A long time without blogging…

The days keep flying by as Sam and I keep exploring the English Midlands with various friends and family, although I haven’t been keeping up to date on this blog.
I apologize for that.
Since my last post Tuesday Sam and I have spent a few days with Mo and John Macintyre and their humongous home in Goxhill, a small village a few miles outside of Barton.
We packed in a lot of sites—and a significant amount of wedding dress shopping—in those few days, hence the lack of blog post.
Sam and I are going to a wedding in Munster Germany the first week of June, which is why Sam wanted to make sure she had a great dress for the ceremony.
Her best friend Anna is getting married June 5th, so Sam wanted to look her best.
I won’t go into too much detail since I’m not a big “dress shopper,” but it’s safe to say after two half days of shopping and about 50 potential dresses later, Sam found the perfect dress, both for Anna’s wedding next month and my brother Seth’s wedding in November.
Dress shopping wasn’t the only thing we did with Mo and John.
We visited an underwater aquarium in Hull called “The Deep” with Mo on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, we went back to Hull to take in the maritime museum there, as Hull was and still is a major shipping locale in England, and visit William Wilberforce’s house.
Wilberforce was a key player in abolishing slavery in Great Britain.
Britain, through Wilberforce’s persistence, abolished the slave trade in 1807.
In 1833, Great Britain passed the Slavery Abolition Act, outlawing slavery in the country for good.
Wilberforce died in 1833, three days after the Slavery Abolition Act’s passage was assured.
On Thursday, the four of us traveled north to the seaside town of Whitby and the nearby village called Robin Hood’s Bay.
No one could tell me why it was called Robin Hood’s Bay, so we just figured Robin Hood must have vacationed there when making mischief for the Sheriff of Nottingham became too much.
Whitby is home to the looming ruins of Whitby Abbey and a famous church that is quoted in Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
Stoker lived near Whitby and used to visit the area often during his life, which is why, a museum worker told me, the town in mentioned in his book.
The worker said in Stoker’s novel, Dracula arrives in Whitby in the form of a dog, changes into his human form in the church graveyard and then is mentioned in Whitby again.
The connection is loose to be sure, but that hasn’t stopped the Whitby Abbey museum from trying to make a pound or two off the mention in the novel.
As the museum worker said: “The connection to Dracula is tenuous, but we sell the book in the gift shop.”
You can’t beat commercialism.