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kmusserYou can see all of our trip on Google Maps. Days 1 through 7 are on the first page, you have to click on 2 or next to get days 8 through 10. My photo album, though ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
radiant_one took lots more photos than I did.
Day 0
Doesn’t count since we aren’t even in England yet, but we took a red eye flight out of Dulles to Heathrow. Uneventful except for a couple of things. One is that the cheesecake gods were smiling. There among the Dwarven bread, "chicken" curry (seriously, a single bite worth of chicken - and who's bright idea was it to serve curry in a confined space?), scrap of iceberg lettuce called a salad . . . was a slice of Eli's cheesecake. Nom! Secondly, normally I'm a pacifist, but if you think 4 am on a red eye flight is the appropriate time to speak loudly and at length about how you can never sleep on red eye flights . . . then you deserve to be shot. I'm sorry, but the world will be a better place.
Day 1
We arrive at the crack of dawn, somewhat bleary-eyed, at Heathrow and shuffle along many queues until it spits us out. Next step is to get a car, unfortunately I used Thrifty, which I've never had a problem with in the U.S., but their U.K. version was not so good. The so-called courtesy shuttle took about 45 minutes to show up (distance between the terminal and the rental office - 3 miles) and the office itself wasn't any speedier. Fortunately we did at least get a decent car (a BMW, which I'm very sorry about what I've probably done to its transmission over the course of the trip) and a badly needed snack at the hotel next door. Finally, we have our car and are fed, it's time to head out . . . and sit in traffic. Eventually we do escape the M3 (though only after stopping at a the world’s busiest rest stop - we grabbed our maps here and they served us well for the rest of the trip) and make our way to Salisbury.
Our first touristy stop is to Old Sarum (chosen first so we could pick up our English Heritage passes). Yay for getting out of the car, the weather is gorgeous, as is the site - ruins of a Norman castle built on an older hill fort. Old Sarum is also famous for historically being represented in parliament despite its lack of any population. We also get nice views of Salisbury from here, as well as aerial goings on - a biplane whizzing by and a bunch of parachutists in the distance.
From there we go into town to see the cathedral and get food. Lunch/dinner was at a pub and I don’t even remember it well, but it was our first real meal since arriving and was badly needed. Thus fortified we continued on. I saw the Salisbury Cathedral in 1992 on a school trip it was one of the places that stuck with me. I never really expected to be back here, but here I was and it was just as impressive as I remembered and a lot of the reconstruction work that was being done then was now done. What I like about this cathedral is not so much the ridiculously tall spire, but the relatively open floor plan. Unlike many cathedrals that are cluttered with little shrines all over, you can actually see from one end of the church to the other. Also there were morris dancers, just one of the many hazards of visiting England.
After sufficient ogling of the architecture it’s back on the road for the long drive to Cornwall. The drive is fairly uneventful except for the weird time warp thing around Exeter - when we try to drive by Exeter the roads spit us out going to the wrong direction - after several detours we do eventually make it passed Exeter, though quite tired, and now it’s dark. Fortunately there is no more getting lost, just progressively smaller roads till we get to our cottage on an unnamed farm lane in the middle of nowhere.
Still we found it, and our host is there expecting us. Unfortunately the place is a bit of a dump. It’s musty and dirty, with an uncomfortable bed and full of mosquitoes. Really not what you want to come to after a 7 hour flight and a nearly 6 hour drive. But there is a bed, and after a brief mosquito murdering spree we collapse.
radiant_one took lots more photos than I did.Day 0
Doesn’t count since we aren’t even in England yet, but we took a red eye flight out of Dulles to Heathrow. Uneventful except for a couple of things. One is that the cheesecake gods were smiling. There among the Dwarven bread, "chicken" curry (seriously, a single bite worth of chicken - and who's bright idea was it to serve curry in a confined space?), scrap of iceberg lettuce called a salad . . . was a slice of Eli's cheesecake. Nom! Secondly, normally I'm a pacifist, but if you think 4 am on a red eye flight is the appropriate time to speak loudly and at length about how you can never sleep on red eye flights . . . then you deserve to be shot. I'm sorry, but the world will be a better place.
Day 1
We arrive at the crack of dawn, somewhat bleary-eyed, at Heathrow and shuffle along many queues until it spits us out. Next step is to get a car, unfortunately I used Thrifty, which I've never had a problem with in the U.S., but their U.K. version was not so good. The so-called courtesy shuttle took about 45 minutes to show up (distance between the terminal and the rental office - 3 miles) and the office itself wasn't any speedier. Fortunately we did at least get a decent car (a BMW, which I'm very sorry about what I've probably done to its transmission over the course of the trip) and a badly needed snack at the hotel next door. Finally, we have our car and are fed, it's time to head out . . . and sit in traffic. Eventually we do escape the M3 (though only after stopping at a the world’s busiest rest stop - we grabbed our maps here and they served us well for the rest of the trip) and make our way to Salisbury.
Our first touristy stop is to Old Sarum (chosen first so we could pick up our English Heritage passes). Yay for getting out of the car, the weather is gorgeous, as is the site - ruins of a Norman castle built on an older hill fort. Old Sarum is also famous for historically being represented in parliament despite its lack of any population. We also get nice views of Salisbury from here, as well as aerial goings on - a biplane whizzing by and a bunch of parachutists in the distance.
From there we go into town to see the cathedral and get food. Lunch/dinner was at a pub and I don’t even remember it well, but it was our first real meal since arriving and was badly needed. Thus fortified we continued on. I saw the Salisbury Cathedral in 1992 on a school trip it was one of the places that stuck with me. I never really expected to be back here, but here I was and it was just as impressive as I remembered and a lot of the reconstruction work that was being done then was now done. What I like about this cathedral is not so much the ridiculously tall spire, but the relatively open floor plan. Unlike many cathedrals that are cluttered with little shrines all over, you can actually see from one end of the church to the other. Also there were morris dancers, just one of the many hazards of visiting England.
After sufficient ogling of the architecture it’s back on the road for the long drive to Cornwall. The drive is fairly uneventful except for the weird time warp thing around Exeter - when we try to drive by Exeter the roads spit us out going to the wrong direction - after several detours we do eventually make it passed Exeter, though quite tired, and now it’s dark. Fortunately there is no more getting lost, just progressively smaller roads till we get to our cottage on an unnamed farm lane in the middle of nowhere.
Still we found it, and our host is there expecting us. Unfortunately the place is a bit of a dump. It’s musty and dirty, with an uncomfortable bed and full of mosquitoes. Really not what you want to come to after a 7 hour flight and a nearly 6 hour drive. But there is a bed, and after a brief mosquito murdering spree we collapse.