I've finally reached the last in my blog series of trip reports from our March trip to England. I'm left with pictures that simply didn't fit in with the other posts, but ones that I still wanted to share.

During my visit, we stayed with Dan's parents in the lovely town of Newbury. Newbury was fantastic. It's filled with many gorgeous Historic buildings, yet is modern enough to have a plethora of shopping, dining and entertainment options. The center of town is a short walk from Dan's parent's home making it easy to go explore.

Here are a few pictures of the snow in the front garden of their home.

Our rental van also got covered in snow. It only really snowed on our last morning, but the weather was cold througout our entire visit.

I liked the neighborhood watch stickers. Many years ago, I was working at Universal Studios and a group of police officers from London visited the park. While I was assisting them on the Jurassic Park ride, they handed me a sticker that said "I met the Met" and it had a similar picture and logo.

Neighborhood (neighborhood) Watch Sticker

On my first morning in Newbury, we drove over to the nearby Highclere Castle. Fans of the show Downton Abbey will recognize Highclere as the home of the Crawley family. Unfortunately it was closed for the season (and filming), but Dan took this picture of me with a Highclere road sign that was located right across the street from the estate.

One of the more interesting aspects of traveling in a foreign country is checking out the local grocery store. England has several major grocery chains and on our trip, we visited two of them. Waitrose is the more upscale chain. They sell organic food, offer free coffee in their cafe and Pippa Middleton writes a hostess column for their newsletter. It's nice and similar to Gelsons or Whole Foods.

Tesco is more like Walmart. They sell a little bit of everything and although it isn't bad per-se, it's definitely downmarket from Waitrose. One thing that Tesco had that I've never seen in America, is a service where the store slices your bread for you.

I spent the first afternoon of our trip walking around Newbury with Dan's mom. I was so busy absorbing and enjoying the sights, that I really didn't take very many pictures. Here are a few snaps.

Followers of my blog might recognize the following location from my series on British candy. Dan's niece sent us a box with several items from Mr. SImms. We went inside to get to the bottom of the banana candy that they sell. The banana candy is good, but has a strange taste, almost fizzy and taffy at the same time. The nice girl working behind the counter looked up the ingredients, but alas, we couldn't figure out the source of the bizarre taste.

The town has a new outdoor shopping mall with a big underground parking lot that we used to go to the nearby Victoria Park. The park was huge with a playground that the kids really enjoyed. The park also had a shallow pond that is used for sailing model boats.

No matter where I travel, if I see ducks, I'm a happy camper. Newbury has a canal running through the town and the canal is home to loads of ducks and swans.

I had a wonderful first trip to England and I'm happy to report that I'm going back! The tickets have been booked and we will be traveling at the end of the summer. The England adventure, to be continued...

This is a poorly timed post, as we are trying our best to cut down on sweets in the New Year. I have a few English treats that we sampled last year, but I never reviewed. The pictures have been sitting on my desk top, mocking me. I guess I will have to just eat this apple and live vicariously through my 2012 food memories.

Back in October, Dan's Brother-In-Law spent the weekend with us and he brought along early Christmas presents. Thank You Higgins Family! I still have some of the treats waiting to be tasted on our "British Yummies Shelf", which is a high shelf in our kitchen, that hopefully puts things out of view, so that it lasts longer. Out of sight, out of mind?

This present from the Higgins, was gobbled up within a week.

The label from the candy shop where the bar was purchased. I get to visit Newbury in March!

A small portion of the enormous bar.

One enormous bar of chocolate!

The chocolate bar was huge and I have no idea how he got it over here in one piece. 2.2 pounds of Cadbury Milk chocolate. This present rocks. First, Cadbury chocolate is delicious. I've now come to appreciate the English version, which unlike the American version of Cadbury, doesn't have added components to keep it from melting. It's creamier. Second, it's giant. Giant novelty candy is smile inducing.

We have another chocolate treat from Dan's parents, Maltesers.

Maltesers!

interior of a Malteser.

Maltesers are delicious. I think that they taste remarkably similar to their their American counterpart, Whoppers. Dan insists that they are nothing alike and I respectfully disagree. They are similar, both small balls of malt covered in chocolate. Whoppers are malt and Malterers have a malt/honeycomb combo center. Maltesers were first sold in 1937 and Whoppers was originally sold as product called Giants and was sold in 1939. Apparently, the thirties was a hot time for malt candy.

I discovered a fun fact, that Maltesers were originally advertised as a diet food! It was created by Forrest Mars Sr. and heavily marketed towards women, labeling as slimming and claiming them to be "Balls of Energy". I read this and immediately tried to justify working it into our 2013 diet plan. If you don't look too deep, anything can be diet food. The Malteser company said that it was healthy, must be, right? I like the sound of "Balls of Energy". Ok, back to this Granny Smith. Crunch.

I think on our trip to England, I will have to pick up a bag and bring it home for a Malteser/Whopper side by side comparison, so that I can appreciate the difference.

Hypersmash.com

England March 2013- Final Trip Report

So You're Dating a Brit - More Chocolate