England and Scotland -- July 13

July 13
5:30 PM, Central Standard Time

Home again! The lawn needs mowing; Gary’s truck has a flat tire; and the dog got out once while we were gone. But all in all, everything’s fine and it’s good to be back.

We spent our last full day in England driving through some more pretty countryside
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to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex. It’s a gathering of all kinds of vehicles (classic cars, Indy cars, motorcycles, etc.) for a race held on the 1.8-mile-long drive of Goodwood House, the estate of the Earl of March.





Gary was in heaven, of course, seeing so many trendy cars. We stayed there for most of the day. The weather was cool and overcast, but dry at least. We even managed to get a good spot at the Start Line for part of the race.

When we got back to London, we realized our hotel was less than a mile away from Buckingham Palace, so we drove on over. It was too late in the day to get tickets to tour the inside (and we were still tired from sight-seeing the day before), so we just took a drive-by picture. Besides, it’s probably like the White House, where you get to see the public rooms of the house and that’s it. It’s not like you’re actually going to meet the Queen or the President when you tour places like that.



We also did the last of our shopping at the Kings Mall in Hammersmith (much smaller than our American malls) and had drinks and dinner at our two favorite pubs in the Pimlico area. A nice way to end our vacation.

There were a lot of other places I would like to have seen that we didn’t have time for on this trip (Bath, York, Stratford, Stonehenge, etc.), but we definitely plan on coming back sometime . . .