Auntie Glenna and Uncle Juergen: Pinehurst, North Carolina

At 9.30pm Tuesday 27^th April after a long drive, being OK’d by the security guard and passing through the gates, we made our way through the lovely little roads surrounded by pine trees and pulled up at Snowdon’s Auntie Glenna and Uncle Juergen’s house, in Pinehurst, North Carolina.  Oh my gosh we exclaimed on arrival - it’s a mansion!  I could learn a few things from these Siregar relatives about creating and maintaining successful businesses and designing gorgeous homes - from my current experience they seem to have some skill in this area and know how to live the high life!  I learned that Glenna is a nurse and cleverly joined up with friends and started ‘caring’ businesses for elder people in both Sydney and London, earning a very comfortable living.  Juergen created a business in textiles, which began with ladies leather gloves and evolved into high tech ski gloves (they have both lead active sporting lives).  He travelled a lot, particularly to Korea.  Eventually Glenna learned German and worked with him in his company in Germany, later Juergen ran the business from Pinehurst.

After a night in a huge king size bed with fully equipped ensuite, the next morning I pulled the blinds to a beautiful view of a bed thick with pine needles with tall pine trees towering over it.  We then dined on a delicious breakfast with Glenna, Juergen (and with son Sven popping in) of peeled orange segments with blueberry yogurt, German pate, and various cheeses on lovely mini wholemeal buns and hard German bread (Juergen is German and they’d spent a lot of their life together there). 

After breakfast we stepped outside on to the patio.  OH MY GOSH! Spread before us was an incredibly tranquil vista.  With my jaw hanging down, my eyes gazed upon a lovely patio area with deck chairs, then to a beautifully manicured lawn and garden, and out onto a calm twinkling pond, with geese and backed by several similar mansions, all surrounded by a very plentiful number of pine trees.

Naturally Snowdon and I migrated outside with books to enjoy the peaceful surroundings, and didn’t move far that afternoon.  Glenna supplemented our already very content selves with fold out chairs and a blanket.  Then arrived soon after with a tray of salmon rice cakes and coffee.  Then again with sliced up pears on flax skewers.  Yum!

Over the next few days we relaxed and chatted with Glenna and Juergen, were given several walking and driven tours around the surrounding towns (some very quaint with cute little shops), marveled at the beautiful area outside and inside (Juergen designed their gorgeous house and Glenna has filled it with carefully selected and well loved antique furniture – including an original Korean butchers table complete with knife chunks out of it), learnt that many of the people in the area play golf all day in the quality selection world class golf courses, we started watching a second Mike Moore DVD of Pauls, ‘Bowling for Columbine’, dined on Glenna’s lovely cooking, caught up on sleep, learned about German delicacies (including veal sausage with sweet mustard for our last breakfast there – yum!). I read a book all about Michelle Obama.  Glenna mentioned that Charleston (Gone with Wind is one of my favourite novels) is several hours south, and I felt like one of the ladies from back in that age living in the Southern States – a lady with all the time in the world to rest, read and dine on delicious meals (minus the corset and pedicoats of course).

On the last afternoon there I sat outside on the porch and posted this facebook status:

Amber Taylor

is in a sun lounger (Pinehurst, North Carolina) with the late afternoon sun shining down over an incredible tranquil view of a pine tree surrounded pond. Snowdon's exceedingly lovely Auntie Glenna has just brought me spring rolls with ginger and a goblet of Spanish wine. How much more relaxing can it get (Snowdon's well planned itinery says that we're leaving here tomorrow morning. Leaving here? how crazy is that)?  

On the last night became captivated by the USA news of Rachel Maddock (Arizona Bill/Brutal Oil Spill), and the various hilarious comedy, but also very informative, news channels.

I felt very at home with Glenna and Juergen, enjoyed their company (and their incredible hospitality) and found it hard to leave - I could have happily stayed much longer!