You Don't Want Any Meat on Your Salad?

The Lake District, home of Beatrix Potter, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth (listed in order of importance), is really as charming as they say. We stayed at a place called Yewfield which I intend to review glowingly. Yewfield sits on a 30-acre farm complete with a tarn (small lake i think?), chickens, compost piles, nature trail, and an old English manor which serves as the b&b.

We tried to go on a nature walk but ended up in the chicken coop looking for a way back to the house--the path was hard to follow.

Back on the road, we headed to St. Bee's Head on the Cumbrian coast with GPS leading the way. We got very hungry around 2 or 3 and stopped to ask some kids where we could eat in this small town of St. Bee's. They recommended getting a pie at the post office???? Right, the post office? We ended up going to a pub inside a hotel on the beach. I checked the salad page of their menu and found a noticeable lack of greens and the strong presence of various meats. I asked the barmaid if I could just get a green salad and she said innocently: "You don't want any meat on your salad?" A few minutes later, I spilled my entire half-pint on my lap in front of a couple of staring construction workers.

We arrived in Edinburgh at Andrea's flat in the evening on Friday night and enjoyed a lovely curry made by John, Andrea's Scottish boyfriend. In the morning, we drove to Glasgow and met up with Geraldine, who is Irish but lives in Glasgow. Despite its reputation, Glasgow is very nice, especially the old town around the university. I met Andrea and Geraldine on the JET Program in Japan almost 8 years ago, so it was a mini-reunion of sorts.

On Sunday, we poked around the Royal Mile and the castle in Edinburgh, probably eating more than walking. Ahmet enjoyed some oysters and Guiness at Cafe Royal. I told the English bartender that I wanted to try some scottish whisky in my hot toddy (andrea had irish whiskey in hers) and got a showy reply. He said, "well, technically ALL whisky is scottish. If they want to use the spelling `whisky`, the whisky must be aged in barrels off the coast of Scotland for at least seven years". After encountering a mix of grumpy Scots and uppity English early that day, I decided to reply to his little tirade. I pointed to Andrea's glass of Jameson and said, "That's not Scottish whisky". He said, well it's a blend and look at the spelling anyway of 'whiskey'. I guess the implication was that all whiskeys, including Irish whiskeys, want to be Scottish.

We're off to Liverpool today and back in London for the night on Tuesday. Wednesday we return to blustery Chicago.

***

And the Albatross begins to be avenged.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot : O Christ !
That ever this should be !
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

(from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge)

Viva GPS

When I last blogged, we were still in London. The next day we took the train to Heathrow Airport and picked up a rental car, a lovely Nissan Note. Will try to post a photo of it. We headed to Oxford but forgot to charge up the laptop which had the GPS antenna connected. Very difficult to navigate without GPS in the UK! It took us several hours to drive to Oxford when it should have taken one. We got a nice tour around the ancient college town from our Chicago friend Mike Mason, who is studying abroad there. After another two hours trying to get out of town, we drove to Bristol for the night and sadly had to skip Bath.

The next day we had GPS but no power connection for the laptop, so we got Gloucester and the laptop died in the middle of what we like to call a "sheep road". The countryside was very beautiful but we wondered if we would be sleeping in a barn that night. We slopped our way back to some paved roads and decided we had to skip our two stops that day, Church Stretton and Liverpool, and just drive straight through to Hawkshead in the Lake District. After deciding that we were totally helpless without GPS, we stopped in Birmingham and bought a AC/DC converter for the laptop at an electronics store called Maplin's. The clerk said he thought we had "western" accents. Wild west?

Things went a lot more smoothly on the drive after the GPS was working reliably. We arrived in Hawkshead around 9pm but we could sense the beauty of lakes and the land underneath the darkness.

I'm in Edinburgh now and my Irish friend Andrea just made us breakfast, so this post is to be continued. Photos here.

Afternoon Tea and Fun with Antiquities

Today we visited the Ancient Greek, Middle Eastern, and Japanese collection at the British Museum. The Museum houses more than 7 million objects, so it's really best to focus only on several collections unless you plan to camp out for the next year in front of the museum in Bloomsbury. The Egyptian collection was interesting, if not a little gross with preserved corpses and the like.

After the museum, we had afternoon tea with finger sandwiches and champagne at the The Orangery in Kensington Gardens (also home to Kensington Palace). My tea was a little pedestrian--I guess that's what I get for ordering the "classic". Ahmet's darjeeling was peppery and good.

Sunny days and nice weather so far. Not a drop of rain.

Tate & Tour

Yesterday we left the hotel early, before 9am, which is very early for us. A small miracle, really. We were jet-lagged and couldn't sleep, so we decided to take off early.

We signed up for one of those dorky bus tours where you can get on and off at will. We should have done the carbon-free walking tour, but my new "walking" shoes are really uncomfortable so we took the lazy choice on the bus. We did get a nice overview of the city and took advantage of the river cruise (included). A few observations:

1. English people love gardens.
2. They are more formal, starting with the schoolchildren in tiny, neat uniforms.
3. The food is not as bad as I thought (mostly international).

Our day in the city ended at the Tate Modern, but we hit a wall of fatigue by that time, so we had to take a break after each floor of art. I can't remember much of what we saw, save the Austrian expressionist pieces with bandages, needles, and self-mutilation featured. Cheery stuff.

Today we attempt the British Museum and afternoon tea if all goes well.

London

We arrived in London today (Sunday) disheveled but happy to be here, after a nice sleep on the floor of the airport in Dusseldorf for a few hours. That floor was so clean you could have almost eaten off of it.

London seems crowded but the neighborhood where we are staying, Belgravia, is cozy and pleasant. Poetry posted on tube--saw a nice one by Scottish poet Andrew Young. Will try to post it later if I can find.

They always give Ahmet a hard time at customs and border crossings. This time they asked about our relationship, his job, and our travel plans. We said we planned to drive through England to Edinburgh and this young guard said, "you know, that's a long way". Then he asked Ahmet in a worried tone: "Have you drive long distances before?"

It's only 400 miles one-way from London to Edinburgh and we aren't even driving it all in one day.

Blogging from UK

Greetings from an airbus 340-300 to london connecting dusseldorf. I will be posting trip updates on this blog over the next 10 days. Here's the itinerary: London-oxford-bath-bristol-lake district-edinburgh-york-london. I'll post again from london.

Early Adolescent Addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference

Jonathan Krohn isn't old enough to have a cell phone, so he uses his mom's to call into conservative talk shows. Check out the video of Krohn at the CPAC.

The Republican Party in disarray is looking everywhere for leadership, I guess.