International Delights in Ohio

Yesterday my friend Jackie and I drove out to Cincinnati Ohio for some international shopping. While Cincinnati doesn't conjure up images of a cosmopolitan utopia, between Ikea and Jungle Jim's you sure can get a lot of international loot! It's only a 3 hour drive from here, so it is totally do-able as a day trip. And even more fun when you go with a friend!

Here's a sampling of my shopping results:

• Cheese from Sweden, France, Switzerland and New York
• French wine from the Corbières, Sake from Japan
• Red bean daifuku from Japan
• Swedish herring and Swedish caviar
• Moroccan olives

household stuff:

• Small trash can from Italy
  
• Storage boxes from Poland
  
• Lamp from China
  
• Scrub brush from the Czech Republic
  

It was so nice to get out of Bloomington for a day! I only have classes once a week this semester (my 3 classes are all on the same day), so I've been going a little stircrazy being around the house all day. When I realized I talk to my dog more than with people, I decided it was a good time to go out and do something besides sitting at home and reading and writing papers!

The Biggest Waterfall in Indiana

Yup, this is it. Cataract Falls. The biggest waterfall in Indiana.



We took Binsey out there last weekend when we had a little bit of sunshine. Here we are at the lower falls


She seemed to enjoy herself.


And I just thought this view of the river bed was really neat


And it wouldn't be an Indiana state park without the obligatory covered bridge. This one was used until 1988.

More Simaceks in Oxford

No, there's not another little Simacek on the way. I'm talking about Paul's family coming to visit us a couple weeks ago! We spent most of the time touring around the Cotswolds seeing all the touristy things. We even rented a car, and Paul did great driving on the other side of the road!

I had to work the first two days of their visit, so they all went around to the Oxford colleges. That was fine with me, since we all got a chance to get out of Oxford on the weekend. Paul and I don't get out of town much (even to go one town over), so we really haven't had much of a chance to see England together. So it was great to have guests and an excuse for Paul to take a break from studying to see the sights!

On Saturday we did Warwick Castle and Stratford-Upon-Avon. We had some National Heritage passes left over from when my family visited over Christmas, so we wound up saving a ton of money on entrance fees - well over $500 when all was said and done!

Here we all are at Warwick Castle


Shakespeare's birthplace:


On Sunday, we saw Blenheim Palace and Broughton Castle. Blenheim is the birthplace and was the home of Winston Churchill. Not a bad start!

Here's Paul in Blenheim's back yard


At Blenheim, you can walk right into the sheep pasture, and there were adorable little lambs all over!


here I am striking a pose in front of the "Column of Victory" at Blenheim:


We also just happened to see this wedding procession! Can you imagine how much a wedding at Blenheim Palace would have cost?? I have no idea, but I'm sure you need a title like "Lord and Lady" to afford it!


Here are the Simacek ladies at Broughton Castle. The owners, Lord and Lady Saye and Sele (yes, they have an 'and' in the last name), still actually live there, but open it to the public two days per week during the summer. They filmed Shakespeare in Love here!


This is the back yard at Broughton - and the moat!

Yolanta & Anne in the garden


Paul and me on the roof..

Why I love Abingdon

Abingdon is a town just south of Oxford, about a 15 minute bus ride away. I decided to go there a couple of weekends ago because I found out they have a Polish store where you can get Polish food. Well, the store wasn't that great, but the rest of the town was awesome! This is what I had in mind when I found out we would be living in England.



The town square is pictured above. Oxford doesn't really have a town square, so it was neat to see what one looks like in an English town. They have a lot of great shopping around, most notably a Woolworths (kind of like a small version of Wal-Mart) and a Waitrose grocery store (similar to a Whole Foods). Both do not exist in Oxford, and both made me very happy, as it's nice to be able to get cheap household items and it's wonderful to get good quality groceries. As Oxford is a college town (average age seems to be about 19), it was so refreshing to see people of all ages and all walks of life out shopping on a Saturday.



Outside of the town square is Abingdon Abbey gardens, which are quite nice for a stroll.


The old ruins in the garden are pretty neat. I don't yet know the history, but I did get a self-portrait in them. :)




Needless to say, I will be back to Abingdon, if for nothing more than the fabulous groceries!

Biking the Isis

There is a river that runs through Oxford. Before it enters Oxford, it is called the Thames. When it leaves Oxford, it is called the Thames. But in Oxford, it's called the Isis. Why that is, I'm not sure, beyond some sort of snobbery. Either way, it's a nice place to take a bike ride.

We decided to try biking down the river path a couple weekends ago, soon after flooding had become a problem around Oxfordshire. It was the first glimpse of sunshine we'd had in a whle, so we felt we had to take advantage. However, we only got about as far as Iffley because the field we were supposed to go through was flooded with about a foot of water!

Here's Paul on his bike, with typical English winter weather in the background. We have a partly sunny day about once per week, and this was one of them.


This picture gives you an idea of what the bike path looks like as you head south from Oxford. You pass by a lot of cute villages and a few pubs!


At certain points along the river, there are lots of swans and ducks. Normally swans are territorial, but when children are regularly brought along to throw bread at them, they congregate and pay more attention to the good eats than they do to each other. Here we saw a family of swans (you can see the gray teenage ones).


And here's a neat house with a thatched roof that we saw in Iffley.


Also in Iffley is an old Norman church, built in 1170, called St Mary's. Neither of us had ever seen a Norman church before, and we had no idea it was anything all that special until we went home and googled it!


So that's kind of what it's like living around here. The more you wander around, the more random old things you find.

Banbury Cross

Today I went to an interview with a recruiter in Banbury. Yes, the same Banbury as in the Banbury Cross you remember from the nursery rhyme. I had initially thought that Banbury Cross was something like an intersection of two roads, but it turns out that while it is an intersection, it's also actually got a real 54-foot high cross in the middle of the roundabout! However, the original cross was destroyed in anti-Catholic rampages in the 1600s, so it was rebuilt in the late 19th century. Just a few years ago, they added the statue of the "fine lady on a white horse, with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes". (she's to the left of the cross - click on the picture to enlarge if you're curious).


The town itself is really cute, with many small shops, restaurants and windy pedestrian-only roads. I plan to go back to explore the shopping some more, as it seemed to be much less expensive than in Oxford. And it's just 15 minutes away by train!




And one funny sighting in Banbury - the Blues Brothers outside of this record store!






The interview went much better than the last. Perhaps the last recruiter was just having a rough day. But, we'll see if anything comes of it. In the meantime, I've got plans to go to London with the girls on Thursday (we got those 1 pound fares on Megabus). I think I'm going to be checking out the aquarium, which is great since I can stare at fish all day!

Millet's Farm

On Thursday I went out with Danalisa, Owen, Amanda, Millie and a new friend, Alisha and her two girls to Millet's Farm, near Abingdon. We had to take 2 buses, and it took an hour each way, but it was totally worth it! Not only did we get to see the beautiful English countryside on the way there, but the farm itself was really nice! They had all kinds of animals to see, like alpacas, goats, cows and miniature horses, as well as several country shops.

The food shop was really special. Their fresh produce looked great, and prices were even better! What really impressed me was the freezer section - they had the kind of freezers where you slide the top back and look in to get food, only the freezers were divided into sections where you could just scoop out loose frozen veggies. It was kind of like a candy store! They also had all kinds of neat kitchen gadgets (it was so hard not to buy a bunch!), nice meats, fresh fish and a bakery. If it wasn't so far away, I would definitely go there instead of the grocery store! I wound up with some fresh veggies, meringues and a pumpkin to grace our table!

They also had a huge garden center, and a clothing shop. We all got some great bargains at the shop - most notably the 5 pound fleece jackets me, Amanda & Danalisa got. They only had them in green, but we all like green, and for that price, who cares if we're triplets?

I forgot to take my camera with me, so a special thanks goes to Danalisa for letting me use hers for some great pictures, like this one with the animatronic polar bear!

Waterperry Garden

Last Tuesday I joined a group from the Newcomers Club here to visit Waterperry Garden. The garden was originally established for a women's horticultural school, but now it's mainly run by volunteers who are just interested in gardening. They have a rose garden, fruit trees, knot garden, sort of French style flat section and a national collection of "saxifrage" that includes every species of saxifrage plants (they're the type you'd probably find above the tree line in a cold area).

You can see more of my pictures from the garden at http://picasaweb.google.com/kristina.simacek/WaterperryGarden

I bought some herbs from their garden shop, so now we've got some extra ammo for cooking.