We went grocery shopping yesterday afternoon, buying quite a lot of food. One of the downsides to this home exchange is that we don’t have a car to go to the supermarket. We took the tolley, of course, and caught the tram on the way back, but there is a steep walk up to our apartment building, plus some steps, which make it quite hard work. Last time we were here a young woman helped Stephen with the trolley. I had a couple of bags of lighter items.

We can’t work out why, but there are some barricades at the small park, making the walking area even smaller. On the other hand, the little kiosk, which is only open in the warmer months, was open, serving home made cake. We shared a generous slice with our cups of tea. It has been cloudy today, with a little light rain, but as we sat the sun came out.

There are lots of birds around, making quite piercing calls, plus large sqirrells. I didn’t try to capture them as I only had my phone and they move pretty fast.

I put some chicken and vegetables in the slow cooker this morning and we are looking forward to tasting the result. When we were planning this trip I thought it would be too warm for slow cooker meals, but we are having quite cool weather at the moment, with light rain every day. There is a storm warning for Sunday.

Stephen was working on making friends with the woman running the cafe. He is curious to see if she is the same person we met the last time we were here. We were here two months, and the cafe closed when it got colder. It was lovely to see it open today.

I’m trying to get all of my photos backed up into ‘the cloud’. It is taking ages as not much got backed up whilst we were in China. I have them on a hard drive, but having them in Google photos is great because it gives the dates and places taken. I can look back to photos taken here in the UK from 2011.