2017 - A Year in Review

2017 Country of Living: England in LONDON!

Mel has been enjoying her time as a dog groomer at Dogtown while I continue working for Smartlogic though my company has recently closed it's rather under-utilised office in the city to allow us to work from home – Should be interesting though, to be honest, I have been pretty working from home for some time now. We have been once again very busy with events and managed to arrange trips to amazing Venice, then Vienna (Wien) for the Austrian Grand Prix (Formula 1), and finally Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam (primarily Cambodia) on an small group tour. I also travelled to Manila early in the year and Warsaw later. I have also finally taken a rather pricey but exceptional 5-week cooking course at Leiths School of Food and Wine, “The Complete Cook (Part 1)”, and look forward to part 2 early in 2018.

Travel

A bit of travelling…

  • February - A wonderful off-season trip to Venice.
  • March - A work trip to train a new supplier in Manila.
  • April - We had a short break in Wales near Knighton where we stayed in a Shepherd's hut (“The Whistle”).
  • July - A short weekend trip to Austria to see the Austrian Grand Prix, staying in Vienna (Wien). This was Mel's first experience of Formula 1 and from all evidence she really enjoyed it. Beautiful setting in the Austrian Alps for the race where we had a great view of most of the track from the side of a mountain.
  • Late August/Early September - We had a wonderful trip to Asia with Intrepid Travel where we had about five days in Bangkok (Thailand), followed by nine days in Cambodia and a last day in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). See my Angkor Trails Journal 2017.
  • October - Mother stopped by for a flying visit (a day) on the way to Zimbabwe then again on her way back in November.
  • November - Escaping a bit from our hectic lives we had a weekend getaway in Southend-On-Sea which, though cool weather, really helped recharge us for what was a very hectic end of the year.
  • December - I went to Warsaw (Poland) for a quick work trip.

Visitors

We had a lot of visitors this year with my mother arriving for a two week visit in mid-May then a week later (overlapping by a week) my younger sister, Karin, arrived for a two week visit then a short break of about a week when Mel's mother Josie visited for a week. My mother returned in October and November on her way to/from Zimbabwe for her annual volunteer work at a hospital there.

Reviews of the Year

Events

January

February

March

April

May

June

Films

Restaurants

Books

Next Year

Not a lot planned though I am planning a skiing trip with my mother at the end of January, my younger sister is talking about a visit late spring, in July Mel and I are going to Maastricht (Netherlands) to see Andre Rieu, and Mel's family are talking about a “ladies” visit sometime as well.

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Visit here for my review of 2016.