Having just written about our summer travel adventures in London, it's now time to cover all the places we visited outside of the capital...
It was Claudio's birthday in June, and given that his big passion in life is cars, I decided to surprise him with a trip to Mercedes Benz World. As we don't currently have a car, the journey there took us over 90 minutes and involved three trains and a walk through a fairly deserted area. I was hoping that the destination would be worth the hassle, and thankfully, it was!
The museum is free to visit (though there are extra activities you can pay for) and it kept us entertained for a good few hours. Attractions included a cinema showing a film about the history of Mercedes Benz, cars from different eras to look at, modern cars that we could go inside, and a race track where we saw a driving demonstration. Definitely a very fun experience for any car lover!
Bournemouth
During one of the heatwaves over the summer, we decided to spend a day at Bournemouth Beach, which can be reached directly by train from Reading.
With its long stretch of golden sand, this is definitely one of the UK's most beautiful beaches. I'd been twice in recent years (once in 2019 and once in 2021) and wanted to show it to Claudio.
Unfortunately, there was some kind of big cheerleading event going on, which meant that the town was a lot busier than it otherwise would have been. The weather also turned very cold around lunchtime, which put paid to our plans for a swim in the sea, as we knew that the train back would be heavily air-conditioned and we wouldn't be able to warm up until we got back home.
So we chose to spend a large part of the afternoon walking through the Town Gardens, a park that I hadn't fully explored before. The Upper Gardens is supposedly inspired by three continents: Europe, Asia and North America. To be honest, I'm no expert on plants, so it was hard to tell which parts were inspired by which continent, except for the Japanese-style bridges. But it was a nice, tranquil place to explore away from the chaos of the town centre.
Living on the Elizabeth Line, Maidenhead was an obvious place for us to go and visit. We'd passed it many times when going into London, and thought it looked really nice, so took a trip there one weekend.
The town centre was actually not as nice as we were expecting, though it gets better the further you go from the station.
The part next to the river, however, is super picturesque, and we really enjoyed our walk there.
I have been feeling very burnt out this year from a long job search and from a job that isn't aligned with my career aspirations. This was especially tough during the summer, and so I decided to take a few days off one week to give myself a bit of a reset. I used one of those days to take a trip to Oxford, one of my favourite cities in the UK, to spend a day walking around the sights, and enjoying its cafés and shops.
One place I really loved visiting was Blackwell's bookshop - it's a beautiful shop with so many books. I could spend hours there!
Claudio really wanted to visit Windsor Castle, and we had no excuse not to go, as it's very close by. We didn't go inside, as it's so expensive (and the Windsor family get enough of our money as it is!), but we had a nice time walking around the picturesque town. We also crossed over the river to the town of Eton, where you can find the infamous school (another institution I don't approve of!). This was another pretty (and surprisingly peaceful) area to visit, and we were lucky enough to see Dave the Eton Dachshund in his window!
Reading
Over the summer months, we've also got to know our current town better. One place I liked checking out was the museum housed in the town hall, which is completely free to visit. Highlights included a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry, Roman mosaics, and a collection of vintage biscuit tins!
We also spent an interesting evening exploring the university campus (this actually inspired us to take our recent trip to Nottingham!). We really loved the old building next to the lake - it looked like something out of an Agatha Christie adaptation!
