Oh Exeter...

There once was a girl who learned about the possibility of doing an internship abroad as part of her bookseller apprenticeship. Via an aquaintance she found his brother, a comic shop owner in Exeter, Devon, England, UK and spent a month there working in said shop, living with said brother and having the time of her life. That girl was me (now imagine a real loud gasp from an imagined audience).
That was last year in April. This year, my boyfriend and I decided to go to Exeter for a week to visit all the friends I've made during my time there and I fell in love with South England all over again.

Our journey began last Saturday. Early. Really early. We left the house at 7am to catch our flight in Düsseldorf at 10.55 am. I kinda sorta hate my boyfriend for being that keen about being early (rather than late, yes, it's the responsible thing but come on). We spent ages at the airport and to be honest, after security checks there's really not much to do in Düsseldorf airport. But oh well.
The one thing that is really annoying about Exeter is that it's not that easy to get there. You can't just take a flight straight from Düsseldorf to Exeter, no - you take a flight to London and then get on a coach to drive for another 3 hours until you finally arrive. Still absolutely worth it though.

Exmouth

Jup, I'm going to do the thing and write about Exmouth first thing in my post about Exeter. To be honest, to me they're more one city than two seperate ones. So we spent our sunday in Exmouth where my friend Lewis' parents live. They are definitely two of my favourite people in the world - when I met them in April last year they just welcomed me with open arms, they are almost ridiculously kind and warm people and I am very glad I got to meet them again.
Before we actually met them we went for a little walk on the beach and through town and I found it again - the shop of my dreams.

Look at this front. Look at the windows. I am dreaming of buying this shop one day and have my own bookshop inside it, along with a coffee place a friend would lead - it'd be amazing. Of course it would actually need a lot of touching up before that, so I'd need to become ridiculously rich to be able to afford that. If someone has a proper plan how to become rich like that, let me know.

The Glorious Art House

The Glorious Art House is a coffee shop I already fell in love with last year. It's located on Fore Street, which is in general heaven. If Frida Kahlo was a building, she'd be the Glorious Art House. It's just a really colourfull, happy place with friendly people, amazing coffee and couches I could spend weeks on. Thus we went there almost every day.

The couch right in the front might be one of my favourite places in the world. It's great to just sit there, read a book, sketch or, you know, talk to people sitting there with you. Also, I can highly recommend their moccha, and my boyfriend was all over the Glorious hot chocolate (because it had all the marshmallows). Another reason to just go there, of course, it that it's one of the many local independent places on Fore Street.

 The Quay

Exeters quay is a thing I didn't see last time - according to Lewis, it's no fun at all in April? I can only tell that in June, it's quite nice down there, even though you have to climb all the way up again when you're leaving.
We went to the quay two times, the first time for a nice lunch (I can recommend going to Mango's!) and the second time for a pedaloe tour on the river.

Well, to be honest, the boat ride has been a bit disappointing. We rented the pedalo for an hour, and while we got in we got told how small the area was where we were allowed to go. Also, I underestimated how anxious I'd be about my stuff falling into the river... accordingly, we only spent half an hour on the river before we gave the pedalo back and instead took a little walk through the neighbourhood to discover what was going on there.

The Museum

Another thing I can recommend checking out is the Royal Albert Memorial Museum And Art Gallery. It's got free admission so it's definitely worth checking out, and it has a broad variety of things to be discovered, from, well, art to fossils to stuffed animals.

There's so much stuff there, and they also give you activities and you can try on different costumes (which I didn't because my hair but the boyfriend was all over this).

So what else?

Other than that we just spent a lot of time drinking coffee in general. Another really nice spot for this is Camper Coffee Co. in McCoys Arcade on Fore Street. 

 

We also spent some time in the park and on the lawn in front of the cathedral sitting around, reading, enjoying the lovely weather and a burrito from Taco Macho (which is, hands down, the thing I missed most about Exeter).

At the end of the week we finally managed to go out with our friends and I ended up having a nice little hangover on our way back...

...which made the fact that Heathrow airport doesn't have a smoking area after the security checks a lot more annoying. Especially since that wasn't stated anywhere before the security checks. Which we entered about 2,5 hours before our actual flight. So yeah, the actual trips were quite unpleasant, but I still think it was worth it and will be every time in the future.