Thanks for looking at our registry!
We can hardly wait for the best party we've ever given, and we're so glad you'll be with us—and we're thrilled to be a part of history. As you know, we're not exactly starting out in life, and we're way too old to need mixers and pillowcases, but we never get tired of traveling and looking for art for our home. If you feel you would like to give us something, we'd love to be toasting you on our trip and thinking of you when we look at the special piece of art that we bring home with us.
Love,
Simon & Christopher
We're going to QM2 to Southampton, the Southwest of England!
We will fly to New York the Thursday after our wedding and spend two days in my old stomping grounds. On Saturday evening we will board the Queen Mary 2 (three blocks from my old place on Bond Street in Brooklyn!) bound for Southampton. After six days at sea, we alight Friday morning in the Emerald Isle ready for a tour of the Southwest, the one part of the country that's never on the way to anywhere else. The itinerary is pretty ambitious—two stately homes most days, and a lot of driving.
Our first stop will be Osborne House, Queen Victoria's favorite residence, on the Isle of Wight. It's a short ferry ride from the port. (In fact the ship will pass it on the way to the dock, but I doubt they'll stop for us.) After lunch at the palace we return to the mainland for a rental car and make our longest drive, the 150 miles to Exeter. We spend the night at the Thistle, the oldest Hotel in Exeter.
On Saturday morning we visit A la Ronde, a unique 16-sided house built by a pair of spinster cousins in the late 18th century, and after a pub lunch, Lutyens's Castle Drogo, the last castle built in England. We return to the Thistle in the evening.
Sunday morning we head continue west to Plymouth to see Saltram, a magnificent Georgian house with Adam interiors. If you saw Sense and Sensibility, this is the house from which the Dashwood sisters and their mother were expelled when Mr. Dashwood died. After lunch we turn north for Buckland Abbey, domesticated after the Dissolution and given to Sir Francis Drake by Elizabeth I. In the evening we continue north to Barnstaple and the fabulous Comfort Inn.
On Monday our destinations are Arlington Court, a Soane-esqe Regency house filled, like A la Ronde, with collections of shells, pewter, model boats, carriages, tapestries, and you name it. In the afternoon we turn east again to Tiverton for the Gothic revival Victorian country house Knightshayes Court with interiors by Crace. And in the evening we had for the center of the universe, according to Simon: the ancient city of Bristol.
After a day visiting Simon's old haunts (and a side trip to the antique markets of Bath) we'll take the train to London, Paddington Station, where we'll spend the night at my sister's place on Gloucester Terrace. And on Thursday we fly back to SFO.
Our Registry