We arrived in the UK exactly one year ago on May 30, 2024 (via the QM2)! We have really loved being here, and though the home-buying process was a struggle (and took several months), we are finally in…

Remember how we sent off our application to Canada on October 29th, 2020 (received in Canada on November 3rd, 2020)? Yeah, we do too. Remember how we heard nothing for ages? Remember how they finally OPENED our application on March…

Neighborhood 10: Jesmond and Gosforth

So we once again hopped on a bus to Newcastle City Centre and then took a quick metro ride to Jesmond. It's just north of the city centre and apparently very crowded with students living…

Neighborhood 8: Chester-le-Street

We hopped on a bus south towards Chester-le-Street (bus 21), straight down Durham Road. It was about a 25 minute bus ride from our current home, so, yes, it's a bit far from the center of Newcastle.

…

Saltwell Towers

We thought we'd post about the large park in our town: Saltwell Park. It's about a 30-minute walk from our house. A beautiful park…..with a cafe in the ‘towers’ and an excellent coffee shop on the other…

Neighborhood 7: The coastal towns near the North Sea

We hopped on a bus and metro out to North Shields first. (We finally got our POP cards that cap our daily use on the metro to £5 each, so that…

Neighborhood 5: Wallsend

This one gets a 'no'. We had read online that it was ‘up and coming’. It may be, but it still has a ways to go. They do have a big Aldis, and the Latin in the…

We passed the ‘Angel of the North’ as we walked towards Birtley.

Neighborhood 3: Birtley

Birtley is just south of where we are currently living, about 2.5 miles. We decided we'd walk there. There are quite a few…

Neighborhood 2 - Newcastle Center

After disembarking the Queen Mary 2, we took a shuttle to London and had a bit of a wait at Kings Cross train station. We found a corner at one of the station pubs…

We moved to Low Fell, England! We are renting this beautiful home in a VERY hilly neighborhood. 

It's a 3 bedroom, 2 ½ bath house with a modern kitchen (which includes a dishwasher, oven, fridge, washer, and dryer!) and a…

And now we go backwards…..we'll tell you a little bit about our trip from Vermont to New York:

Since we sold our car, we had to rent a car to get down to New Jersey. I swear that I chose…

(Lulu, the Leaf)

Carvana made selling our Nissan Leaf sound so easy, but when the time came to do it they were no longer offering to pick it up, and their nearest place to drive it to was well over…

(I wrote half this blog post and then it disappeared, so this is ‘take 2’.)

We made it to Newcastle upon Tyne!! This will be our last blog post about the Queen Mary 2 so here are photos from our…

Sunset from our balcony

Welcome back! So we are currently on our final full day at sea. We arrive in Southampton, England tomorrow morning, early. We may not be able to post another blog post until after we arrive…perhaps in…

(we made it past the Titanic site….we are north of the Azores and south of Greenland, 
more than halfway there)

Wow, I can't believe this crossing is almost over. Only one more full day after today! 

Scott still isn't feeling…

We're over halfway there!! Only a few more days left on this ship. Unfortunately Scott has gotten sick with some sort of cold (NOT Covid…we tested). That's what happens when you're on a ship with a few thousand people. 

Today…

(my blogging corner in the King's Court Buffet)

Yesterday was the first day I really felt swaying and heard creaking of the ship. Makes it harder to walk the deck and climb stairs. I only started feeling it while we…

(Sunset from our balcony)

Good morning! I am writing this as I have a mid-morning coffee in a nice quiet corner of the buffet. We've got pictures and videos from yesterday, including our first afternoon tea (they will be more…

Hello from the Queen Mary 2!!  We arrived in Brooklyn yesterday and boarded early afternoon. Here are some photos and videos from the 1st day:

Waiting to board:

Walking to our stateroom:

The view from the deck:

Our stateroom:

First…

I may be one of the last composers who still writes with a pencil and paper. Since we're moving to England this month, we had to get rid of a lot of things, and many boxes of my scribblings were…

We are now just over 6 weeks from the time we set sail on the Queen Mary 2!

There's still SO much to do. This week I'll share with you just how difficult it is to organize everything for…

This week I'm going to concentrate on HOW we got our visas to go the UK. Every country has its own types of visas that are available for those looking to move permanently. We did A LOT of research to…

Once we had decided on England, we needed to pick a city. Not easy, as there are lot of good candidates to choose from! 

Most English cities have most of what we're looking for in a place to live. The…

It took a long time to decide what we wanted in a place and what our options really were. We had some false starts. Almost 3 1/2 years ago we applied to Canada on their self-employment visa, and we still…