Trading Spaces

We returned home last night after a very fast 3-day trip to the UK. Paul has been offered a job about an hour north of London, and we're deciding whether to move the family to the UK for a three-year posting. This was not a vacation. This was a recon mission.

In many ways the decision to live overseas is a no-brainer. Most people never get an opportunity for this kind of adventure and cultural look-see. Why go to NYC on the weekend when you can go to Paris or Amsterdam? And the children are young enough that changing schools or their social setting wouldn't be a hardship. Kindergarten is an adjustment whether you're in DC or Devon.

In other ways, it's like plotting a trip to the moon. We enjoy a very comfortable home, a lovely, full community that offers us anything we want, and the support of good friends and loving family, all close by. Leaving that, if just temporarily, is worth many deep breaths and a whole lot of consideration.

So we embarked on a trip to suss it out. We rented a car and we drove and drove and drove and drove - up to Cambridge, west to St. Neots and St. Ives (to see seven wives), through Buckden and Godmanchester and Huntingdon and half a dozen other villages before wending our way to exquisitely beautiful town of Stamford. Before we left we'd covered 350 miles, visited with friends who live and work in the area (one family in a country setting in Alconbury-Weston - I was totally charmed by the two Sussex chickens laying eggs in their backyard....I could SO do that) and then in the chic town of Marlow for a Michelin one-star pub dinner (pubs get stars? huh.).

We stayed two nights at the Talbot hotel in the stone village of Oundle. It is said to be haunted by Mary Queen of Scots - the staircase she descended to her execution is in the lobby. And drank ale in pubs many hundreds of years older than our own country. Any trip to Europe is exhilarating. This one was that, and a little scary too. As we flew out of Heathrow yesterday morning, I could not help but wonder when we'd be back and for how long.