Summing it all Up: Home

When we were planning for our trip and dreaming about it, August 31^st to September 17^th seemed such a long way off, but as time does, it came and it went.  I am reminded each day of my life of the fleeting nature of the moment.  We so need to be aware that it quickly comes and just as quickly goes.

Saturday morning, the 17^th of September we awoke to a cool, drizzly Saturday in London knowing that by the time the day ended we would be “back on the other side of the pond.”  We have stored memories, tried to share a few of our little daily adventures, and have felt incredibly blessed to be doing this together. 

We began our day be creating art inside of our two pieces of luggage.  We know we created art because at Blenheim Palace on Wednesday we had seen an art exhibit in various rooms of soft sculptures which looked very much like piles of dirty laundry.  Before we creatively piled our art into the bags we each removed the very last of our clean clothes to wear home.

Our driver called at the Holiday Inn Shoreditch for us ten minutes early.  He had his device in his hands with our destination and names which helped with the language difficulties.  We were quickly on our way past the Westminster University buildings behind our hotel and into parts of the neighborhood that we hadn’t seen.  We went under the river, down through the Greenwich area and onto the motorway that would take us to Gatwick.

There are numerous ways to get to the major airports which service London, but this is one of the luxuries that we give ourselves when we travel.  If we were twenty years younger, we’d use the bus of the rail system, but with the additional luggage, it is not easy in the crowds when you are not, now, as fast as everyone else is.  So, we cut back a little in other areas.  Our trip to the air port in the hired car was equivalent to less than one dinner in an upscale restaurant in London.  It also was not much more than two tickets on the airport bus transport would have cost.

Our driver was good.  He wove in an out of traffic, but I never saw Klep get really pale or grip the edge of his seat the way he did in Greece.  I was quite proud of him…..both the driver and Klep!

We were checked in with Norwegian with our luggage tagged and checked, through security (where I got pulled for special screening) and customs and in the lounge with lunch ordered by 1:20.  We enjoyed our salads and pasta along with a lot of little snacks and sweets, accompanied by tea, coffee, or soft drinks while we read the London papers and watched planes come in and leave. 

By three, our gate was announced and we strolled down the twenty miles or so through all the shops to watch the three hundred or so other people board.  Since we were in Row 1, we were in the last group to board.  We were in no hurry.  We were going to be sitting on that plane for a while! 

We were due to take off at four p.m. London time (11:00 a.m. EDT).  We were boarded, but we lifted off about thirty minutes later.  We had been properly hydrated by then and were relaxing in our seats discussing our trip.  We tend to choose such times to look back and choose highpoints and low points. 

My lowest point of the trip happened before I actually left when I tripped over a curb and fell on the concrete quite thoroughly bruising myself.  I finally got up, decided that I hadn’t broken anything and went to the house and applied ice.  Since that wasn’t enough to make things a little more difficult for my mobility, that night at the Holiday Inn in Valdosta, going in for a Gospel Music performance, the door caught a couple of my toes in sandals and ripped a toe nail off.  Now I was in really fine shape for our trip!  My girls in Sunday School were praying for me, though, and with answered prayer, my injuries were a little uncomfortable, but they didn’t keep us down!

Our high point of the trip was actually getting to do it together:  sitting by the water in Burton-on-the-Water watching the ducks, standing on Wicklow Mountain in the quiet and cool gazing out at the rolling hills, the lake and feeling God’s presence in His creation, feeling the power of the wind at Inch Strand, watching the fat goose waddle across the grounds at Blenheim, sharing the unexpected melodious music in the subway, the beauty of Connemara, the majestic, historic churches in Ireland and England---the list could go on and on.

We learned a few things that we will make note of if and when we travel again.  We will pack wash cloths.  None of the hotels we were in had them.  We will not leave meds out where they can be overturned or spilled and lost by the maid staff.  I will pack a small notebook on which to take notes instead of having to use such things as the backs of receipts, the barf bags on the ferry, and napkins.  We will take a shirt or two extra.  Jeans and pants can be worn more than tops.  If we go to the theater, we will spring for better seats for comfort’s sake.

The weirdest experience, we decided was one that Klep did not share with me.  When we took our trip to the Cotswolds, there was one woman that must have been French.  Anyway, she spoke with a distinct French accent.  Our first encounter with her was at the pay toilet in Burford.  You put your 20 pence (it is an unusual seven sided coin.) in a slot, the door opens, you go in, lock the door, etc.  There was, of course a queue of us to use the facilities.  When the green shows, it means it is unoccupied.  A young woman in front of me, put in her coin and opened the door to the screams of the French woman.  When she came out she kept repeating, “I am claustrophobic!  I no lock doors!”   Anyway, we caught the door so that the young lady who had lost her 20 pence could still use the bathroom. 

Later that afternoon at the palace, I moved ahead of most our group, walked through all the rooms and just as I was about to find a cool place facing the courtyard for some quiet reflection time, I found the lady again or rather, she found me.  “You are in my tour! “  She asserted loudly.  “My tour abandoned me!  I do not know where they are.”

I assured her that she had just followed the wrong group and that if she would continue the way she was going, she would find the group.  After all, the path through the rooms was a circular one.  She followed me outside and continued to berate me because the group had deserted her.  Then she said to me, “Queen Anne was a lesbian!”  Now, quite frankly I do not know if she was or not and I really don’t think there is any way to prove she was or wasn’t.  I told the woman politely as I could that I really wasn’t interested in discussing the issue with her whereupon she decided that I was English and was protecting Queen Anne’s reputation.  Queen Anne, by the way has been dead for about three hundred years.  Then she said, “You are German, then!”

I ask you, how anyone could mistake my North Florida accent for either English or German!

Fortunately, she decided I wasn’t worth her time and left me to gaze out at the quiet of the yard.  All I can say is, "Bless her heart!"

Most of the people we encountered in Ireland, in England, and from other countries were quite pleasant to be around.  We treasured those encounters.

Our flight across southern England, the Irish Sea, southern Ireland, the Atlantic, and the east coast of Florida was a good one.  Other than talking over our trip, we used our individual tablets to put together puzzles, played solitaire, did trivia games, and ate.

We landed at 7:59p.m. EDT.  A little over an hour later, we had finally cleared immigration, customs, and retrieved our bags.  I thought I was going to get arrested when I answered Klep’s cell phone in the baggage claim area, but they let me go with a warning!

As we exited the main terminal, Anne pulled up in front, loaded us into her Honda and whisked us to her house where we visited for a while and went to bed.

Today we took a driving tour up the center of the state of Florida under a partly clouded sky with some of the most brilliant sunshine we had seen for a while.  At the half way point, Klep skillfully

maneuvered our vehicle into a parking place in front of a quaint restaurant with a blue roof where

we sampled the delights of a full American breakfast.

At one p.m. we saw the sign, exited and found the house still standing where we had left it.  Some

dear souls had piled the fallen limbs from the recent hurricane and we were relieved to find that the fridge had held up all right during the power outage.  We had shut off the ice maker before we left, but there were ice cubes in the freezer which still had their shape.  If we had had a serious thaw, they would have melted. 

We created an art object of great beauty by emptying the suitcases into a pile.  Now we enjoy the quiet churning sound of the washing machine.

 Home!

Summing it all Up: Home

When we were planning for our trip and dreaming about it, August 31^st to September 17^th seemed such a long way off, but as time does, it came and it went.  I am reminded each day of my life of the fleeting nature of the moment.  We so need to be aware that it quickly comes and just as quickly goes.

Saturday morning, the 17^th of September we awoke to a cool, drizzly Saturday in London knowing that by the time the day ended we would be “back on the other side of the pond.”  We have stored memories, tried to share a few of our little daily adventures, and have felt incredibly blessed to be doing this together. 

We began our day be creating art inside of our two pieces of luggage.  We know we created art because at Blenheim Palace on Wednesday we had seen an art exhibit in various rooms of soft sculptures which looked very much like piles of dirty laundry.  Before we creatively piled our art into the bags we each removed the very last of our clean clothes to wear home.

Our driver called at the Holiday Inn Shoreditch for us ten minutes early.  He had his device in his hands with our destination and names which helped with the language difficulties.  We were quickly on our way past the Westminster University buildings behind our hotel and into parts of the neighborhood that we hadn’t seen.  We went under the river, down through the Greenwich area and onto the motorway that would take us to Gatwick.

There are numerous ways to get to the major airports which service London, but this is one of the luxuries that we give ourselves when we travel.  If we were twenty years younger, we’d use the bus of the rail system, but with the additional luggage, it is not easy in the crowds when you are not, now, as fast as everyone else is.  So, we cut back a little in other areas.  Our trip to the air port in the hired car was equivalent to less than one dinner in an upscale restaurant in London.  It also was not much more than two tickets on the airport bus transport would have cost.

Our driver was good.  He wove in an out of traffic, but I never saw Klep get really pale or grip the edge of his seat the way he did in Greece.  I was quite proud of him…..both the driver and Klep!

We were checked in with Norwegian with our luggage tagged and checked, through security (where I got pulled for special screening) and customs and in the lounge with lunch ordered by 1:20.  We enjoyed our salads and pasta along with a lot of little snacks and sweets, accompanied by tea, coffee, or soft drinks while we read the London papers and watched planes come in and leave. 

By three, our gate was announced and we strolled down the twenty miles or so through all the shops to watch the three hundred or so other people board.  Since we were in Row 1, we were in the last group to board.  We were in no hurry.  We were going to be sitting on that plane for a while! 

We were due to take off at four p.m. London time (11:00 a.m. EDT).  We were boarded, but we lifted off about thirty minutes later.  We had been properly hydrated by then and were relaxing in our seats discussing our trip.  We tend to choose such times to look back and choose highpoints and low points. 

My lowest point of the trip happened before I actually left when I tripped over a curb and fell on the concrete quite thoroughly bruising myself.  I finally got up, decided that I hadn’t broken anything and went to the house and applied ice.  Since that wasn’t enough to make things a little more difficult for my mobility, that night at the Holiday Inn in Valdosta, going in for a Gospel Music performance, the door caught a couple of my toes in sandals and ripped a toe nail off.  Now I was in really fine shape for our trip!  My girls in Sunday School were praying for me, though, and with answered prayer, my injuries were a little uncomfortable, but they didn’t keep us down!

Our high point of the trip was actually getting to do it together:  sitting by the water in Burton-on-the-Water watching the ducks, standing on Wicklow Mountain in the quiet and cool gazing out at the rolling hills, the lake and feeling God’s presence in His creation, feeling the power of the wind at Inch Strand, watching the fat goose waddle across the grounds at Blenheim, sharing the unexpected melodious music in the subway, the beauty of Connemara, the majestic, historic churches in Ireland and England---the list could go on and on.

We learned a few things that we will make note of if and when we travel again.  We will pack wash cloths.  None of the hotels we were in had them.  We will not leave meds out where they can be overturned or spilled and lost by the maid staff.  I will pack a small notebook on which to take notes instead of having to use such things as the backs of receipts, the barf bags on the ferry, and napkins.  We will take a shirt or two extra.  Jeans and pants can be worn more than tops.  If we go to the theater, we will spring for better seats for comfort’s sake.

The weirdest experience, we decided was one that Klep did not share with me.  When we took our trip to the Cotswolds, there was one woman that must have been French.  Anyway, she spoke with a distinct French accent.  Our first encounter with her was at the pay toilet in Burford.  You put your 20 pence (it is an unusual seven sided coin.) in a slot, the door opens, you go in, lock the door, etc.  There was, of course a queue of us to use the facilities.  When the green shows, it means it is unoccupied.  A young woman in front of me, put in her coin and opened the door to the screams of the French woman.  When she came out she kept repeating, “I am claustrophobic!  I no lock doors!”   Anyway, we caught the door so that the young lady who had lost her 20 pence could still use the bathroom. 

Later that afternoon at the palace, I moved ahead of most our group, walked through all the rooms and just as I was about to find a cool place facing the courtyard for some quiet reflection time, I found the lady again or rather, she found me.  “You are in my tour! “  She asserted loudly.  “My tour abandoned me!  I do not know where they are.”

I assured her that she had just followed the wrong group and that if she would continue the way she was going, she would find the group.  After all, the path through the rooms was a circular one.  She followed me outside and continued to berate me because the group had deserted her.  Then she said to me, “Queen Anne was a lesbian!”  Now, quite frankly I do not know if she was or not and I really don’t think there is any way to prove she was or wasn’t.  I told the woman politely as I could that I really wasn’t interested in discussing the issue with her whereupon she decided that I was English and was protecting Queen Anne’s reputation.  Queen Anne, by the way has been dead for about three hundred years.  Then she said, “You are German, then!”

I ask you, how anyone could mistake my North Florida accent for either English or German!

Fortunately, she decided I wasn’t worth her time and left me to gaze out at the quiet of the yard.  All I can say is, "Bless her heart!"

Most of the people we encountered in Ireland, in England, and from other countries were quite pleasant to be around.  We treasured those encounters.

Our flight across southern England, the Irish Sea, southern Ireland, the Atlantic, and the east coast of Florida was a good one.  Other than talking over our trip, we used our individual tablets to put together puzzles, played solitaire, did trivia games, and ate.

We landed at 7:59p.m. EDT.  A little over an hour later, we had finally cleared immigration, customs, and retrieved our bags.  I thought I was going to get arrested when I answered Klep’s cell phone in the baggage claim area, but they let me go with a warning!

As we exited the main terminal, Anne pulled up in front, loaded us into her Honda and whisked us to her house where we visited for a while and went to bed.

Today we took a driving tour up the center of the state of Florida under a partly clouded sky with some of the most brilliant sunshine we had seen for a while.  At the half way point, Klep skillfully

maneuvered our vehicle into a parking place in front of a quaint restaurant with a blue roof where

we sampled the delights of a full American breakfast.

At one p.m. we saw the sign, exited and found the house still standing where we had left it.  Some

dear souls had piled the fallen limbs from the recent hurricane and we were relieved to find that the fridge had held up all right during the power outage.  We had shut off the ice maker before we left, but there were ice cubes in the freezer which still had their shape.  If we had had a serious thaw, they would have melted. 

We created an art object of great beauty by emptying the suitcases into a pile.  Now we enjoy the quiet churning sound of the washing machine.

 Home!

Museuming In the Rain: Friday in London

When we pulled back the curtains, we found grey skies with a light rain falling this morning.  The heatwave that has plagued London this week is coming to an end.  The meteorologist on BBC announced that London would have rain with occasional downpours and thunderstorms.

After a late breakfast, we went through the checklist:  Oyster Cards, map, camera, shades, tissues, and phone.  We then hoofed past the little shops and restaurants, the Shoreditch Fire Station, and the little coffee van who was set up in the rain under large umbrellas.

  We went down the long ramp into the station past the little food shops and flower shop to where we checked the amount of money left on our Oyster cards.  We tapped our cards onto the little pads that opened the gates for entrance to the trains, followed the signs for the Northern Line, went two stops (Angel and then Kings Cross) changed to the Piccadilly Line

and rode nine stops to South Kensington where we took a very, very long, long tunnel to the entrance at the basement level to the Albert and Victoria Museum.  It purely makes me tired to think about it!

The people visiting the museum are as fascinating as the exhibits.  I loved watching a family from India which looked like it spanned four generations.  The older man was in traditional clothing with the decorative spot on his forehead and a full, grey beard.  I loved the consideration and respect I saw the younger members of the family paying him

The Albert and Victoria Museum has everything from an exhibit on the history of underwear to a lot

of very nice art work from all over the world.  It is quite a fascinating place and I suppose you could spend a week there and never see it all.  We breezed through a lot of sculpture, a lot of medieval religious art, a lot of things from Korea (Klep identified the Kimchi pot without even having to read the explanation), a lot of things from Japan, and some things from China.  We saw the underwear exhibit, but we did not pay the eleven pounds to tour it.  I figure drawers are drawers!

The Grand Entrance to the museum is beautiful with its dome and columns.  Right now they have an art object which has quite beautiful shades of blue and green hanging under the dome.  For the life of me, it reminded me of the bunch of plastic fasteners that I have at home all tangled up in a drawer.

After we left the A & V, We walked a short way to the Natural History Museum where we joined a very long, long line in the light rain for the security check to get in. The building housing the museum is one of the draws for us.  It was a design which lost out in the competition for the buildings to house the Parliament.  It was such a spectacular design that it was built, too and later became the museum.

While we moved up, we fell into conversation with a tourist (His wife is in London for business and he came along) from Charleston, SC, a Carolina fan, but a pretty nice fellow who was going in to see the dinosaurs.  He didn’t have far to go.  The first one was right inside the entrance.

We took a brief stop in the restaurant for a light snack before we headed into the large dinosaur

exhibit.  It was pretty slow going because of the crowds of people everywhere.

We were about museumed out.  We headed to an entrance onto Cromwell Street and thence to South Kensington Station that did not require a long, long tunnel, took Piccadilly back to Kings Cross, walked down lots more stairs (Northern Line always seems to require a couple of flights of stairs and an escalator.  It seems to be a really deep tunnel.), changed to Northern Line and walked up the stairs and up the ramp to the sight of temporary sunshine.  Before we got back to the hotel, we were in light rain again.

Earls, Lords, and Us Common Folk: Another Day in London

If anyone had told me on August 28, 2016 that Klep and I could have walked 45 flights of stairs and a couple of miles during one day, I would have told you that you were crazy.  We did that and more today as we had another good day in London.  Every train station will have some escalators, but they will also have some stairs.  Just for fun, I kept up with the number.  We had several train changes during the day and then, on top of the tube stations, we also “did” parliament today which

means we had to climb a whole lot of stairs to get to the “stranger’s” gallery on the House of Lords side and the “visitor’s gallery” on the House of Commons side.  Had we not illegally taken the lift down from the commons, our total would have gone over 50.

We didn’t mean to break rules.  We were in the lift with the door closed before we saw that we were not allowed to take the lift unless we were escorted.  At the next stop, we got a very nice young man who escorted us the rest of the way down!

The two houses of parliament are a contrast in style.  Both are beautiful, but the Lords is quite ornate with the marvelous gold throne where the queen sits when she addresses parliament.  The windows are all beautiful stained glass and there is nothing as gauche as the bullet proof glass in the House of Commons.  The wood work is lovely in both chambers.  The only thing I saw in the Commons that appeared gold was the mace which I am sure has great symbolic power about the transfer of power from the monarchy to the people.

In the Lords, when we first got there, members were questioning the person in charge of the BBC.  After that, the debate was concerning what the government should do to eradicate the usage of antibiotics in animals except when necessary  because of sickness and what the government should do to encourage the development of ways to cope with antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria.

In the commons, we listened to speeches about domestic abuse and the need to modify and change the court system to help the victims.  Several of the speakers were members from Scotland.

We took a few minutes between the two chambers to share a meat pasty and a pastry in the parliament café+.

After we left parliament, we went in search of Selfridge’s, the department store featured in a BBC show that airs on PBS.  The website I checked this morning said it was almost over the Oxford Circus Tube Station.  Not so.  We finally found it about a half mile away after we passed the next tube station, Bank Street. 

We had some ideas of some things we wanted to buy there, but we did not end up buying anything.  We did go to the top floor and have a light tea…..sundae for Klep; cup cake for me.  My cupcake was

lovely, but I could show them a thing or two about baking a good cake!  The crowd and the noise in the store was anything but conducive to shopping.  Most of the shoppers had the appearance of wealthy Middle Eastern people and we heard very little English being spoken.

We had had enough stairs for the day.  We took a double decker bus back to Museum Street, changed to the one which runs by our hotel, good old 55, and rode with a lot of other commuters back to Old Street.

We had not really had a meal in an English Pub.  We stopped at The William Blake (he is buried nearby) and had an ale and meat pie with mash and veggies.  The gravy was really, really good.

A football (soccer) match started while we were eating bringing up the noise quite a lot.  After supper, a short hop on another #55 put us in front of the hotel, tired, full, and ready to put our feet up

To the Cotswolds and Back

The Romans founded London (Londinium, then) and built roads while they were here, many of them leading west from the city.  We followed the path, slowly, of some of these roads as we ventured out into the Cotswolds, an area rich in British history.

We joined the workers headed into Victoria Station to meet our tour bus.  We made good time with time to spare.  I saw something that looked like a goblet

over a luggage carousel.  It looked like a good place to sit for a while, but a nice young man kindly requested that I not sit on the art work.

We loaded the bus and were on our way creeping through the traffic to the edge of London past some of the Olympic sites, the huge shopping center built a few years ago in Shepherd’s Bush, past the Royal Air Force Base to the edge of Oxford.  Our first stop in the Cotswolds was Burford.  We visited the church which was probably financed by wealthy wool merchants.  For centuries this was the main industry in this area. 

Many of the old graves in the cemetery have the shape of bales of wool on top of them.  The main street was lined by shops built out of stone and a lovely arched bridge crossed the little river, a thing each of the three villages we visited had in common.  Both Burford and the next village are on the same river, the Windrush.

 Our second village was Bourton-on-the-water  which is known as the Venice of the Cotswolds because it is prone to flooding. 

The river was beautiful with clear water, a rock bottom, and dozens of ducks floating under the graceful little arched bridges across the stream.  We saw a fine example of the dry stone fences as we walked up to Main   Street.

Stow-on-the-Wold (Holy Place in the woods) was our third village which is the highest Cotswold village with standing exposed to the surrounding countryside at 800 feet elevation.  It, too, was an important center in the woolen trade and when it was at its height, it wasn’t unusual for as many as twenty thousand sheep to be sold on one market day.

One of the buildings that fascinated us there was its town hall and library building.  This village also had lots of old stone buildings.  We also loved the roses blooming around the village.  Our guide told us about the covered gates leading into the church yard which are called lynch gates.  They were where the coffins were put overnight before the burial.  The town claims to have the oldest inn which was build in 947.

After the simplicity of the stone buildings and the cottages, Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill was absolutely not simple.  It was a rather complex baroque castle funded by Queen Anne for Sir John Churchill after his military victory over the French in the 1700’s.  Quite frankly, I cannot imagine living in such a place and rearing a family in it. The grounds were beautiful with a lovely lake and rolling lawns.

By the way, the 12^th Duke of Marlboro and his family did not come out of their private apartment to greet us.  Most of the house has been a show place for a good many years.  In fact, that is what finances its upkeep.

Although Churchill received a state funeral when he died, he chose to have his body brought back to the village of Blenheim for burial.

Late afternoon, the bus driver squeezed our bus through the stone arches at the entrance to the palace grounds and we were on our way back to the city through rolling countryside and forests

with a little mist in the distance on the hills.  Traffic was stop and go, especially around Oxford, but by seven thirty we were back on Old Street having a little (small order)  fish and chips before calling it a day.