England and Scotland -- July 5

July 5
6 PM, Greenwich Mean Time

We finally made it to our hotel in Rugby, Warwickshire after a long and winding road.
More...
The transfer of passengers onto our plane took more like 2 hours instead of 20 minutes (I should have known that first estimate was too good to be true). We didn’t take off until almost 10 PM, then had a whole 6½ hours more in the air. (We considered asking for an upgrade on our flight back for the inconvenience, but in the end we just wanted to get to our destination with no more delay.)

The service was great once we were on our way – alcohol and a full hot meal (including salad, roll, entrée and two desserts) actually included in the price of your ticket!! Just like it used to be on U. S. airlines! They also had video screens in the back of every headrest with a full selection of movies you could listen to on your headphones. They even gave away a little “travel package” containing socks, a sleeping mask, and a traveling toothbrush complete with a tiny little tube of toothpaste. The next time we have a long flight like that, though, I think we’ll go ahead and spend the extra money to travel in the first-class section. The extra leg-room would be worth it.

Sleeping on a plane is always difficult for me, so I finally took a sleeping pill, put on the sleeping mask, and stuffed in my ear plugs. I suppose I did manage to sleep a bit, because the next time I was aware of anything, they had already served breakfast and we were over England. From the air, it was all very green fields broken up by rivers and lots of church spires.

Finding our way to Rugby wasn’t too hard because of the Google directions I had printed out and the GPS system I spent all day Friday re-formatting for Gary. The motorway was full of lots of small, unfamiliar makes of vehicles, all with yellow license tags. (Our rental car was something called a Vauxhall Vectra that runs on diesel fuel.) Gary identified lots of really cool cars that you don’t see every day in the U.S., which was pretty thrilling for him. We saw Lamborghinis; Aston Martins; a Ferrari; some “smart” cars; American cars like Chrysler 300s or mini-vans with right-hand-drive; Japanese versions of cars that aren’t sold in the States, like a 5-door hatchback Toyota Camry; and funky-looking, box-like London taxis.

It was a little un-nerving at first to be driving on the opposite side of the road and sitting on the opposite side of the car than in the U. S., but you get used to it quickly. You just follow the crowd. You’re all right as long as you remember that everything traffic-related here is backwards: the center line in the roadway should always be on your right; the right lane is used for passing, always look to your right when crossing a street, etc. The motorists here are pretty good about following the rules of the road. No slowpokes clogging up the passing lane. The ones who do break the rules are probably dumb foreigners like us.

We saw a couple of military vehicles driven by soldiers, too. They’re the only vehicles here that have left-hand drive – I guess because almost everywhere they get sent to fight uses that system. I think the United Kingdom is one of the few places in the world that still uses right-hand drive vehicles (except for some former colonies and Commonwealth countries, I guess).

Once we got into Rugby, we had some difficulty finding our way around. Our hotel wasn’t facing the main road, but was located in a little side street that was blocked off from traffic because of a street market that was going on. We drove around town several times for almost half-an-hour trying to find it, then had to find a place to park. Very narrow, twisting, poorly-marked roads and confusing traffic circles (called roundabouts here). A modernized main road and downtown section, but a lot of the buildings are very old and quaint. Everything here just reeks of history.

Our bed-and-breakfast, the Three Horse Shoes Hotel on Sheep Street, is one of those old buildings with narrow, crooked, old-fashioned hallways and staircases (no elevators). I learned later that it’s been a hotel or inn since the 1700s! (Although it’s modernized now, of course).

We have a nice clean little room looking out on a narrow little cobblestone alley, but with 2 twin beds instead of a double. I guess Gary and I will be sleeping like Rob and Laura Petrie tonight. (I always wondered how they managed to have Ritchie with those beds. I guess one night Rob just said, “Get ready, Laura, I’m coming over!”)

We went walking around town and had ale at a pub called The Black Swan. There was a betting parlor directly across from it, with old men standing in front rolling their own cigarettes and betting on Wimbledon and the Tour de France. When we found out the pub had stopped serving food at 3 PM, we found another pub right by our hotel called The Bull, made sure the kitchen was still open, and had fish-and-chips and bangers-and-mash (sausages and mashed potatoes, in American English). Now we’re crashing in our room, trying to recover from jet lag. Tomorrow is the British Grand Prix at Silverstone Circuit. We passed the exit for it on M2 on our way in, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find . . .