We were honored to be a stop on Caity’s journey to Rosnaree, Ireland. Though the trip started with Caity having a pretty hefty airport security experience, we made up for that with an evening at Gokyuzu, a new favorite Turkish restaurant in my book. In true Forrest/Tremblay/Leonard fashion, we talked for an entire evening about her Davis graduation, her new plans to move to upstate New York, and her other upcoming European pitstops. Corey was shocked at how he could barely get a word in!
My cousin set off on her own each day, and there are few I know who have a sort of museum stamina like Caity Tremblay. Each day, she’d return with stories of the smallest clocks built in the last 200 years living at the British Museum or we’d learn about the unique journey of a piece of mail that was not delivered to its final destination at the Postal Museum. I’m just realizing as I write this how uncanny it would have been if Caity met Jules Capaldi at our wedding. They would be an unstoppable force for museum curators to reckon with.
Caity isn’t so much into drink and I had to reflect seriously about how many activities I’ve shared with our visitors that involve the imbibing. Thank you, Caity, for keeping me honest about that!
For the weekend, we took a trip out to Oxford, where we had a pretty delicious afternoon tea at The Grand Cafe, the first coffee house established in Oxford. Yes, I know that we asked for tea in a coffee house but they really do both very well. We got a really tasty clotted cream with our scones, one that Caity decided to take home in a doggy bag regardless of the face that we had about half a remaining scone to use as mechanism for getting the cream into our bellies (no shame!).
We wandered through a mass of dancers with bells, face paint and props as the Folklife festival was traveling through Oxford on this weekend. We toured the small botanical gardens and also took a lightening quick tour at the Bodleian Library, where parts of the Harry Potter movies were filmed. It’s pretty amazing to know that every single item printed in England is sent to this library, and that the royal family has a tradition of retreating into the vellum stacks to study at some point in their career. We avoided most of the commercial shopping but did manage to meander through a few markets. Oxford is an easy day trip from London with a little bit of “British” for everyone in terms of history, beautiful scenery, and treating oneself to lovely tea rooms.
On Sunday, we hit up Spitalfields Market and on Monday we had an extra day with Caity as she got things in order to get on to Ireland. I always say it’s nice to hang out with cousins as adults. I know that Miya had this with Ginny (Caity’s sister) so it was fun to have this experience with Caity and to hear about her adventures during this gap year. (Note: As my posts are clearly so delayed, ask Caity about her trip as she’s fully returned from Ireland at this point and quite possibly in NY at this time!)
l o n d o n f o r r e s t 
Leave a Reply