I finally did it - I moved out of The Barn.

(Okay, technically I only half moved as everything went into storage and haven't actually gotten a new place, but let's not split hairs.)

So yes, I moved. Success!! Two exclamation points fully earned.

In order to celebrate the fact that I had managed to do this very normal thing that people do all the time (and they do it without banging on about it for months on end), I jumped onto a plane and headed for Europe. I've been considering moving back over to that side of the pond and I thought this would be a good chance to check it out again and see how it felt to be back in my old hometown of Brighton.

It felt brilliant.

I was only able to spend a couple of days in England as the real reason I was there was to join up with a group of friends who were all off on a sailing holiday around Greece to celebrate a big birthday. My former flat mate W is a fabulous person and it seemed only fitting that we spend an entire week celebrating the fact that she exists.

There were 9 of us on the 51foot sailing yacht that we'd rented from a very, very dodgy company out of Greece. They definitely stitched us up with the boat as pretty much everything that could go wrong with it, did. A few times when we anchored in a harbor, the harbor master would come out, see the old tub we were knocking around in and laughingly ask us if we'd like a little extra help because he was only too aware of just how poorly the damn thing ran.

There were 5 cabins on the boat so I was sharing with my friend K. She's pretty much the perfect person to share a tiny 4 foot x 6 foot x 3 foot space with. She's calm and funny and lovely and she doesn't snore. Every single other cabin had a very loud snorer in it, so I felt pretty smug that we'd managed to get the only non-snoring cabin. That is, until K informed me that I snored. Oops. I blame the fresh sea air.

We had a great time, sailing around the Ionian Islands for 7 days. It was also of a reunion of sorts as a few of us had been on a similar sailing holiday on the Amalfi coast. Considering that only 5 years had passed, the dynamic of the boat had definitely changed. Over half of the boat had children now, some multiples and there were two engagements in the works. Instead of staying up until 5am every morning, dancing and drinking on the dock, we were mostly tucked up in bed by midnight after (quite) a few sedate drinks on the deck.

To be honest, I liked the change. I'm notoriously bad at staying up late and after getting baked by the Greek sun and wind all day, I was practically passing out before I made it to the bunk! Plus, these early nights meant not having to deal with murderous looks from the neighboring boats while we were kicked out of yet another harbor for excessive noise. I still can't go back to certain ports in Italy. Good times though. Damn good times.

- Italy, 2007

We had a little bit of everything on the trip. Hot sunshine, crazy stormy seas, swimming in secluded bays and clinging for dear life onto the side of boat as we tried to navigate through a storm we'd inadvertently sailed straight into. I even suffered a terrible sailing related injury. Or I sliced open the skin between my finger while washing dishes. Whatever sounds more dramatic, that's what I did. As the first aid kit on the boat was about as rubbish as everything else, I opted to pour gin on the wound and bind my fingers together in hopes that it would heal. Thankfully, between the gin and the X-Men bandage, I haven't developed gangrene. Yet.

It was, without a doubt, one of my favourite holidays ever. Ever, ever. And it made me realize just how much I miss life with my Brighton friends. Although I'm always 'myself' and I sincerely loved (and miss) my friends in Santa Barbara, I'm a far more relaxed and laid-back version of Kara when I'm in Europe. This is definitely something I'll be bearing in mind as I try to figure out just where in the world I should live over the next few months.

Next up: Cannes. I'm off to France now to play the WPT National Series there before returning to the USA to get stuck into the WSOP.

Good luck to the CR guys out there already!