Peckish Travels

Bob and I have completed our first housesit in Austin and have until Sunday before our next sit starts. We have scheduled a short get away to Comfort, Texas, a small town in the Texas Hill Country southwest of Austin. We left “our” two sweet cats about 1:00 this afternoon and were in Comfort by 3:00.

It is always bittersweet to leave pets, especially ones that we have sat for for a long time or multiple times. Pancho and Lefty are very sweet and definitely are up for a purr-filled snuggle. Lefty prefers a lap snuggle when you’re trying to work on the computer or when watching tv in the den. Pancho is all about snuggling in bed — usually somewhere on or near your head.

Bob got us a room at the Meyer Inn in Comfort. It has 2 large rooms plus the bathroom. Also, a fireplace, which will be especially nice tomorrow after the cold front blows through.

This afternoon/tonight we restocked our breakfast and lunch supplies at the local market and ordered a basil garlic pizza from Comfort Pizza to have while we watch the University of Texas Women’s Volleyball team play San Diego in the first game of the final four. Fingers crossed that they’ll advance. They are ranked #1 overall but have broken our hearts quite a few times over the years.

In our December full of doctors appointments, today was a big one — new hip for Bob day. We had an early morning wake up at 4:05 to make sure we got to the outpatient surgery center by 4:45. We did, things proceeded as planned, and we had him home by 11:45 am. Crazy! Even crazier, he seems to be walking strong and steady (though with a walker for now). We have a follow-up appointment on the 21st unless things go sideways before then.

He’s been a good patient so far. I may need to remember this particular drug combo.😁

We have arrived in Austin and have nearly completed our first full day of our first of three house sits in Austin, Texas that will take us into the new year. These will be a bit unusual in that we will be doing some catching up with friends while also doing some maintenance work on the car and ourselves.

We have already had a road car inspection that happily found no issues to address. I have had a cap put on a tooth that I have been having issues on and off with since mid-October, and Bob has had three doctor’s appointments already to prep for his hip replacement surgery next Wednesday (arrival time of 4:45 am!). Our current health insurance ends at the end of this month, so it feels like a mad dash to fit things in while we try to pick a health plan for next year. While we realize universal health coverage has its own issues, it looks pretty good to us right now.

Enough about that unhappy US topic. We had a great catch up with our friends that we are currently housesitting for before their departure yesterday for Helsinki, Hamburg, Berlin, and Stockholm. We look forward to hearing about their trip when they return.

We are currently caring for their two cats — Pancho and Lefty. They are indoor/outdoor cats with a lovely yard to roam around in, although they seem to be mostly indoors now. We also were treated to see an owl in their owl box on our first night here.

Tonight we are having dinner with a gentleman that we use to live with (in the same condo building). He’s brillant and from the great state of Wisconsin, but that’s being a bit repetitive. Can’t wait to catch up and will be meeting up with more friends tomorrow.

Today, we’re flying from Reykjavik to Chicago, and then we’ll be with family over Thanksgiving. Afterwards, we’re taking a few days to drive to Austin, Texas, to house sit for friends. We’ll be back to blogging at that point in early December.

As with every place we visit, we have definitely more ground to cover here, but at least we have a more accurate image in our heads of this lovely and interesting island. A couple more photos.

Cheers! Hopefully, a December blog will be about Bob’s successful hip replacement and retina surgeries!

Iceland offers up a number of guided explorations to help you see more of the island, but they are not cheap so you have to do some choosing. Bob and I opted for a full-day small group journey to the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, which was billed as Iceland in miniature due to the variety of landscapes to be seen.

We had a great guide, learned a bit more about Iceland, and saw some of this country’s wild but beautiful scenery. From our guide we learned that Iceland has a total population of about 365,000, with 2/3 living in the capital region, a series of 7 connected towns including Reykjavik. The remainder live near the seafront with very few people in the middle of the island. There are no reptiles, cockroaches, or bears, but Iceland does have between 4,000 and 6,000 reindeer roaming free.

We left in the dark this morning about 8:45 and returned tonight about 7:15. During the tour itself, the day was mostly overcast and very windy, with a feels like temperature in the low to mid 30s. On the way back, we hit a bad patch of rain and stronger wind that felt like it picked up the van at one point, but our guide managed it well.

Bob and I have only two days in Iceland. Today, we spent the day walkin around Reykjavik. We loved it, and even had another Richard Osman sighting. Here are some of our photos.

Yesterday ended our Cambridge housesit with a great reunion with our homeowners and their son who had had a fantastic trip to New Zealand. It was lovely to catch up before Bob and I headed off to catch a bus to our hotel near Heathrow.

We will definitely miss Hugo. He is obviously a gorgeous cat, but he charmed us with his personality. He was especially fond of Bob. He mostly hung out with us when we were around but also went out to check out the neighborhood.

The bus to Heathrow was great, although not a lot of room. It was about a 2.5 hour journey from Cambridge. At Heathrow, we caught an airport hopper bus to the Renaissance Hotel for the night. That was a very easy connection— especially since Bob had researched exactly where to pick it up.

The Renaissance was great. We had a free dinner since they offered a free happy hour for Marriott club members, and they served some great appetizers as well as cheese and crackers, nuts, etc. The hotel also had a fitness room, so I got to get my run in this morning.

We left the hotel on the hopper bus today at about 8:45 for our noon flight to Reykjavik. Since we had upgraded seats we had access to a lounge, and were thrilled to see Richard Osmond walk in. He is a game show host and author. We know him from the game show Pointless, which we enjoy watching when we’re in the UK. He also ended up a few rows ahead of us on our flight.

The arrival into Reykjavik was a little more dramatic than we would have liked, as we were nearly landed when the pilot pulled up and we were off again for a circle and another shot at landing. He apparently felt a wind gust that we hadn’t felt.

To avoid paying nearly $100 for a taxi ride into the city once we landed, Bob had booked us on a FlyBus. The bus ride was fine once the bus arrived, but the queuing was a mess with people cutting in line since the wait had been so long.

A couple of weeks ago, when I reserved us a slot for a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum, I also booked us tickets for a guided tour of the correspondence of Charles Darwin ( a Cambridge grad, of course) at the Cambridge University Library. Today, was the day for our 10:00 am tour, and it gave us a chance to see a little bit of the library as well as some of the Clare College campus that we walked through to get to the library.

The exhibit is called Darwin Conversation and is being staged to celebrate the end of a 48 year effort to collect, date, identify, and publish correspondence both to and from Charles Darwin. There is a lot! There are 15,000 known letters exchanged by Darwin with nearly 2,000 correspondents between 1821 and 1882. The 30th volume of this correspondence is now in print. Any new material will just be digitized and placed on the Cambridge University Library website.

Just a note that while Cambridge University Library has the largest collection of Darwin’s manuscripts, the correspondence collection effort actually began in the States headed by Frederick Burkhardt who served as a Trustee of the New York Public Library.

The tour was interesting, and our guide, who serves/served on the Darwin Correspondence Project was very informative.

As today is also Remembrance Day, we thought that stumbling on the site below was fitting, and we heard the bugles being played somewhere when we walked out of the library at 11.

Bob and I then headed into the city center where Bob grabbed a sandwich for lunch, and I continued on to Hill Road for a massage.

Tonight, Bob and I went into the city center to see the Cambridge Carnival, a video and music presentation on the side of the Senate House, across King’s Parade from Great Saint Mary’s Church. The projection uses artwork produced by pupils from Castle, Arbury, St Matthews, and Galfrid primary schools. The artwork moves along with a recording of Saint-Sean’s Carnival of the Animals. It was all new to us and very enjoyable.

After the short, 15 minute show, we walked to the lovely University Arms Hotel for a drink before heading back to the house for dinner. It was lovely, and we had a great chat with the very knowledgeable bartender.

Bob and I added to our Graduate Hotel experiences tonight by having a glass of wine at the Graduate Hotel Cambridge. It’s about a 25 minute walk from the house and sits along the River Cam. This is our 4th Graduate Hotel that we’ve experienced, having stayed at one’s in Iowa City, Iowa, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Columbia, South Carolina.

They are known for tailoring their decor to the local university area. We thought this one was super cute and captured a lot of what Cambridge is known for.