Day 3: Ipswich!

I woke up early the next morning, after one of the deepest sleeps I have had in a long time. After a shower, and a change of clothes, I felt like a whole new person. I put on some fresh makeup, then went to blow dry my hair, only to find out that the electrical adapter that I had gotten for the cell phone wouldn't work with my blow dryer or hair straightener. That was a major problem. I have the most curly/frizzy hair in the world, and I had no idea what I was going to do with it. After searching around the house, Patrica found a blow dryer. I would have to find a way to manage with just that.

After getting all ready, we caught the bus to downtown Ipswich.

We decided that we should first take care of a couple of errands. Patricia needed to go to the bank, and we needed to get some food in the house. Grocery shopping was just as fun as sightseeing. I was fun to look at all the different foods, and compare prices from back home.

Speaking of food, my favorite things about the food were: CHEESE! I am a cheese freak. England has about 800 different varieties of cheese. Okay, maybe not 800, but alot. And they all taste better than ours does! My other favorite thing was that everywhere you went to eat, they always had at least a couple of GOOD vegetarian items on the menu. That's very helpful, when you don't eat meat.


My least favorite food item was Steak and Kidney Pudding. Okay. I didn't actually try it. But it looked, smelled, and sounded really nasty.

And here are some photos of my first real day out:

Patricia buying fish for dinner at the open air fish market.




A couple of interesting microwave meals in the department store.

Downtown Ipswich

Town Hall, Mannings Pub Sign, Ancient House, Ancient House Beams, Ancient House ceiling, Cock & Pye Pub Sign, The Great White House (where Charles Dickens would stay to work on his novels), & a random old building.

Saint Mary le Tower Church - Ipswich

While we were out and about, I got to experience English rain for the first time. It doesn't just rain hard and for a few minutes, like it does here. It was just drizzly and gloomy all day. I found out really fast, that it really didn't matter to much if I had a blow dryer and hair straightener or not when it just rains all the time. After that day, I just gave up on trying to get my hair to look even somewhat presentable, and just let it go curly.

Everything in Ipswich closes really early. It's definitely not a 24 hour city, like Vegas. All the shops close by 5 pm, and the pubs only stay open until 11PM. So, we ended up back home shortly after five.

After dinner, we watched a little bit of TV. I really struggled to understand what it was saying, with the different accent. So Grace and Patricia figured out how to put the closed captioning on for me. :)