Finally, Tea First!

It's about time that I found a place that offers tea first, before offering coffee!  I've had more tea in the past week than I can remember.  It is rather refreshing.  People do seem a bit surprised that I want "black" tea "black" and no cream and/or sugar...not a huge shock, but still it does catch them off guard.

Here's our real timeline...I read JB's blog entries and even I was confused about the timing.  I'm willing to chalk it up to road weariness and chaos.  Here you go:

Thursday: Arrive 5 hours early and drop our bags at the hotel, get a sim card for the phone, eat in a pub (I don't like haddock for my fish & chips) and head for the British Museum.

Friday: Train to Carlisle, get rental car, go to Hadrian's wall, eat at the Crown Inn pub (steak & ale pie is great), then my first attempt at a blog entry and early to bed.

Saturday: Early up with the continental breakfast at the hotel, followed by the rest of our tour of Hadrian's wall and frantic dash and near failure to get rid of the car, dinner at the pub (I do like cod for my fish & chips) with a bit of "football" and some rugby followed by a walking tour of downtown Carlisle...bought three (3) skeins of "wool" even though it was acrylic and nylon.  They don't understand the word "yarn" as string of varying thicknesses used for making cloth...every time I mentioned it people would stare at me and then point to thread...go figure.

Sunday: Early up with a full English breakfast (confused by the baked beans for breakfast...it's just Wrong!), next up is the series of trains to Cambridge (Carlisle to Newcastle to Peterborough to Cambridge) and meeting up with Beatrice for some great soup and hospitality.  She took us on a tour of the 43 colleges that make up the town of Cambridge and vespers at St. John's College chapel.  I had a hard time not crocheting in church and not fidgeting either.

Monday: Early up with a trip to Cardiff via Birmingham...a really cool thing happened - we purchased BritRail England train passes which were supposed to only be good in England, but we were going to Cardiff (in Wales) and thought we were going to have to buy train tickets from Birmingham to Cardiff, however the ticket agent called her supervisor who said to wait and see if the train conductor/ticket agent would charge us or not...they didn't and saved us at least 80 pounds! We took a cab to Ken & Suzanne Woods' place in Cardiff and discovered the chaos of a construction zone and toddlers combined...it was fun!  I was missing my monkey anyway and so we got both the pooch fix and the toddler fix.


Tuesday:  We did a walking tour of Cardiff - Walked through an awesome park, saw Cardiff Castle, ate lunch in an Irish pub, got a little turned around, took a little train down to Cardiff Bay and walked around the Roald Dahl plaza where Torchwood was filmed, saw the over-priced Dr. Who exhibit, took the water taxi back up the Taff (the main river in Cardiff) and had dinner with Ken & Suzanne and friends.

Wednesday (Today): Easy day = No Plans.  JB and I came over to Ken & Suzanne's early to hang out and just take it easy.  We had lunch at the Bangkok Cafe (a new place in town) and it was really quite good.  JB & Ken went to meet with the producer and have a rehearsal and will be back later.  There are no spectacular plans for tonight...just hanging out with toddlers who go to bed at 7pm.  I'm looking forward to the down time.

Tomorrow (Thursday) we're going to Shipston which is near Stratford Upon Avon if you care to look at a map.  JB's gig is on Friday and the recording session is on Saturday and then it's back to London.  Well, enough typing today.

Michelle