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Part of our trip was planned to visit family and friends that we haven’t seen in awhile and especially since we have moved to Vancouver.   While it means we are moving around a lot, it’s been nice to see a lot of friends and family.

This week has been spent visiting Justin’s family and hitting Manchester so Justin could see a Manchester United game (a missing item on his “resume of sports events” that can now be “ticked”).  While the week had its challenges with poor little Stella having a pretty bad cold, it was a nice trip.

Francesca and Stella

We started out at Eden and Janine’s house in Stratford Upon Avon.  Wellington, Justin’s Dad, had arrived there for a visit so we met him for dinner with Eden, Janine and Francesca (Justin’s cousin).  It was a nice visit and good to catch up.  We had not seen them since 2005 when we were over for a visit.

We then headed up to Manchester so Justin and his Dad could go the match.  We stayed in a really nice hotel, Yang Sing Oriental Hotel.  I highly recommend it if you are going to Manchester.  Free breakfast, mini-bar and very nice/ornate rooms.  There’s also a great Chinese restaurant attached where we had a nice dim sum.

Stella and I spent the evening shopping and then hanging out in our hotel room with room service and a movie.  It was very nice mommy/daughter time which was quite fun for me as she’s finally old enough to relate to  - well sort of - and “hang out” with.

I even picked up a pair of proper English riding boots!

Manchester is a great city, shopping, culture and a variety of ethnic cuisine.  And of course they have teh best footy team Man-United!

Helen and Stella

We then headed back to Liverpool to visit Justin’s Grandmother Alice and also see some close family friends (and Justin’s Mum’s long time childhood friend), Helen, Charles and their lovely three boys.

Charles and Samuel with Stella

It’s been nice to let Stella spend some time with family and experience the life and culture of her roots here in England.  We look forward to the next few months as well where we will be taking her to Pennsylvania, NYC and of course VA to visit and experience some of my roots and places where Justin and I both have many memories.

That is the one thing about travel.  Outside of experiencing new things (which we love to do), it’s also nice sometimes to go back to your roots and explore and remember who you are and where you came from.

Back to Marlow for 10 days and then off to St. Louis for work on November 5.

Some Baby Tips:

Make sure you travel equipped with a few relief medicines, balms, etc. for baby in case they get a cold and you find yourself unable to get to a market.  Stella unfortunately picked up a really bad cold last week at the little daycare/play time we took her to.  I had a few things that I knew helped relieve her cold with me and picked up a few other things here.  At her age there isn’t much you can do but Vicks balm and menthol vaporizers really help.  Unfortunately I was unable to find a cool mist vaporizer in England.  Apparently no one uses those here.

Another thing to think about if you are traveling in Europe.  Don’t run out of diapers on a Sunday (and in some places, any day for that matter).  We were rationing out our last diapers last Sunday as I didn’t realize I was out until 5 pm on Sunday and every shop was closed.  Thankfully we made it with the last 2 diapers until morning but we could have been in BIG trouble!