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We decided to try out an adventure this weekend: take the train to another city to explore, learn, and have fun. We chose to go to Durham in northeast Yorkshire.

Jacob excitedly awaits our train

The Saturday train ride was a lot of fun, especially for the children. Jacob was amazed by the countryside zooming by, and the occasional train zooming by even faster when it passed in the other direction. We had to change trains which was a small challenge but also an enjoyable learning moment. Figuring out which platform we had to switch to wasn't too bad--just find the big board and look for our destination on the list. Finding the right crosswalk was a little more challenging--look for the right number and where the arrow points to go the right way. We made it to Durham without a hitch.

Jacob explains how the table stays solid, unlike on planes

We stayed in the historic Bridge Hotel right outside of Durham. The bottom floor is a pub, and easily the best pub we've been in. A small door off to the side leads up a narrow staircase to the eight guest rooms. Our rooms were #2 and #4. We had lunch there on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday. Breakfast was the standard British breakfast: bacon, sausage, mushrooms, grilled tomato, beans, fried egg, and toast. We had some tea and the kids had some cereal. It was quite delicious. The bacon was a cross between American-style bacon and Virginia-style ham (i.e. quite salty tasting). It was very filling and helped us through the day.

And what a day it was. About 09:30 I received a call from our apartment rental place. They had expected us to move out the day before and were surprised that our stuff was still inside. They had a new family come in and needed us to move out asap. I thought we had until the end of the month! Eventually we discovered that it had been booked up to the 16th with the expectation that we'd renew if we needed a longer stay. We were told that on our arrival when we were too groggy to remember. Of course, we didn't get any notice from the company before they emailed us on Saturday night (while we were in Durham sans internet). No final bill or instructions for leaving the place was slipped under the door. My wife checked her email and there was nothing about the final day in the earlier emails. It was a very frustrating call to receive. We packed quickly and headed to the train station to return and deal with it. Fortunately, we were already getting ready to go so we still left on the same train we had originally planned to take.

The apartment company did book us in a nearby hotel for one night (which we've managed to extend to two nights). We will have time to find a new place to stay for a couple of weeks till the townhouse is ready for us to move in. Our sponsors started checking for us on new accommodations. Nothing will happen till Monday most likely.

So my wife and children went to the new hotel to check in and get naps. Jacob and Lucy without naps is not a good sight to see. Her cousin and I headed to the apartment to pack up and move out. Luckily, we already bought a new car which was much bigger than the rental we had. Even so, only about 60% of our stuff fit in it. The cousin walked a bunch of the rolling luggage bags down the street to the new place (one or two blocks away). I kept packing up stuff. Luckily, we had a stroller on loan and I was able to load some groceries and things that we'd need at the hotel to be walked to our new quarters. I packed what I thought we wouldn't need immediately into the car, hoping to leave it in the boot (that's the trunk in American lingo) or possibly drop some stuff at our sponsors' house. We'll do that Monday night, because...

The new hotel has a posh restaurant. We thought it'd be easiest to eat there after we got home from 6 p.m. Mass in town. We got a table pretty quickly and they had a highchair, so we thought we'd be okay. The menu didn't have any kid's items, but our children usually eat off our plates half the time anyway. It took a while for the waitress to take our order. To kill some time I took Lucy to our room to get sippy cups and some table entertainment for Jacob and Lucy. No crayons or activity books seemed likely at this restaurant.

When I got back I was gratified to find out our orders were in and drinks would be on the way. About 30 minutes later, our water, apple juice, and J2O (some juice drink I'll blog about later) finally came. The food took even longer. When it did come, we were short the side of rice my wife had ordered for the kids. So the waitress checked with the kitchen and it would be another 10 minutes. By the time it came, the kids were no longer interested in eating and were getting stir-crazy. Our food was only average. The abysmal service made it seem terrible. Everybody finally packed off to the room while I waited around for the bill.

The bill eventually came and the waitress apologized for the mix up and said they took the drinks off the bill. I wished I had ordered wine or beer or something to make it more meaningful. I graciously accepted the apology and she headed off. I looked at the bill and saw that I could charge it to the room. I decided that would be much faster than trying to use a credit card. That's when I realized she'd left no pen. Luckily I carry a pen with me so I was able to fill it out and escape without a longer delay.

Back at the room, Jacob was eating a peanut butter and raisin sandwich. We are not eating breakfast here tomorrow.

I will have more posts on Durham and what we saw (awesome cathedral and lots of wandering bands) later on. I'm glad we didn't find out about the apartment mix up until mid-morning on Sunday. We got to enjoy Durham before we left. And thank goodness my wife's cousin was with us to help out when things did fall apart.