Catchup Day - Wed, Aug 20th

Yup, it was time to step back a bit and get caught up.  We both had emails to answer, work to do and laundry.  We had lunch in our flat, chicken curry dinner with the Fathers but did get out and about later in the evening for a pint at The Crown on Queen Street.

We do love the email comments from our US friends and family.  One response included a barrage of questions.  Needed a chuckle today. 

Back to the first days:  63 stairs! and I am winded going up my--good grief I don't know how many steps are in "my" stairs and as it is dark and lonely out there at this hour guess I'll wait until tomorrow to count them--but sixty-three steps down and back up----are they broad or narrow, is there a handrail, are they inside or outside,can you go down them (and up them) side by side or single file, do you meet coming uppers as you are being going downers and visa versa?????---wow 63 stairs.

Yes, we are certainly getting our exercise thanks to the stairs.  Not only when we leave the building, but the dining hall is on the 1st floor.  At least the laundry that we use is on our level.  So, shall I respond to some of the questions......

This pic is from our 4th level looking down.  A full square for each floor.  Straight carpeted area, stairs, straight wooden area and stairs.  You can only just see the edge of the final flight of stairs up to our level (at the bottom of the pic). 

 Unfortunately the pic is too dark to let you see that the stairs are carpeted in red, until the ones accessing our level where they are in beige with just red on the edge of the stairs.  At least it makes it easy to know when approaching our floor - for us and them. 

Also, our stairs are a bit narrower than all the rest of the floors but they are still broad and wide.  So you can see that ours can easily have 2 persons passing up/down.  But we usually walk up/down in single file.

The pic does allow you to see the polished wooden handrail.  Sometimes there is the same wood so it looks like a handrail but with no space between the wall and the wood it's more like a chair rail/stair rail?!

At the very bottom level of the stairs is the back doorway to Rose Lane that we generally use - rather than walking through the building.