Monday, April 16
Monday was the first quiet day that we had had in quite a while. As always, when it gets to be late in our trip, I get a bit tired and I need a day off to just refresh. Normally, I try to plug in a rest day every 7-10 days. A rainy day makes a good down day, but we had had so many rainy days that one was no different from any other. Oddly, there would be rain, clouds, wind, fog or whatever Monday through Friday, and then on the weekend each week, the weather seemed to clear up and bring some partly sunny days.
So, on this day of rest, I used my time to catch up on emails and write my last blog post. We had been going out every day to see something, so I had a lot to catch up, and I was quite a bit behind. That seemed to encompass most of the day. It's too bad that we spent the day mostly inside because it was a warm, sunny day. It was so warm and dry that the wooden outdoor table and benches actually dried off enough to sit on them without getting a damp seat.
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When we are traveling in another country (always another country because we don't usually travel in the US), I tend to notice things of everyday life that maybe tourists who just visit cities, or just the "Top Ten Sites to See", might miss. Here are some things that come to mind:
-- England is very adamant about cutting down on plastic. Plastic carry bags (as they call them) at the grocery store are sold, not free. And there is definitely no double bagging. However, they have a plan (or scheme, as they say) for not really charging very much. A single use plastic bag like the stores here in the US offer will cost the customer 5p, but for 9p the customer can get a better bag which can be traded in for another one at no charge when it wears out. It's not that 5p (about 7 cents) is going to be a financial hardship for anyone, but the 9p trade-in is a bargain.
-- The British drive on the left, as do people in current or former British Commonwealth countries. So, why do they walk on the right? That's confusing to the just landed tourist. Everyone knows that the English drive on the left, so it would seem logical that they would walk on the left as well, but no, they walk on the right. In the long walkways of Heathrow, there are signs just about everywhere warning people to "stay to the right".
-- The Brits have a bit of a mix-up when it comes to measuring things. They use miles for long distances (thank goodness, I can never figure out how long a kilometer is), but they use metric for short distances, like meters instead of yards and millimeters instead of inches. That seems odd to me.
-- They have an odd way of packaging their fresh meat. Most meats come in one size fits all packages. If you want more or less than the standard pack, you are out of luck. You either have to buy too much or too little, or buy two packs when you only need about one and a half. And, here's the strange part: the price will be the same for every package, even if the weight varies a little. Whole chickens come in three size packages: small, medium and (of course) large. Chickens are not especially known for keeping their weight in convenient sizes like that, so within each size category, the actual weight will vary. However, the price is the same for anything in that weight category. You don't pay by the weight, you pay by the weight category. What a strange system.
-- Fresh fruits and vegetables and also their wonderful cheeses are much cheaper than in the US, sometimes a third to a half of the US cost. That makes me wonder what it is about US farming that makes produce and dairy products more expensive.
-- The Brits seem to have a love affair with standard transmissions, with usually six gears. Whereas other Europeans seem to have a deep seated distrust of automatic transmissions, the English are simply too frugal to splurge on a less fuel efficient automatic, even though their roads are just begging for it. The problem, like the rest of Europe, is that gas (petrol) is so expensive that they need to get maximum efficiency. Their petrol is sold by the litre for about 1.22 pounds. That equates to about $5.30 a US gallon. Ouch!! No wonder they need to squeeze out every drop. We paid about $63 every time that we filled the tank, and we did a lot of driving.
-- Apparently lacking in sufficient bona fide holidays, the British have what they call "Bank Holidays" on three Mondays; two in May and one in August. They are in addition to the holidays for Christmas, New Year's, etc.
-- Why do the English use such large electric plugs? Every plug has a fuse in it. That makes it impossible to take a computer cord with you and stow it away in a bag. The plug is just too large. And, by the way, every electrical outlet has an on/off toggle. You can wait a long time to recharge your phone if you don't realize that the outlet was turned off.
-- All of the washing machines in Europe, for home use, are small and designed to fit under the kitchen cabinets. In other words, they are the size of a dishwasher. In the US, we are accustomed to washing machines with huge capacity. The ones in Europe have about half the capacity of US machines, at best. Although there are a few oddball brands that open at the top, almost all of them are front loaders. They generally do an excellent job of getting clothes clean, but due to their small size, there isn't much room for the clothes to spread out. Therefore, everything comes out of the machine with a mass of wrinkles. Clothes dryers as a separate machine seem to be unknown in Europe. Some washing machines are combination washer/dryer. My experience has been that clothes dried in these machines need to be removed immediately and hung on a drying rack to finish drying as wrinkle free as possible. Apparently, people iron most of their wash. Enter a service that does not exist in the US: a pick-up and delivery pressing service! While in the Cotswolds, where the household income is obviously above average, I saw several little delivery vans that will pick up your clean laundry, iron it and return it. That must explain how we came to have perfectly pressed linens in our Cotswold cottage.
-- Why can't the British figure out that if they can have a mixer on their kitchen sink so that the hot and cold water come out of the same tap, that they do the same in the bathroom sink? Why do they have modern sinks with two separate taps? I don't understand that part at all.
-- Another thing: what's the point of having a pull cord for the bathroom light? Every other room has a wall switch, but the bathroom has a pull cord. It made me think that it was an emergency pull cord. I was afraid to pull it at our first apartment, but then I couldn't find any wall switch so I gave it a try. The EMS did not come, but the light did go on. Okay, while we are on the topic of bathrooms, why is the toilet sometimes in a separate room all by itself and then you have to go to the bathroom to wash your hands? That makes no sense at all.
Alright, I got all of that off of my mind, now let's continue with the last day of our extended trip to England.
Tuesday, April 17
Tuesday was our day to leave Kent behind. We really liked our cottage which was originally a turkey processing barn, long and narrow. I originally thought that it had been stables due to its narrow width, but a chat with the owner enlightened us.
Our flight was on Wednesday and we needed to be in proximity of the airport so that we could turn in our car and get to the gate in time. Larry chose to have our last night at a pub. Most pubs seem to also have rooms. I was a bit skeptical because I could imagine a bit of noise in the evening when we would be tired and in need of sleep to get up early the next morning.
I had nothing to fear because: 1. our room was in a completely separate building, and 2. the village was so quiet that evening that one would have to look really hard to find any noise at all.
Here's the pub. It was in a town called Wooburn Green, about 20 miles from the airport.
On our way to our evening's lodgings, we stopped in to our last National Trust property for this trip.
This is Hughenden Manor, the home of Queen Victoria's favorite Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.
After seeing many really large and ostentatious properties, this one seemed a bit modest for a prime minister.
This is the library, of which he was very proud apparently. So, here's the thing about a personal library. This one supposedly holds 25,000 volumes, mostly leather bound. I understand the idea of having the look of lots of expensive leather-bound books, but who has time to read 25,000 of them?
I was more impressed by the lovely ceiling.
The sitting room was nice. It faced the south and had a view of the gardens. It also had another, even nicer, ceiling. As you can see from this photo, the house was filled with portraits. I believe that the one over the mantel is of his wife. Disraeli wasn't exactly impoverished, but his family apparently didn't have as much money as it once had, so he married for money, then fell madly in love with his wife later. In spite of his love for his wife, he was always known as a lady's man. I would assume that he made up in charm what he lacked in good looks. Here is in a photograph taken later in life, but he didn't change much over time.
He looks remarkably like Bob Dylan to me (not a flattering comparison!).
Back to his house. As I said, this is his lovely sitting room. I thought that it was a reasonably comfortable looking room for its time.
The dining room was quite intimate. I don't think that it would seat more than 8 or 10 people at the most, so he evidently did not entertain very much at this house.
No one knew until a few years ago that Hughenden was used during WWII as a map making center. The story goes that one day a visitor was going through the house and remarked to a volunteer that he remembered sitting in a particular window when he worked there during the war. That comment spurred some research and now the National Trust has an exhibit in the basement with a photo showing that gentleman sitting by the window drawing maps. The window of opportunity for finding first person accounts of WWII is quickly drawing to a close. It was fortunate for the National Trust that this man happened to speak up when he did.
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After Hughenden, we checked into our room at the pub. We had had seven weeks of one of the chilliest and dampest springs in recent history in England, but in the end, the sun came out and it was lovely. There was even a heat wave predicted for the weekend after we left.
No long trip would be without any mishaps and we had ours (with the car, as usual), but we also had a wonderful experience with our family as our son, Jared, and his wife, Evelyn, our son Jonathan and his wife, Carrie, and their kids, Molly and Henry, and then Larry's sister, Linda, all joined us at different times. We hope that they will have pleasant memories of our trip to England in 2018; we did.
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