Life Update and January & February Highlights

Claudio's now been in the UK with me for nearly three months, and we've been living at home with my parents since Christmas. We'd hoped that in the first few months of 2024, we'd be able to sort out our future plans, but of course, that's not proving to be easy. Nothing has come up in terms of work for Claudio in the UK - probably because he's currently on a tourist visa - and we're not sure we'll be able to get a partner visa for him, because the requirements are supposed to be changing soon. And in any case, I don't think the UK's a great place to live at the moment, and I don't know if I want us to be tied down here by a two-year visa, when we'll both hopefully have EU citizenship within the next year or two. Having said that though, Claudio has been attempting without success to get an appointment to submit his documents for Italian citizenship for over six months now, so who knows how long it will take him to get his passport. (Hopefully the process to get my Irish citizenship - which I plan to apply for this year - will be quicker and easier.)

So, all in all, things are pretty much still as uncertain as they were before. And although we long to settle down somewhere permanently, we've realised that that might not be easy to do until we've got more options open to us. But fortunately, there is an adventurous side of us that has things we want to do and places we want to go before we settle down permanently, and so we're now looking into some exciting plans that could be a great way to fill the time before we both get our EU citizenship.

Of course, we've been stressed and worried and full of uncertainty lately. But despite all this, I want Claudio to enjoy his time in the UK as much as possible, however long he's going to be here for. 

Once a week, I go into the office in Bristol, and Claudio comes with me by train. Usually he goes round visiting different places and museums in the city, and sometimes he goes off to other cities. Once he even went to Wales by himself, which was quite impressive considering he hadn't really travelled solo before.

And of course, at weekends, we try to go off to nice places whenever possible.

Here's a selection of highlights from the first two months of this year...

Our Engagement Celebration!

In January, we had a low-key celebration of our engagement at one of our favourite restaurants, the Thai Emerald in Cirencester. It was a really lovely evening! As always, the restaurant looked beautiful, the food was amazing, and it felt like an ideal place to celebrate our engagement, given where we're planning to have our honeymoon...

The Whitehall Garden Centre

The following day, we went for coffee and cake at the Lavender Lodge Tea Room in the Whitehall Garden Centre. This is one of the prettiest cafés I've ever been to, and to make things even better, we saw gorgeous reindeer, goats and donkeys while looking around the garden centre!

Afternoon Tea at the Old Bell Hotel

For my parents' birthdays in February, we went for an afternoon tea at the Old Bell Hotel in Malmesbury. It was a new cultural experience for Claudio, as he'd never had a traditional British afternoon tea before, and we all really enjoyed it.

Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary

One place I really wanted to take Claudio was Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary, where you can find rescued chickens, goats, alpacas, and emus. Claudio was particularly happy to see the emus, as he follows a Chilean "car influencer" who has one for a pet! They are very funny birds, and certainly entertained us with their movements and expressions!

Claudio's Christmas Present!

I got Claudio a Christmas present this year which I'll probably never be able to beat in future years! As he's a car fanatic, I decided to get him a supercar experience voucher, which involved driving a Ferrari and a Lamborghini, and having a high-speed passenger ride in a GTI. So on a rainy day in February, we went over to Castle Combe race track to use the voucher at a supercar event there. Claudio was in his element and had an amazing time - he especially loved driving the Lamborghini Huracán - and it was great to watch him having so much fun!

The Temple of Minerva and Botanical Gardens, Bath

This probably would have been our wedding venue, but then we found out that we can't legally get married in the UK because of our civil union. All the same, it was really nice to visit this little temple, which is located in a beautiful, secluded part of the city that I'd never visited before, despite the fact I've been coming to Bath for years.

(As it happens, we've discovered what looks like quite literally our dream venue in Chile, so hopefully we'll be able to get that booked for the Chilean summer!)

The Swan Hotel, Bibury

This is another wedding venue that we were considering, though after visiting, we felt that the village of Bibury itself was too full of tourists to have our wedding there. But the hotel itself is lovely, and as part of our venue visit, we got to visit its garden, which is so pretty.

AV8 and Cotswold Airport

This is a place we didn't get to take Claudio last time he was here, so it was nice to show it to him at last! It's really interesting to look at all of the different types of planes at the airport, and the décor in the café is so fun!

More adventures will be landing on this blog very soon, as it's not long before we'll be off to Italy! Even though our future plans are still really uncertain at the moment, we have to make the most of this time together, explore this part of the world, and have great experiences whenever possible.

See you back here soon!

A Seaside Day at Weston-super-Mare

It's amazing how having a couple of weeks away from blogging really makes me want to get writing again! It always reminds me of how this blog is my passion, and brings back the motivation to keep adding to this online travel journal, which I've been building up for more than half a decade now.

And today I've got another little trip to add to my collection. It's definitely not the most exciting one out of all the different places I've visited since starting this blog, but it was a fun day out!

My parents were visiting friends near Chippenham last Saturday, and they offered to drop me and Claudio off at the train station so that we could go off exploring somewhere. It didn't make sense to go to London or anywhere to the east or north from Chippenham, when it's quicker and cheaper to go from Swindon or Kemble, so we decided to go further into the South West. The two options that were reasonably interesting were Taunton (which has a museum inside a castle) and Weston-super-Mare (a seaside town that I went to a lot with my family as a toddler). Eventually, we opted for Weston-super-Mare, as it had been a long time since either of us had been to a beach.

The last time I went to a beach was in August, when I squeezed in a last visit to St George's Bay in Malta before coming back to the UK. (That is, unless you count Severn Beach as a beach, which to be honest, I don't!) Beaches are probably my favourite type of travel destination, so six months without visiting one felt like a long time! And although Weston-super-Mare is not exactly the Caribbean or the Mediterranean, there's something about seeing the sea, listening to the waves, and smelling the sea air that is really good for the soul, no matter how picturesque or not the beach itself is.

Having said that though, it was a little disappointing to arrive at the seafront of Weston-super-Mare, only to find something that didn't really look like sea at all! In photos we'd seen online (and in my memories of going there as a toddler!), it looked more like a "proper" beach, but what we found there looked more like an expanse of somewhat muddy sand with something that looked like it could be sea a long way off in the distance.

All the same, being at the seaside was a nice change of scenery! We decided to start off our sightseeing by visiting the Grand Pier, which costs £1 per person.

Most of the pier is taken up by the arcade, which has lots of different rides and games.

Near the far end of the pier, there's a corridor where you can see various examples of vintage travel posters advertising Weston-super-Mare. I've always loved these kinds of posters (I actually have one of Cannes!), and from a marketing perspective, it's amazing to see how they can make a place like Weston-super-Mare (which is pretty grey and muddy most of the time) look like a sunny paradise where glamorous movie stars go on holiday!

On the other side of the corridor, there's a large tearoom, which can actually be booked for weddings. It is a really nicely-decorated and spacious room, but it would be improved if it had a view of the sea rather than mud!

We also had a look out at the views from the pier, which were quite nice, despite the mud! I particularly liked the look of the island in the distance, which I believe is called Steep Holm. It looks kind of mysterious and exotic rising out of the water, and I like to imagine that it's hot and sunny over there, with tropical jungle and beautiful beaches!

Looking back towards the town itself from the pier, you can see the Winter Gardens Pavilion, an events venue, which is definitely the grandest and most beautiful building in the town.

Next we headed inland to visit the Italian Gardens behind the Pavilion. We had been quite excited to see these gardens based on their name, but in reality, they couldn't really be described as either "Italian" or "gardens" - it's just a big concrete square with some fountains and benches.

We then walked over to Knightstone Island, which is one of the most old-fashioned and pretty parts of Weston-super-Mare. The island is next to Marine Lake, where we found probably the closest thing to a normal beach that we saw all day, though it was a shame that the crane in the water ruined the view a bit!

Then we walked all the way down the seafront to the golf club, passing sights including Tropicana, an events venue with a bar (I wonder if drinks are free there!).

The far end of the beach is quite picturesque with its quaint wooden beach huts, and the sun had come out by this point, which made the place seem much more cheerful than before. We stopped here for a while and talked about life in general, and even came up with some exciting ideas as to our plans for the next year or two. Things haven't been coming together for us lately the way we hoped in terms of being able to properly set up our life together in a place we both want to be, and it's been getting us down at times, so it was definitely a positive thing to start to see another potential pathway ahead.

By this point, it was the middle of the afternoon, and we were very hungry! So we walked back up towards the town centre and found this cool round building, which has a Bistrot Pierre inside (a restaurant I used to go with my parents nearly every time they visited me when I was living in Nottingham).

The interior of the building is very elegantly decorated and has fantastic panoramic views of the beach. And the food was delicious!

For our dessert, we had Mr Whippy ice creams while walking along the sand, which was a great way to round off our day at the seaside!

Although Weston-super-Mare isn't the most beautiful beach in the world, we really enjoyed our day there, and it was a nice break from the stresses that we're going through at the moment. It was also interesting for Claudio to discover a typical British seaside town - he'd been to Brighton before, but not to a place like Weston-super-Mare, which is less wealthy and doesn't really get any foreign visitors. 

If all goes to plan, we'll be off to a more exotic beach very shortly, but our day in Weston-super-Mare definitely helped us get our beach fix for the time being!