10,000 Miles - Part One

Where do you start when you visit three countries in two weeks?  We traveled approximately 10,000 miles by plane, another 850 by train, over 160 miles driving on the left (which I submit is the RIGHT side of the road!) and another 100 or so on the OTHER side of the road.  Not to mention the countless footsteps exploring small villages, cities filled with noise and energy, and everything in between.  How do you capture all those moments that bombard the senses?  What words can describe the feeling of being transported back in time at the Tower of London, or the utter beauty of Le Louvre and the stab of illogical fear when they locked the gates to the German castle behind us?  To say it was a whirlwind is an understatement and yet in the best tradition of fabulous experiences it took us so far from our everyday world that when we returned it felt like we had been gone for a couple of months.

We arrived in London the weekend of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.  I was seven the last time I celebrated a jubilee and distinctly remember the street parties and my Mum making me a new dress in red, white and blue.  I felt a familiar sense of nostalgia when we walked off the plane and were immediately greeted with big smiles from girls dressed head to foot in red, white and blue.  They presented four dazed boys with flags and pins and coerced them into signing a book of good will messages to the Queen herself.  They seemed quite amazed that a welcome party had been ordered for their arrival and we will wait a few years before breaking the news to them that the girls were not standing by solely for their visit.

Hungry in only a way that traveling for a day can make you, I asked for the nearest English breakfast and we received directions.  I may have lost some of my stiff upper lip over the years because the gentlemen saw the look of disbelief on my face and reassured me it was very good.  We found the café easily and at 7:30am in London, five Americans and a Brit sat down in a Thai café and ate their first English breakfast of the trip.  Let me amend that; one American had spaghetti for breakfast and pronounced it the best he has ever had.  Who knew we had to travel so far and find that Thai café to experience the best spaghetti in the world?!  Within a couple of days another member of the party would start to ask at every meal if baked beans were served with EVERYTHING in England??  I consider this to be a rhetorical question. 

The next two days were an immersion into all things English in the capital.  We took the Tube to the London Eye and saw the city from every angle.  My adorable husband proposed to me at the top of the Eye and everyone was relieved I accepted or the next 15 minutes locked together in a capsule on the way down could have been the longest of all our lives ;o)  

The dungeons followed which was more designed for children than adults yet reminded me of some of the more gruesome parts of English history.  We spent almost an entire day at the Tower of London, including the Bloody Tower (pardon my language) breathing in the history and reveling in every moment of being part of its present.  The castle and walls are a living, breathing part of history that we were encouraged to touch, walk on, understand, and enjoy, as long as we didn’t go on the grass!  We took a boat up the Thames mere hours before the Queen would lead a pageant of 670 boats on the very same river and had much better weather for our trip than she did for hers.  Sitting up top we took photograph after photograph like crazed tourists, deliriously happy, slightly jet-lagged, and seemingly always hungry.  When we left London to head north it was amid a persistent drizzle but it did not hinder our spirits or our progress; we were eager for the next leg of the English chapter…more to come...