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The Way They Are...

Today's banner is actually the view from behind a London commuter, a week ago today.

Natives visiting the British Museum

Travel is so broadening.  In one sense, I can't be safely broadened any further.  I am too big already, and especially for England, a country of narrow spaces.  (Don't start me on the women's bathroom stalls in one particular jewel of modern English architecture).  In the more important sense, however, of course I need all I can get.

I loved my trip, which ended yesterday when I touched down in (blessedly sunny and bright) Boston.  I traveled alone, but I stayed with friends   I was handed around from one host to another by one particularly kind, cultivated and generally excellent family.  I was shown various corners of London and a few other places in the country by them, very well fed by them (see reference to broadening, above).  I went to see these friends and to see some of the English places that I had fictionalized or by which I had been inspired - from a distance - when I was writing that book (you know the one, see the sidebar ====>).

I did see those people and places and not one disappointment in the lot.  In fact, things were better and more magic than I had any reason or right to expect. Thanks to my native guides, who brought me into the homes of several of their friends, I also got a real look at life in modern Britain. It was fascinating and I'll be thinking about it all and processing it for some time.  Just stopping in here this morning, taking advantage of the time shift to get a ridiculously early start, and to say a little something before the glow wears off altogether.

I am not on the payroll of the British Tourist Board, but I could be.  I don't know anyone who wouldn't like to visit the UK and I am here to say do it if you can.  You won't be sorry.

Castle ruin, just lying around, spotted on a walk...

I'll add before I use up the last the minutes of this found early morning hour that driving home through New Hampshire and Vermont yesterday I also got, for at least the length of the drive, to see our bit of the US through English eyes.  It was so beautiful it could break any heart.  Mine just held on.

More eventually.  Having set my reset button, I'm off for a bike ride.

Eject! Eject!

Pimlico Cross Country Trail

Has the snow in England melted yet? I heard an amusing (and sort of amazing) radio report on Thursday morning about how the country had been paralyzed by six inches of snow. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, was interviewed and was nearly breathless about how "extraordinary" it was. The report made it sound as if a moon-sized meteorite rather than a few inches of snow that had hit London.

You know I love you, all you lovely British people, but this will not do. What happened to "keep calm and carry on"?

Just now, hopping around my favorite blogs, I found this over at Unmitigated England (see the sidebar). If you've been looking for a great blog to read, with pictures just as good, do yourself a favor and click through.

Vermont -> London, Oxford, Bath -> Vermont

Yesterday morning, 5 AM in the UK, I awoke in the smallest hotel room in London with Kid 1 still snoozing in the bed that occupied nine tenths of the room. How small was it? "My hotel room was so small I had to go outside to change my mind." (buh duh bump). Well, it was only for one night, the night before our departure from the great UK adventure of 2008, which began with a car trip from home in Vermont to Montreal, air travel from Montreal to London, site seeing in London for three nights, off to friends in Oxford for two more, then one night with more friends in Bath and then back to London (in a chauffer-driven Mercedes that detoured to Stonehenge, more on that in another post); a long plane ride back to Montreal and not so long car ride to Vermont. Absolutely ripping overall, as they might say - and the small hotel room was clean and gave me a chance to repeat that old joke and to own a London accommodation story worth repeating so I am not really complaining. It made for a comic ending to a fun trip for me and my ten-year-old daughter. As I write from my accustomed perch in The Back of Beyond of Vermont, Kid 2 is outside in the sun with Vermont greening up all around us. He mastered a two-wheeler today (at last) so it is a good day to be home. I have lots to say about our trip to England but it will have to wait to be unpacked, rather like my daughter's luggage. So much to do when one has been away for a week...

Above are a few of my favorite pictures from our trip to whet your appetite and remind me what I want to write about. The one below of the sleeping kid is an attempt to capture room 153 Days Inn and Suites in Westminster. I had no room to back up which meant it was impossible to capture the smallness.



Hard to believe that just yesterday we were treading the pavements on Belgrave Road into the cavernous (and wonderful) Victoria station. Sigh. Off to Newport (Vermont) for pizza with the kids.