We do the same tour every summer: First we take England, then we take Portugal (trying very oddly to refer to that Leonard Cohen song here). Mr. Payne is, as you may or may not know, English, so he has his brother with wife and kiddos and his father over there. His mother lives in Portugal, so we always go there after having been in England (with his brother and family joining us).
Anyway. England, more specifically the countryside around Chester, was lush and green and summery, it was beautiful. I find Britain somehow exotic, even though you might think it isn't that different from Norway culturally. I think it is. So going there for me is a real journey, and going there for Mr. Payne is familiar, it's home.
We had lunch at the pub (as one does), went to the Zoo (see next post), and generally hung out and caught up. Lovely!
(Mr. Payne doesn't understand why I want to post the photo below, of his brother's back alley, but you see, I even find the brick houses exotic. So there you go!)