Great Britain with Mallory's Grandma

September 5, 2006

When we saw ELIZABETHTOWN (the movie Orlando Bloom was filming in Kentucky when Mallory and I stalked him there), it inspired me to want to go on another road trip with Mallory, this time including my mother and my other daughter, Jessica. When I asked Mallory where she'd like to visit, she replied "Europe." One can't exactly drive to Europe, and I'm not in a position to afford the airfares. I told Mallory and Jessica that if they could save some money to pay for the plane, we would do it. They didn't save any money. So, instead, I suggested to my mother that the two of us should go. I've always wanted to see England and Scotland.

I heard about some low airfares (about $200 each way) to London through an email from Travelzoo. I booked two flights for September 4, 2006, and my sweet father picked up the cost as my 50th birthday present. Then I got busy on the internet, finding bed & breakfast facilities in London, Edinburgh and Paris. I also arranged a rental car through AutoEurope for us to drive from London to Edinburgh, on to Aberdeen in Scotland (where we have cousins), and then to Paris. Though I've never been to Great Britain, Mom has visited there a few times. However, she has never been to Paris.

So, here's the first half of our trip:

Mom and I had a great flight to London. Once arrived, we struggled a bit with getting suitcases up and down the underground stairs, and we found ourselves sitting close to an Indian couple and their small daughter. The woman was sneezing a lot and seemed quite miserable (this will be significant later). Anyway, we finally found our way out of the underground into Victoria Station. There we bought sodas (from a Burger King - in Victoria Station!!!) and rested a bit before tackling the walk to our B&B. We were staying at the Stanley House Hotel, which is only a few blocks south of the station, although by then we were so tired it felt like miles. Our room was on the first floor, which is one flight up in Britain, but at least we had a private bathroom. We showered and crashed - correction, tried to crash. There was a traffic signal right outside our balcony window, which was open to cool off the non-air-conditioned room. We were kept awake most of the night by loud motor engines gearing up and down at the light.

Day 1 - After our full English breakfast (fried egg, sausage, bacon, beans, grilled tomato and toast), we reported to the Golden Tours Office in Fountain Square (next to Victoria Station) for our Essential Monuments Tour. A nice air-conditioned coach took us to the Tower of London, where we saw all the sights, including the Traitor's Gate, the Bloody Tower, the White Tower and the Crown Jewels. Then we returned to the tours office to pick up more people before heading to Bath. Mom and I napped a bit on the way, but we also looked at the British countryside out the window. It looked a lot like the New Jersey countryside. In Bath we toured the Roman Baths Museum and the magnificent Bath Abbey. Mom and I grabbed a late lunch of fish & chips, served with a mysterious pile of bright green stuff which our waitress identified as "mushy peas." They're mashed peas, a peculiarly British dish, and the restaurant in Bath served a very tasty version. Then it was back on the bus to drive across the Salisbury Plain (made famous by pranksters nocturnally creating crop circles) to Stonehenge. It was fascinating to arrive at this legendary place, and see that it was sitting out in the middle of the fields, surrounded by herds of sheep. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me. U.S. friends who had visited Stonehenge told me not to bother, because the monument ordinarily is roped off, keeping visitors a good 20 feet away from the stones. However, our tour group arrived half an hour after the monument closed to the general public, and we were allowed to enter the stone circle and wander and take pictures to our hearts' content. We stayed for about an hour, until the sun had set. It was amazing! Then we re-boarded the bus for the long return trip to London. This time we napped a lot. Back at Stanley House, Mom and I visited a Night Spot (convenience store) for supper provisions. We dined on ice cream bars, bananas and toffee chip cookies, while watching British television. They have some surprisingly bawdy advertisements on their television. This night we closed the balcony window before going to sleep, and we got plenty of zzzzzzs.

Day 2 - Slept late and missed the hotel breakfast, so we got coffee and pastries at Starbucks. We addressed postcards to the folks back home while we ate. Then we had to make our way to the Tower of London again, to pick up passes for a Three Palace Tour. Now, here the learning curve caught up to us. We should have got those passes when we were at the Tower the day before, OR we should have taken the underground to the Tower on this day. Instead, we bought tickets for a double decker sightseeing bus. We did see a number of sights on the way to the Tower, and the tour guide did have some good anecdotes to relate. However, street traffic in London is even more congested than in Manhattan. It was well after Noon by the time we got to the Tower. We picked up our passes - which would admit us to the Tower of London (been there, done that), Kensington Palace, the Banqueting Hall and/or Hampton Court. Then we shopped for souvenirs and more postcards in the Tower Gift Shop and got some lunch at Tower Walk. Mom had KFC (sheesh), and I got shepherd's pie from a little deli kind of place. Then we got back on a sightseeing bus to return to the other end of London for Kensington Palace. This bus didn't have a live tour guide, only an audio tour which they gave us headsets to plug into. It was after four when we got back over near Victoria, where we had to change to a different line of the bus to get to Kensington. Well, the silly bus never showed up, so we spent more precious pounds getting tickets to the city bus. And then, when we finally got to Kensington Palace at just about 5:00, the gates were shut. DRAT! Well, we had learned from the first tour guide that the National Gallery would be open until 9:00 that night. So we got on another city bus to Trafalgar Square. We took pictures in the square, and got more sodas to quench travellers' thirst. Then we went into the National Gallery and looked at old Flemish and Italian masters for a while. There were plenty of overwrought paintings with religious themes, some renderings of mythological subjects, portraits, landscapes and still lifes. Before we reached the end of one wing, I was feeling extremely weary. We found the washroom and freshened up, then ducked out the back of the museum and found ourselves in Leicester Square. There was a charming little Italian restaurant where we were able to get a reasonably priced dinner of soup/salad, pizza and wine. I ordered hot tea, as well, because I was beginning to feel decidedly queer. By the end of the meal, I knew I was running a fever. I was shivering, and Mom said my forehead was very hot. We settled the bill, bought some ibuprofen at a newsstand, and got on the underground at the Charing Cross station. Wow! The underground gets one around London MUCH more quickly than the bus. Returned to our B&B, I undressed and lay down and felt like - well - you know. We didn't have a thermometer, but I felt as bad as I did when I had the flu in August and was running a temp of 103. I was worried that I had contracted another flu strain that would lay me low for days, and I was really worried that the Indian woman from the airport might have given me Bird Flu. Mom was worried that she ought to take me to the emergency room. After two double doses of ibuprofen, I finally fell into a fitful sleep. I awoke sometime in the wee hours in a sweat, and I knew the fever had broken. I felt wrung out, but no longer racked by body aches and chills.

Day 3 - With the mysterious illness magically gone, we were back on track to collect our rental car and drive to Scotland. We did go downstairs for Stanley House's full English breakfast. This time we found ourselves sharing a table with a retired couple from Tasmania - quite the characters. After I called the rental car place to let them know we were behind schedule, we packed and hauled our cases back to Victoria Station. Weakened from illness, I found it much harder to carry my luggage. I went into Fountain Square and bought a rack with big wheels on which to put my suitcase. That made it more manageable. The rental car place was at Heathrow, and after a little mix up - the first vehicle they gave me had a standard transmission, which I knew I wasn't going to be able to handle simultaneously with driving on the "wrong" side of the road - we got our little KIA, stumbled our way through the airport access roads and roundabouts, and got on the M25 Motorway that rings London. This took us to the A1/M1 for the North, which eventually (9 hours later) got us to Edinburgh. It wasn't bad at all travelling on the motorway. The lanes were wide, the roads pretty straight, and rest stops with food and gas placed at frequent intervals. However, once arrived at Edinburgh (well after dark), the conditions changed. Instead of intersections, they have these lovely little roundabouts (traffic circles), and as you enter a roundabout there is a sign naming all the exits out of the roundabout. Well, I couldn't watch the road and read the sign, and Mom couldn't read the sign fast enough. So, needless to say, we made several false turns before we got into the part of Edinburgh where our B&B was situated. Then, once we were in the old city, things got worse. The streets are very narrow, old world streets, but most of them are for two way traffic and have cars parked on both sides. The street signs, instead of being on poles at the corners, are located on the sides of the buildings. Took us a little while to figure that one out. Mom couldn't read the map and the street signs at the same time, so I pulled onto a side street to assess our location. We couldn't reconcile the streets on the map with the streets we were driving. Our salvation was Edinburgh Castle, which stands all lit up on a hill in the center of the city. We could see it from the road, and were able to figure out our location on the map relative to the Castle. This enabled me to get to the main thoroughfare that runs nearest the B&B. Then we stopped at a gas station to confirm the turn for the B&B. Please note that, in the U.K. as in the U.S., gas station attendants are mostly from India. Fortunately, this attendant was able to direct me. We were staying at Granville Guest House in Granville Terrace. Of course, when we finally found it, there were no parking places anywhere near. I left Mom at the Guest House and drove around until I found an opening a few blocks away. I was very proud of myself that I found the way back to the Guest House on foot. It was another shower and crash kind of night.

Day 4 - We were awakened at 6:12 a.m. (I know because I sat bolt upright and looked at the clock) by an unearthly howling in the pipes. We found out later that this sound was produced by other guests taking early morning showers. We tried to sleep for a little while longer, but finally gave it up (the pipe howling returned), got up and dressed for breakfast. The fare was exactly the same in Edinburgh as in London, except the sausage was a different (more peppery) variety. This guest house was much more nicely appointed than Stanley House. Beautiful wallpapers and ceiling moldings, tasteful window treatments, and a monster philodendron growing up the wall and all the way around the ceiling in the dining room. After breakfast, we drove to Edinburgh Castle, where the car park, which the guest house proprietor had assured us of, was closed for construction. Grrrrrrr! We parked illegally in a spot marked for residents only, and we got the parking ticket to prove it. We picked up some souvenirs and postcards in the shops in the Royal Mile (road between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace), then went into the Castle for the tour. Edinburgh Castle is more of a fortress, which contains tiny St. Margaret's Chapel (more than 900 years old - you can have a wedding there, so long as you don't want more than 20 guests), the barracks for the Highland Guards, an Armory, a couple of war museums and the crown jewels - the Honours - of Scotland (even older and more steeped in legend than the British crown jewels). There is also the very moving Scottish National War Memorial, and breathtaking views across the city from the Castle battlements. I took tons of pictures there. After the tour, we lunched on very pricey soup and rolls, plus I indulged in a bottle of Heather Beer (brewed in Scotland). Then it was back on the road for the three hour drive to Aberdeen.