February has been a crazy month. In case you missed last month’s recap, Mr. Away With Maja was in a pretty serious car crash in January, and most of this month has been spent recovering from that. I haven’t had any fun travel plans unfortunately, and this is the first month in YEARS that I haven’t left the city of York! Which is kind of depressing, but there’s worse things and worse places I suppose. Here’s what I got up to in February.
Where I Went
York, United Kingdom
Best Moments
The York Ice Trail! One of my favorite events in York for the year was at the very beginning of February. The York Ice Trail sees beautiful ice sculptures take over the town, sponsored by local businesses. This year there was a new date (it was previously before Christmas), and there were 50 sculptures—way more than last year! I had a great day running around town photographing the sculptures. It’s such a fun event that appeals to so many different people. Definitely put it on your calendar for next year if you can!
Seeing York in the snow. Earlier this February, York had real snow. As in, real, thick, heavy snowflakes that fell and stayed on the ground for several hours. I was luckily off work, and as soon as I opened the curtain in the morning, ran off to go photograph the snow around town! I was treated to two heavy snowfalls on my walk. It made me miss home so much—but I loved getting to capture these moments.
Celebrating Valentine’s Day. Adam and I have still spent most of our relationship doing long distance. So getting to celebrate special anniversaries and days means so much to me, since we spent years missing all of those things. This Valentine’s Day, we went for a fantastic dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. Adam was able to walk all the way there on his crutches without much pain, which was huge! I’m so grateful, every single day, that we get to be together and share those special days with one another.
One of my friends came to visit us in York! My friend Laura came up to York for a short two days and we had so much fun with her. I loved getting to play tour guide and take her to all my favorite places in the city. We saw Museum Gardens, went to York Minster, walked part of the City Walls, visited Jorvik to check out the latest with the Vikings, wandered around the Shambles and York’s other snickelways, and just in generally had a great time. It was so nice to catch up with her as well and just hang out.
BBC Yorkshire featured me on their Instagram. The BBC Yorkshire Instagram account does a cool project called 52 Views every Monday, where they feature a local photographer and they share a bit about themselves and tips. BBC Yorkshire asked to feature me for it on the last Monday in February, which was such a cool offer! I saved it under my stories on Instagram so if you haven’t seen if already, make sure you check it out!
Making khachapuri, our favorite Georgian food! My brothers-in-law got me a Georgian cookbook for Christmas, and Adam suggested we try making khachapuri! It was definitely a two-person task, and it took HOURS (about four). In the end though, we ended up with delicious cheesy bread boats that we devoured. We’ll have to tweak the recipe in future though—we ended up with way too much cheese and too many eggs. But it was so tasty! I so want to go back to Georgia!
An amazing brunch at Pig and Pastry. I’ve been making more of an effort to eat out at new places in the past few weeks (mainly as a result of being sad I’m not traveling anywhere…). Pig and Pastry was by far the most recommended place for brunch and it did not disappoint! Probably my new favorite place to eat in York, 11/10 would recommend. I will definitely be back!
Starting to feel normal again. January was the craziest, most chaotic, most stressful month I’ve had in a long time. Finally, now, at the end of February, I’m starting to feel normal again. Like I can have a life again. Like, I have the time and energy to do the things I enjoy. Work is (finally) starting to quiet down a bit, and my stress levels are going down with that. I have time to think and breathe and blog and go to the gym!
Worst Moments
My blog went down for a day. I had tried to run a backup of my blog, and then when it finished, I couldn’t access my blog on my laptop or phone on my home wifi. Yet somehow it would work on another phone, and on other wifi networks?? I did everything I could and then spent all night asking every tech chat I could—my hosting provider, my wifi provider, Apple tech help (as it could have been a device issue), my hosting provider again… only to wake up in the morning and have it work fine. I still don’t really know what went wrong, and I don’t really know what I could have done to fix it. It caused a huge dip in my page views, but the important thing is that it’s working now!
Trying to organize a backup for my blog. While I was using UpdraftPlus for the last year, I realized I really need something a bit more stable than that. So I bought Backup Buddy in the hopes of getting a good product and having backups of my blog. Well, I still haven’t been able to do a complete backup, and am still waiting on their tech support team to help me out. In the meantime, I don’t really want to be doing any changes to the blog while I’m waiting to get this sorted! The tech stuff this February has been really complicated and so incredibly frustrating.
Cancelling our trip to Greece. As I mentioned in last month’s recap, we obviously have had to cancel some trips. We were supposed to go to Greece for 8 days towards the end of February—obviously that’s not happening. And not only have we had to cancel Greece, but my phone has had the audacity to pop up with reminders for my flight times as if I were still going!! Like, I’m not going to be on that plane because I had to cancel that flight! The nerve of my phone… Greece was somewhere that we picked to go rather randomly, but it really is a dream trip for me. I’ve been wanting to go to Greece (and especially Santorini) for so many years. I guess it will just have to wait for some other time!
Having to sort out my student loans. I’ve had to re-certify my income for my federal student loans this month, which was a nightmare of paperwork. As I have additional expenses that don’t appear on my paycheck (such as council tax and a massive visa fee coming up in May), I submit a lot more information than just my payslip. I also sent in all of my own currency conversions, since I don’t trust them to figure out the exchange rate on their own. It also means that I’ll be paying more on my student loans as I have a full-time, contracted job now—while I do want to get out of debt, it would just be nice to not have to make high monthly payments!
Doing so much paperwork and admin. From student loans to travel insurance, to finding receipts and injury claims, this month has been very busy sorting out paperwork and generally just doing a lot of admin. I have piles of paperwork all over the house, and have a constant to-do list that I’m working on. It’s been a job in and of itself trying to remember to respond to certain emails, chase up payments, call lawyers, etc.
Posts Published
I’m finally starting to get the time and energy to get some blog posts out! Here’s what I published this February.
Ice Ice Baby: Everything About The York Ice Trail!
Ben Nevis: Hiking Britain’s Highest Mountain
A Daytrip To Khor Virap, Areni, And Noravank In Armenia
Walking In A Winter Wonderland: York In The Snow
Instagram Top 3
I’ve been on and off with my Instagram this month. I had a lot of energy and motivation for posts at the beginning of February, but tailed off significantly later on. Here are my top 3 photos from Instagram!
Coming Up In March
As of now, I don’t have any plans for basically all of March. Everything will depend on Mr. Away With Maja and if/when he’ll be able to get out of the boot and walk without crutches again! If all goes well, I’m hoping to maybe have a few daytrips on my days off around Yorkshire. I’ll be going on the Eurostar for the first time, with work to Brussels for a few hours. It’ll be a long day, but I’m really excited for it! Fingers crossed all goes well and I can sort out more travel plans as we go!
What was your February like? Anything exciting planned for March?!
[…] was over in the blink of an eye. I spent almost the whole month in York, which is strange because last February was the first month ever that I didn’t leave the city! Here’s what all I got up to in […]