Eric and I got the opportunity to visit Sheffield UK this summer to see two of our friends' marriage celebration. They were legally married in Japan but wanted to have a celebration with both families - he is from the UK and she Japan, so because they live in Japan full time, decided to get away to have their celebration in Sheffield. Eric & I went out a few days before the wedding so we could explore England a bit. We spent a day in York, what a beautiful old city! We did the tourism thing there, visited castles and museums and that sort of thing. Lots of pictures were taken of course! We spent a day exploring Sheffield, expect we didn't find the interesting shops until we were with Ewan... But we found a beautiful garden - Winters Garden and attached to it, a gallery of interesting exhibits. Sheffield is a big industrial city famous for knives and flatware, one of the exhibits was all about the making & history of silverware.
Ewan & Tomomi's wedding was beautiful! Very intimate, only 26ish people total there. It was set at Hassop Hall Hotel, they had beautiful gardens where Ewan & Tomomi were having pictures taken. We watched as pictures of family and friends were taken with the bride and groom. Tomomi looked like a princess in her dress. Ewan was very proper in his suit. Once the pictures were almost done, the servers at the hotel came out and set up a little white table and served Pimm's & Lemonade or punch (which was alcohol free) Pimm's & Lemonade was delicious! It was a little chilly so we all moved inside and milled about before lunch was served. Ewan and Tomomi exchanged vows - made lots of the ladies cry! Their vows were beautiful! The wedding lunch was delicious, lots of food - we left so very stuffed.
The next day we met Ewan & Tomomi in the afternoon to go for a walk in the countryside. We walked around a reservoir, through a tiny town where Ewan used to play cricket, then up a steep hill towards an old church that looked like a castle. Half way up the hill we came across a pasture that had a sign that said public foot-path, so Ewan hopped the fence and we all followed into the field with the cows. Tomomi was sooo cute, I guess she hasn't been so close to cows before. We cut across the field up to the old church, where we explored the tombstones. They had some extremely old ones where the letters we funny and hard to read. Afterwards, while waiting for Ewan's Mom to pick us up we decided we would pop into the pub. On this whole afternoon on our walk we saw maybe 4 or 5 people, but the pub we went into was PACKED, we could find anywhere to sit so we bought some sodas and Eric got a beer, we walked outside and were going to sit on the picnic bench outside but it was extremely windy, so we went back inside the pub and found four bar-seats. Ewan's Mom showed up and drove us downtown where we went for dinner with some of Ewan's friends from Sheffield. They were really nice. It was a great day, and a great way to end our short vacation! Pictures are up!!!!