today marks exactly three months remaining in my time in France. Ironically, I’m currently in England. The reason for this is because the French school systems have two weeks of vacation every two and a half months. Which is amazing. So I’m currently spending my week of vacation at a friend’s house in Cumbria. We’ve spent a few days exploring the nearby attractions. Hat and her family live in a quite rural town where the roads are wild and unpredictable and before we left I was warned by everyone to expect an intense ride. Growing up in small town USA, I felt that they were being dramatic. But even with my iron stomach, I admit to feeling a little green after a few times on the roads.

So for our first destination: the Lake District. This is an area of many lakes linked with forests, mountains, and lake towns. This is quite an extensive place where you most certainly need a car to explore. We spent two days experiencing this area and we only managed to see a fraction of it.

The first lake we explored was Lake Windermere. This is the largest lake in England and stretches over nine miles. I was told that in Britain it either rains or looks like it’s about to rain. We managed to enjoy a day where it only looked like it would rain!

Another fun opportunity I had was to work at the annual “Skelton Sevens” netball tournament. Before this, I’d never heard of netball. It’s a bit like basketball except easier for me to understand. Hat’s mum works at the elementary school where they needed a few extra hands for the event. I got the esteemed honor of working the drinks and biscuits table where I received some help from the kids who weren’t involved in the tournaments. It was a great day and a really fun experience.

Another day we went to yet another lake town! This time Keswick where we were hoping to rent a rowboat for a better view of the park (and a light workout.) Unfortunately the lake wasn't open for the season until next week so we enjoyed the view from the docks and had some fun with the local wildlife.

Although we didn't get to go out on a boat we decided to play a game of crazy golf which is basically mini golf except their courses are made of cement and rocks rather than the American-style felt courses. The second hole took me 11 strokes (I attest this horrible score to me getting better acclimated with the English style golf) but I managed to pull off second place! Not too bad I’d say.

In town, there was a quite renowned museum known as the Puzzling Place. It’s full of optical illusions and explanations as to how they work. Really a cool place!

Since this is vacation, and essentially this trip is just a week-long sleepover, we decided to have an entire day spent on the couch watching Friends and playing the London Game until we went to the pub for some drinks in the evening. I’d call that a successful day! And an excellent ending to a successful trip.