Seat of our pants

Freddie has some vacation time he has to use before the end of the first quarter, so last week he asked me to check our passports and make sure they are still valid, since he was thinking about running away to Cancun or similar for the weekend.

Passports are valid, so yay! Let’s go!

As the planning evolved, we found we didn’t really want to go sit on a beach for four days. We live in New Jersey, if we really feel the need to get sand in our collective asscrack, we can mosey down the shore (which is something we don’t do often enough, but whatever). So… where else could we go?

Freddie wanted the trip to be easy and relatively stress-free, so that meant going to a place where English is widely spoken. Which is… anywhere these days, but after some thinking we decided to head to London.

LONDON! Possibly my favorite city on Earth!

Yes, I know there’s a great big world out there and lots of stuff to see and do, but I could be happy travelling to the UK and nowhere else for the rest of my life. Between actual decent beer, the best cheeses in the world, accents, bone-dry humor, and unrepentantly trashy TV, it’s pretty much the place where I belong.

So we’re headed out on Thursday. No computers! No cell phones! We might purchase a guidebook to assist us in getting around but our advance planning via the internet might make that unnecessary. Four days, and the only MUST-DO things on the list are a trip to the Earl of Lonsdale pub in Notting Hill, and a quick train trip to Salisbury and from there, Stonehenge.

Yes, I know, Stonehenge isn’t that big a deal. But it is! Last time we were there, in 2001, Britain was in the midst of a hoof-and-mouth epidemic and Stonehenge was CLOSED. Yes, closed. We got off the train at Salisbury and there was a sign on the platform saying Stonehenge was closed. We asked the dude at the station what our options were and he told us about taking a cab where you could drive past and see it from the road or taking a bus that would swing past there, but one option was crazy-expensive and the other would take a total of 5 hours all told, so we got back on the train and headed to Bath for the day.

So we’re going back. And this time I am determined to get as close to Stonehenge as I can, because it has fascinated me since I was a wee lass.

And of course, there’s the promise of beer. Lots and lots of beer.

2 Comments

Filed under Freddie, Me Me Me

2 Responses to Seat of our pants

  1. audrey

    My 21 year old neice works in a hotel bar in Bath slingling beer to the locals. She is having such a great time she is reluctant to return to Canada. Loves the history and the people. She did a day trip to Stonehenge late in the fall so you should be able to see it this time.

    Are you taking The Jillian? She really would do great on a trip to London – except for the drinking beer part. Wait…people regularly take their dogs to pubs so children are allowed too!

    Have a couple pints for me, okay? Cheers!