Bobba Adventures Pt. 2

This is a photo-filled post about my day of nature and art with Bobba!

We started out our day by heading to Harlow Carr, a very big public garden. We decided to tackle one half of the gardens first before lunch. As usual, I was on the lookout for cute animals to photograph. But I didn't have much luck until...A GIANT BEAR ATTACKED BOBBA.


Kind of. My most exciting find was, in fact, a slug.

Cool looking slug, right? Mostly I was just excited to use my camera's close-up mode allll over the place. And I sure did. I think I have about 20 flower pictures, but I'll just post my two favorites:

Marigold!

And...something else.

We made our way up to the greenhouse and looked around. On our way out, I noticed that they had a bunch of troughs full of miniature plant worlds. What a sight to behold. I spent probably a little too much time in this part of the gardens, to the point that even my Bobba seemed a little bored. This was my favorite tiny world:

We went for lunch at Betty's (a famous tourist spot in Harrogate, apparently) which of course included tea. It was very good! I met a couple of Bobba's lady friends who happened to also be there for lunch that day. Evidently (that's a Bobba word) I was friends with one of their grandsons when I came over when I was about 7.

After walking around more of the gardens, we decided to check out the little art show they were having. I was planning on just looking, but there were a couple of artists I actually really liked, so I bought some little prints of their paintings to put up on my wall. There was one painting that I aaaabsolutely fell in love with (http://www.nikkycorker.com/originals.php?page=picture_details&pid=320) but it was only available as the original painting, which cost £400. I don't know why I love it so much, but I really do. Hopefully it comes out as a print sometime.

We had some time to kill after Harlow Carr, so we drove into "downtown" Harrogate so Bobba could give me a little tour. One of the stops was the free art museum. What I really love about England is that artists here truly appreciate animals. Here were my favorite pieces of animal art:

Papier mache chicken.

I really appreciate the way this artist utilizes the small mouse figures in eggs to evoke a tone of chicks.

This work was simply entitled, "Bob." Forreal forreal.

Some of the artists took themselves a liiiittle too seriously, perhaps...

"Landscape as a visual metaphor to express ideas, memories and emotions." I am definitely using that the next time I have Malibuuuu! And possibly as a topic for one of my lit essays. Jk, literature is legit.

I did manage to find a couple of paintings that I liked that did not involve animals:

I especially like the second one because it's not actually a painting, it's a paper cutting. And it reminds me of Persepolis.

After the museum, we went to Bobba's friend's flat for...tea! So much tea. And so many little cakes.

So, an unexpected day full of art. I figure if I'm spending a month in Europe, I should probably have one of those. Can't wait to hang up my little prints! Which, by the way, are all colorful interpretations...of sheep.

Cousins!

So if you thought it was bad that I hadn't seen my Bobba in 6 years, I hadn't seen my cousins, aunt, or uncle in 10. Needless to say, I was really excited to see them again. None of the cousins on my dad's side of the family are my age, and I always wished I had cousins my age that I could be friends with.

I saw them for the first time when just my cousins--Asher and Georgia--took me out to dinner on Thursday night. They picked me up at Bobba's and we walked into Harrogate to pick a restaurant. We decided on a place called Thai Elephant Restaurant, and had an awesome dinner. I was really happy because even though I knew we'd get along just fine, I hadn't seen them since I was 10, so we didn't really know each other anymore. But conversation was easy and we clicked really well, and I just genuinely enjoyed hanging out with them. So yay, I have cool cousins! After dinner, we hung out at Bobba's for a little before Asher and Georgia headed home, and I was highly entertained by Asher's "joshing" relationship with Bobba, as she calls it. Oh Bobba.

I saw my Uncle Raphael and Aunt Chris the next day when they met us for afternoon tea after Bobba and I went to Tropical World. They took us out to a restaurant called the Mansion (because it's in an old stately home, which was beautiful). It was really nice to see them again, and I was really happy when the conversation flowed easily with them too.

That night, I went out with Asher and his friend from high school, Gabriel. We went out for drinks (I'm going to miss being able to do that when I get home) then had a big dinner at Pizza Express. It was fun to hang out with Asher more and to meet someone else my age. Because I've been meeting a lot of old ladies these days. I'm usually introduced like this: "This is my American granddaughter who's come to visit me...from America." So yeah, going out on Friday night was fun.

Saturday was our big family outing day. Bobba and I drove to my cousins' house, and then we split up into two cars to drive to Castle Howard, which is, as you might guess...a castle. Aunt Chris, Asher, Georgia, and I were in one car, and Bobba and Uncle Raphael were in another. On the way up, Georgia and I found that we have similar tastes in MTV shows. Also, I told her about the words "sketchy" and "sketchball," which she's gonna start up in England. I appreciated her response when I said sketchball: "Oh, you mean a dodgy character?" So I think I'll start that one in the U.S.

We got to Castle Howard and started our day with a picnic that Uncle Raphael had prepared. It was delicious! We sat and ate for awhile and then headed into the castle grounds to look around. It was beautiful! You should google Castle Howard. Now. Go.

One of my favorite parts of the grounds was that there were peacocks roaming around everywhere. Exhibit A (all pictures of exotic creatures are enhanced when my Bobba is in them. I'll have to post the one of her next to an anaconda at Tropical World):


We walked down the back green, which had a bunch of statues ("There are bottoms everywhere!" exclaimed my Bobba, since all the statues were naked) and a sweet fountain. And there we took our first cousins picture!

We walked around the pond on the grounds, and guess what?? It's still duckling season here. England win.

We walked around for awhile more, I found out my cousins and uncle watch Dexter (!!!), we went through the gardens, got some ice cream (with a flake!) and then headed back. Luckily, traffic was a little better for the return trip. Aunt Chris invited us in for tea, so we sat around and talked for a little before Bobba and I left. But before we did, we took some silly (Scilly??) pictures. Here's my favorite off my camera:

I'm glad that Georgia and I look familial, because we flank really well in photos. So in conclusion: very successful few days with my family. My cousins are awesome! And I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with them and seeing them sometime soon (and by soon I mean sooner than 10 years from now).

Bobba Adventures Pt. 1

This is my Bobba (holding a traditional bobba):


She lives in Harrogate, which is about an hour away from Reeth. The Aldersons drove me down to see her on Wednesday, and I'm staying with her for a week. She's from Northern Ireland, and she's Jewish (according to her, she's got a lot of chutzpah), and she is shorter than me:

The first night I was here, she asked me to help her reach something on a shelf. I...helped someone else...get something off a high shelf. And she keeps hugging me and telling me how much she loves me. I could get used to this. This is Bobba's car, which I love because it is soooo tinyyyy.

So yeah, that's my Bobba. My first afternoon here, we went to Valley Gardens, which is a public park in Harrogate. It was a little cloudy, but all the flowers were still in full bloom (I think I have about 20 pictures of flowers so far).

We had an ice cream (with a flake!) at Valley Gardens and then headed back to Bobba's flat (when I was younger I called it her "pancake" because I was soooo clever) and had dinner. We watched Midsomer Murders, an English murder mystery series, and then got ready for bed. I liked seeing some of the older pictures Bobba has up in her living room. Here are my parents on their wedding day:

And my Bobba, uncle, mom, cousins, sister, and me at my cousins' house back when I was maybe 5 or 6. Spot (my dalmation) is still white here. Cray-cray!

We woke up early on Thursday (8:30...too much) so we could go to Knaresborough, a neighboring town. It has the ruins of a castle, a cute little main street, plus an awesome view of the train viaduct over the river:

We went to the castle museum and learned things about things, then headed back. My cousins took me out to dinner (more on that in the next post) and by the time I got back, it was almost time for bed. The next day, we headed to Tropical World (another location from my childhood) which is essentially a giant terrarium where they have butterflies and some cool animals. I took about a million pictures, so I'll save them all for facebook, except for my favorite. Check out this meerkat reigning over his meerkat kingdom:

My Bobba tried to take a picture of me with the meerkats, but accidentally just got a picture of a meerkat nose. I am holding daily digital camera/laptop tutorials for her, so maybe next time.

The biggest reason that it's so awesome to see my Bobba is that I haven't seen her in 6 years, since the last time she came to visit us at home. It got complicated for her to come over or for all of us to go over, so it's nice to be able to go on my own and hang out with her by myself. We've been getting to know each other again, and drinking tea. A LOT of tea. Definitely the most tea I've ever had within one week of my life. But luckily I won't have to deal with tea withdrawals when I go home...because she gave me a tea pot. Pinkies up.