England

Arrival in London happened after I managed only a couple hours of sleep on the plane ride over. Unfortunately for me, the arrival occurred at 7:00a.m. London time. This meant a long day before I could consume myself in a deep sleep.

After getting to the hotel (which was a long tube ride from Heathrow) I checked in and met up with Joan and Michael. The hotel - the Park Lane Hotel- was located on Picadilly, right across the street from Green Park. Green Park is the park that abuts Buckingham Palace (Click here to see a map.) Ann Ooms met us at the hotel and the four of us walked all around the area seeing many of the sights. Unfortunately I forgot the Noodler shirt on this tour.

The next day we walked down to the south bank of the Thames - see the photo - and then left London for Coventry. (For a map of England, click here.) Now this is normally about a two hour jaunt by bus. The bus we got on, however, had no air conditioning and then broke down. After waiting for a very long time, another bus eventually came to get us and took us a little further, where we transferred to yet another bus without air conditioning. About five hours after our start we got to our final destination via taxi...the University of Warwick! So, what, you may ask, have I learned about London from this experience...

• First off, London is probably the most expensive city anywhere. For example, when placing a phone call to get our bus ticket from the hotel they charged us 7 pounds (about $14).
• Secondly, the people in London are very unhelpful.
• Thirdly, customer service is a non-existent entity in England (Both in London and in Coventry).
• Lastly, although the movies and folklore of England promise a pub with wonderful beer at every street corner, the reality is quite a disappointment. We had to really search for a pub once we were at the university and after we finally found one the beer selection was terrible...The only dark beer was Guinness and most of the rest were horrible beer-like-anomalies such as Bud Lite. It was as if Jeb owned the pub.

Since arriving at the university, I have been living in a dorm room. We have gone on a couple outings. Sunday evening we went to the village of Royal Leamington Spa. We took a walking tour of Leamington with a guide that was a very funny man. Imagine a character from Monty Python crossed with a very short history professor and you start to get the picture. He was quite informative, telling us about almost every building. It sounded something like the following:

The Pizza Hut came to Leamington in the year 1987. Before that it was the residence of Tim the Gardener who of course was personal gardener to King Greg the Third. Then of course you recall the great fire of Leamington - it was mentioned by Ed the historian in his famous book Leamington for Twits which he wrote during the venerable year 1980 - this burned the Pizza Hut to the ground, or very nearly to the ground since back in those days the ground wasn't really the ground but two to three inches more than the ground. The Pizza Hut was then rebuilt by Kathy and Angela, two nuns of Bachus, who lived in that house across the boulevard - the one with the Ionic columns. Those columns were of course first built in the more traditional Doric style by Lauren the column builder but were renovated in the turn of the century by JC the fifth - who as you may remember in your school days as the son of JC the fourth.

If you add a British accent to that account, you begin to get the picture. We had about an hour tour with this guy. It was great!!! After our walk we ate Balti food at the home of one of the conference organizers.

Monday afternoon, we took a coach to Stratford-Upon-Avon home to one Bill Shakespeare. We visited the Mary Arden house, which saw the birth of Big Bill, and also saw his grave. We also saw the grave of Anne Hathaway - his wife. We then had dinner at the Dirty Duck also known as the Black Swan (see photo at left).

After dinner we wandered across the street to the Black Swan Theatre (notice the British spelling). This theatre, although it is home to the Royal Shakespeare Company, looks like something you might find in northern Minnesota. If Hackensack were to build a theatre, it might well look like this one. We saw the RSC put on a performance of The Penelopiad. (For a synopsis click here.) It was much shorter than 1776.

Note for the Northstar Noodlers: I got some pictures with the shirt at Mary Arden's house, but unfortunately I left my cable to get the pictures from my camera to the computer at home. I will put them up as soon as I have access to the cable.