December has come and gone, and now it’s the start of a whole brand new year! December was fairly quiet and besides the busy Christmas period, I didn’t do very much. November was so busy for me, and this December has been a very nice month to relax after that!
Where I Went
York, Staithes, Grosmont, Great Fryupdale, Lealholm, Castleton, Hutton le Hole, Robin Hood’s Bay, Thornton le Dale, Ness, Crewe, Stoke-on-Trent (United Kingdom)
Best Moments
A wonderful weekend in the North York Moors National Park. Before the Christmas festivities began in earnest, Adam and I booked a rural Airbnb in the North York Moors and had a really wonderful two days in the countryside. We drove all over the Moors, visiting lots of really cute villages and seeing some beautiful scenery. In the evening, we returned to the Airbnb (an annex attached to a farmhouse), lit a fire in the wood burning stove, and read our books. It was absolutely perfect (sign up to Airbnb here and get £25 or US Dollar equivalent off your first booking!).
Seeing Six The Musical! For my birthday present, my mother-in-law was nice enough to treat us to tickets to see a show in Salford (near Manchester)—and it was all about Henry VIII’s six wives! Six The Musical was SO much fun and an amazing show. Girl power, witty history jokes, and lots of sass got two big thumbs up from me. I even bought the soundtrack, and have been listening to it pretty much non-stop over the last few weeks!
I finally got to visit Staithes! One of the most picturesque seaside destinations in Yorkshire is definitely Staithes, located just north of Whitby. I’ve been wanting to go for ages, but it’s almost a bit too far to justify a daytrip from York. Well, I finally went and it was wonderful! It was really quiet, very charming, and so picturesque. It was a definite highlight of December!
The Christmas Eve service at York Minster. We went to the midnight service at York Minster on Christmas Eve. And it was absolutely wonderful. There were loads of people there, and it was probably a bit longer than I would have liked. But it was such a beautiful setting and the Minster looked great decked out for Christmas. If you happen to find yourself in York over Christmas, definitely make time to go to a service at the Minster!
I had a lot of fun times with friends. Earlier this month was my work’s Christmas party, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to hang out with people from work without having to do the busy and boring work part! This December, I also got to catch up with some of my friends from my old job, which was so much fun to see them. I went out three times in five days and it was exhausting, but I had lots of fun!
I got offered my first trip with work! There are perks of working in the travel industry… and I was offered my first official trip through my job this month. In April, I’ll be spending a week in Canada exploring the Canadian Rockies!!! This is a huge bucket list destination for me, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be going there. I was also so touched that my managers think I’m worth this kind of investment, having only been there for 6 months. It will be a trip with work, so it’ll be very different from my normal trips—and I’ll most likely be extremely busy, with long days, and I’ll need to be constantly “on.” But I’m very very excited!
Worst Moments
Christmas was really hard. I don’t really want to even write about it. But it was really hard and I had a tough time being homesick. It was especially hard being away from all my family, and having people continually ask, “are you going home for Christmas then?” as if it’s just a drive down the road. Most people said this out of kindness, which is so appreciated! But it was a tough reminder having to say again and again, no, I’m not seeing my family this year. This year was really, really difficult.
I broke my phone in Poland. This was technically in November but I completely smashed my phone screen on my trip to Poland. I have phone insurance through my bank, so I paid £25 and sent it off to be repaired. 5 days later, they told me they can’t actually repair it, so offered me some other phones they had in stock, or £150 cash to buy a new phone. I took the money, since I was using my old “phone” that just barely works. So I was without a phone for over a week, which just sucks. It took them waaaay longer to credit my account with the money (nearly 3 weeks), but it’s all sorted now!
My first UK driving lesson. I had my first official driving lesson in the UK this December and it was awful. I spent half of it crying, and then came home and literally cried for most of the day. Basically, I was told that (despite driving for 10+ years, and driving in the UK for the past 1.5 years) I’m driving wrong. So I need to change everything from how I brake to how I change gears. I was actually doing quite well with driving here and now I’m back to having no confidence. It also means something I thought would be relatively easy (passing my driving test) is now a massive task, which will require lots of lessons (which cost money, so that’ll be expensive) and changing 10+ years of habits. It was awful and makes me feel awful. So that was pretty shit as well.
Renewing my passport. This December, I’ve had to renew my US passport here in the UK. My passport expires in October 2019, but since you need 6 months validity to visit most places, I need to renew mine a lot earlier. I sent it off the first week of December, since I won’t need it again until mid-February when I got to Greece. This is the longest chunk of time I’ll be in the UK and not needing my passport, so it needed to get done now!
Anyone have any idea how insanely frustrating it is to renew your passport abroad?! Because in order to renew my passport here, I had to get special US passport photos done, as US passport photos sizes aren’t the same size as UK/European ones. This cost £15. I also had to arrange for a special courier to pick up my passport/documents, luckily on a day I had off work (because of course they only do this on weekdays). To get documents picked up and returned cost an extra £15 as well.
And then in order to actually pay for my passport, the US Embassy doesn’t accept checks, credit or debit card payments, or literally anything besides a postal money order. So I had to go to the post office and of course there’s a fee to send money by money order so I had to pay £102 for a £91 order. It was about 18 hoops to jump through. I know it’ll be worth it, and it’s something I only have to do every 10 years. But it was such an absolute pain! I’ve got both my new passport and my old passport back now, so it’s a weight off my shoulders!
We had a gas leak in our house that could have been really bad. Luckily it was completely fine, but it was still scary nonetheless. We had accidentally left one of the burners on our stove on, without a flame, so it was leaking gas. I got up in the middle of the night and thought I smelled gas, but convinced myself I was just being paranoid. When I woke up in the morning, Adam had texted that there had been a gas leak and he’d turned it off. So the house got aired out, everything was fine, no damage done at all. But it was still really scary! Luckily the door to our kitchen is always open, and our kitchen has pretty poor ventilation in the first place. It was such a small mistake but could have had massive consequences, so I’m really glad nothing went wrong!
Posts Published
I made it a goal to try to publish 3 times a week—I still had so much content from my summer trips that I needed a push to get done! I didn’t quite make it, but got a lot of good posts out there. Here’s what I published this month:
How Much Does It Cost To Travel Iceland For 3 Days?
A Daytrip To Gori From Tbilisi: Stalin And Caves
What I Wish I Knew Before I Moved Abroad
12 Tips For Planning Your Scottish Highlands Road Trip
The Best Of Iceland: A 3-Day Itinerary
The Best Restaurants In York, England
44 Awesome Things You Must Do In Tbilisi: A Complete Guide To The Georgian Capital
How Much Does It Cost To Travel Poland For 5 Days?
Reflections On A Year Of Change
Instagram Top 3
My Gdansk photos have definitely been the most popular on Instagram this month! I did my Instagram “Countdown to Christmas” this year again, which was really fun and a really good way to motivate me to posting every day. But somehow I gained more followers when I wasn’t posting (when I didn’t have a real phone), than when I was posting every single day! Instagram is so frustrating.
Coming Up in January
January will be a pretty quiet month for me, travel-wise. This is our busy time at work, and everyone works 6 days a week. I’ve got no plans to go anywhere, and just plan on working a lot! I do plan on publishing my big yearly recaps for 2018 in the beginning of January. Unlike a lot of bloggers, I like to do these at the very beginning of January, as opposed to the end of December, since I had one last weekend trip before Christmas. Stay tuned!
What was your December like? Any exciting plans coming up in January?!
