Back in the UK for pints, papers, and pasties

  London, England, United Kingdom
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

For our second visit to England, we stayed again with our friends, Paul, Bungie and Freddie, about an hour and half outside London. We ended up extending our stay an extra week so that we could watch the US elections. We are really glad we did. We stayed up all night to watch the results come in, the concession and acceptance speeches, and the reaction around the world. We were very moved and proud.

That people around the world were watching this election and rooting for Obama was apparent to us throughout our travels. When people ask where we are from, even in countries where the US hasn't been the most popular recently, we've answered honestly. We've been received warmly (with a few exceptions in Turkey where our response was occasionally only met with silence, not rudeness). The world is definitely impressed and inspired by America right now.

Our time in the UK was pretty relaxed. We both did a bit of cooking and TV watching. Ray learned to work a coal-fired stove and continued his exploration of the beers of the world (the UK has now passed the Czech Republic in the number of entries in Ray's beer journal). We really enjoyed having meals at "home"--we even did take-away fish and chips (no longer served in newspaper) with preternaturally green mushy peas and side order of cod roe cakes (a deep fried hockey puck shaped disk of cod roe with a canned dog food like appearance).

Bungie and Freddie

Paul keeping the home fire burning

View when we woke up the first am, 10/28

While there were a few days when we didn't get out of the house, we did explore the city of Reading and Paul's village (Mortimer) while sorting out our plane tickets to Thailand. Ray tried a few pubs and pasties while shopping for books to read in Southeast Asia.

Paul took us on several adventures on the weekends. We did a day tour of London so Ray could see Big Ben, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square. We picked the Victoria and Albert museum as the one we would explore. We really enjoyed viewing all the "souvenirs" collected by the British during their empire. We even created our own coats of arms. (Ray's motto, below, translates loosely as "things could be worse"---how Minnesotan is that?).

We, again, learned more about the origin of sayings and stories in the English language. For example, both the nursery rhyme "Ring around the Rosy" and saying "God Bless You" after sneezes are both plague related. We'll stick to saying Gesundheit now that we know the alternative was said by people because they expected the person to die from the plague once he/she started sneezing!

On another day, we drove to the area around Windsor to see Ascot where we walked around a lovely woodland where people exercise their dogs and horses.  We also saw the polo fields where the Princes play. We then visited the meadow where the Magna Carta was signed in this same area.

fall trees

On our last full day in England, we drove along country roads to Oxford. We stopped at an old mill along side a river that had been turned into a hotel/restaurant. In the gardens Candy had a fright when Paul's dog Freddie flushed a couple of peacocks straight at us (Dad Smith--this was a wing shot that Ray couldn't have missed). In Oxford we walked around the town to see the different college buildings. We also visited a natural history museum that contained amazing specimens. We were able to see many of the animals that we had seen on our trip - which confirmed what some of the animals were that we had seen earlier!

Peacock before the flush

love the little Shetland ponies

Natural History Museum in Oxford

Seeing the sights weren't our only adventures. One Friday night after Paul's dance class we stopped at an unfamiliar pub around 10-ish. A couple of guys with arms the size of Ray's legs decided to take a disagreement outside to the smoking area. Another guy who had been exploring the beers of England that evening sat down by us to chat. He asked where we were from and said he'd worked in upstate NY. He then said to Paul, "If I had a couple of friends from America, I sure as !@#$ wouldn't bring them to this pub." Candy found this more amusing than Paul and Ray. So, Paul and Ray finished their drinks (and Candy's) and we moved along.

Seeing the fall colors certainly heightened our sense of homesickness that we felt from hearing English all the time, reading papers, and eating familiar foods, etc... After our time in England and getting to fast-paced Bangkok, we are now energized for our travels again (it's day 200 as we write this). Tune in again to hear about our time in Thailand.

fall colors

Candy and Ray

Candy's Jetta, aka Bora in EU, has another name!