Culturestuff

I'm in Suffolk! Sudbury, to be more precise. I'm with the Haynes family, and I have only just remembered what a luxury it is to have an ensuite bathroom.

Suffolk is northeast of London, so it was a 2 hour drive from Steph's. And Sudbury has a few larger towns surrounding it, but it's minuscule. I saw vast amounts of sheep on the way in.

I'm (still) working my way off the Stephanie Moore sleep schedule, so I was in bed late last night and woke up to my alarm at 10 this morning. Oli made us soft boiled eggs and soldiers (toast strips, for dipping) before we visited his dad's bakery.The bakery is way out near all these farm fields, in a refurbished barn from the late 1800s. We pretty much popped in and popped out, but we drove through the most beautiful tree tunnel path to get to and from.

England is extremely lush. Back tracking, some of the roads through Yateley are greener than a majority of places I've been in the states. Steph and I walked around this lake near her place, and it felt like we were in a Jane Austen novel (Steph said Secret Garden) because at certain spots along the path there was nothing close enough to suggest the year. It's stunning.

Anyway Oli and I drove back to the house and packed a lunch before heading in to Colchester, which sounds very much like "culturestuff" (very little emphasis on the f's) when Oli says it. That's actually how I remembered the name just now. Oli and I ate lunch--leftover roast sandwiches, Moore would never approve--by this pond on the Colchester Castle grounds before going into the castle-turned-museum (a Roman castle, actually, and the oldest one in England-->).

Then it was off to Starbucks. Don't judge, Oli works there and he had a 2 hour shift to fill. I explored the rest of town while he worked. Colchester has a town center, which is like the "down town." There's a couple of main streets where cars get through but the shops are double ended and through the other side there's a pedestrian zone, which is like a skinnier street where there are no cars. And all this forms a somewhat convoluted loop depending on where you start. It's kind of like an outdoor mall only more public, if that makes sense. So I strolled. I stopped in TopShop, H&M, New Look, Republic, Next, and some shoe store where Jillian would have probably cried because they had roughly 50 (okay maybe 7ish) different types of women's oxfords. Be proud I only window shopped. I then made my way back to Starbucks--without having to ask directions--and read some "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." Which, by the way, is brilliant.

By the time Oli got out of work it had rained, stopped, and started again. I can't complain though, this is the first grey day I've seen since I got here. I cannot believe it has been less than a week. Haynes just got season 1 of the hills, so we indulged while looking up self guided tours of London...

Wonderful day. Time to go work on that sleep pattern. I'll post pics for this as soon as I return to my camera connector!