Almost Time

We'll be heading out on vacation soon, we're going to England.  Our bedroom floor is covered with bags as we decide what to take.  Our weather is still hot with temperatures in the low 90's.  I've been following the weather in Oxford, that's the nearest big town to where we'll be staying, and the weather there is mainly in the 60's which sound heavenly, but I need to dig out Fall clothes.  We live in shorts and swimming suits here all summer, I don't think I've had a long pair of pants on since April.
Two new umbrellas have been purchased, though we hope we don't get too much use out of them.  A couple of years ago we were in England in September and had no rain until the very last day.  Usually we run into some rain, but fingers crossed.
Our dresser is covered with a bunch of small stuff I need to pack.  We've rented a cottage so we'll have a kitchen, hopefully with a French press for coffee, and we're taking our own coffee.  I have a stack of walking books as we hope to take full advantage of the cooler weather and get some good walks in.  There's also our Atlas for Britain, Mac, bless his heart and nerves, doesn't mind (too much) driving on the other side of the road and so we'll have a car.  Our gas has gotten very cheap here  lately ($2.41 a gallon), I'm assuming British petrol is a lot higher, in fact I looked up the average price for gas around Burford (isn't Google amazing) and found that it is 1.17.9 a liter, and using Google again I found out there are 3.78 liters to a gallon, so a gallon will cost around £5.135 and that's about $7.90 OUCH! And that's not counting what our credit card company will charge us for a foreign currency transaction.   It will probably cost more to buy gas than to rent the car, oh well, lots of short trips.
Still, I'm very excited, it's been almost 2 years since we've been to England and we always have such a good time there.  We won't be going into London, we both love London, but it just wears us out, glad we had a number of trips there when we were younger.  Now we stay primarily in the Cotswolds, rent a cottage, do a bit of antique shopping (Shepton Mallet Antique Fair here we come),  lots of drawing and painting, take many walks (have a walk for Flora Thomson's Larkrise to Candleford)  and have as much pub grub as we can hold.  British bacon and ham is so much better than ours, I love Bacon Buttys and Ham Baguettes.  Mac loves homemade meat pies and we both love a good crumble for dessert.  No doubt I'll put on way, way too much weight.
We've been known to stay for a whole month on some of our trips, but this one will be shorter, neither one of us likes leaving our kitty for long, how sad is that.  But when the bags come out she sleeps on them as if to keep us from going.  A friend is coming in to take care of her, so we know she'll be fine, but like 2 silly souls we worry about her.  Wish we could take her with us.  We had a cat who traveled across the States twice with us, flew to Germany and Turkey, as well as car trips to Utah and Florida.  He liked the car, but was less than enthusiastic about flying.
Need to stop Blogging, I have to sort out painting supplies, find our drawing pencils, move from my current purse into a backpack purse, find cds to listen to on the flight, pick out some books to read and fix lunch.