Days 98, 99, and 100. Yippee!!

Days 98, 99, and 100!!!! Oh my goodness. I hit day 100. How is this possible? Happy Day!! Day 98. Thursday. I'm enjoying being lazy too much. I made some errands for myself so that I could get out of the house. I've been wanting to try a cute cafe on the corner by my house. It was lovely. I rewrote some recipes/notes as I ate parsnip soup & crusty bread. Yummy. Then I headed to the bus stop to catch it, but it was cold & taking too long. I ended up walking to where I needed to go & never once did I see the bus. Glad I did not wait. TK Maxx (TJ in the states) did some shopping...and headed back to the bus station only to see it pulling away as I approached the needed to cross the walk. So I walked home. Yippy! It was fun to walk the route at night. Sunset is 450pm-ish here...so not much time for sunlight with a sunrise at 8am. If you want to get things done with the sun, you gotta get up early. After I dropped off my stuff I headed to the cinema to see "The Imitation Game." Fantastic and sad all in one film. I also decided I couldn't sit around for the next three days waiting for Wales so I booked train tickets, and a B&B for Saturday night. More on that later.  My landlady asked if I could give a months rent upfront (as she is leaving for well a month). I didnt know if my ATM would allow such a thing. I told her I would try tomorrow and see.

 Day 99. Friday. I cleaned my room. I swear every time I clean my room it still looks messy. I vacuumed, cleaned my bed linens. Everything. Then I decided to do a test run to a train station I had never been to, collect my tickets, and ATM it up. I was declined at the ATM three times. What the heck?!? I panicked thinking I was hacked and my money gone, but nope. They had put a security hold on my card because I was at the ATM two days in a row and that is not like my usual pattern. More than you needed to know, but it was a slow day. Came home, packed my things for the quick trip & for Wales as the window between trips is two hours. Not much time.

 Day 100. Saturday. I didn't even realize it was a day to celebrate until I laid down to write this. I packed up my messenger bag (my lightest travel pack ever) and headed to the train station to go to.... Southampton, England. I have ancestors on my mom's side that were born and died here. I don't know why I am nostalgic for family history over here, but heck it gives me something to explore. First stop, I found a walking tour of the city online (Oxfords was good so i figured why not do another one). I was the only person to show up for the tour plus the guide, so it was a personal tour of the old city. This place has serious serious history. It has been around forever. The wall that once guarded the city on the seashore is now in the lower end of town, as during the depression they drained the water to make jobs and build more things. Then the town was bombed during WWII. Not much was left after that, a few buildings survived. It was amazing to see the really old mixed in with the new.

Next up the cemetery. I saw in my FamilySearch.org account a specific church that one of my relatives is buried at....problem is there are two churches with the same name. I contacted one of the churches (they have a website, just not a 'find a headstone' section) on Thursday and they wrote back telling me most likely it was the other one due to the date of the burial. So I headed off out of town on the bus to one cemetery, looking for the oldest headstones, of which most were unreadable, falling over, or fallen over. I liked on the headstones of some it said "went to sleep" vs d.i.e.d. No workers were there for me to ask for help, so I just wondered about the many history books of lives in that place. I wondered around a long bit, called to my ancestors and was satisfied I was in their city, and that a headstone didn't matter too much. I grabbed some lunch before determining to go to the other St. Mary's church as I had some time to see if I could read any of their headstones. They were older and moss covered. Still sweet to see history.

 I headed to the B&B for a break/rest/rejuvenate. I watched the last half of "Nativity!" with Martin Freeman. Funny. Then just as I was debating on dinner, UK's version of Dancing with the Stars came on....I haven't watched much of it, but it was the finals, so I decided to watch. Seriously love how there are NO commercials on a lot of shows here. It is dance, results, dance, results for 90 minutes straight through! And being that this country is all in one time zone, they opened the phone lines for voting, an hour later they are back with the results & a champion! Crazy! No prolonged days getting results. I'll stop talking about TV. I headed out during said hour break to get some dinner. Found a Jamaican place with rave reviews on Yelp & it was the most packed restaurant on the street....and I walked a mile to get there so I know what other places looked like. Yep 2 miles round trip for squash curry. It was worth it.

 Tomorrow I head back to London, and then off to Wales for the week! Yippee!