 |
| view of Edinburgh looking north from Blackford Hill, wikipedia, the Firth of Forth in far distance |
The plan is to drive to O'Hare Airport outside Chicago, leave our car at a nearby motel and fly out late in the afternoon to London. (It's a Park, Fly, Sleep arrangement.) Our friends Richard and Pauline who live in St. Albans, about 20 miles north of central London, plan to pick us up at Heathrow the morning of the 23rd and we'll spend the day with them at their home.
On the 24th the four of us will drive to Scotland and Richard and Pauline will drop us off in Edinburgh while they go and visit a friend north of the city. Susie and I will spend four days enjoying Edinburgh and its environs before meeting up with R & P for the drive back to St. Albans. On the 29th we'll go into central London for the day before heading off to Bath where we'll spend three nights.
One of the novel aspects of this trip, for us at any rate, is we will be making a team presentation (Susan and I being the team) on the trip at Aquinas in January. Since Susan wants to provide examples of afternoon tea in the UK, we already have reservations for three tea experiences: the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, the Dorchester Hotel in London and the Pump Room in Bath.
Oh, and we have scheduled a tour of the Bertinet culinary school in Bath as well, which should be lots of fun. Naturally we plan to stop at no small number of pastry shops while we're in the UK. And a perhaps a short day trip to St. Andrews while we're in Scotland but absolutely no golf!
Returning to London from Bath we will rejoin Richard and Pauline and if the weather cooperates get to Kew Gardens, take a Thames River Cruise and visit the National Gallery and perhaps the British Museum. We had hoped to spend time at the Courtauld Galley but they are closed until 2021 for major renovations.
We leave London on October 5 and arrive back in Chicago that evening around 7pm. We'll take the shuttle to our motel, spend the night and then leave Sunday morning for the drive back to Grand Rapids.
This is just a bare outline, of course -- in later posts I'll be talking about our accommodations -- selected through Sawday's Special Places, which we used in 2013 in Paris -- our dining experiences, and so much more. Like haggis, scotch whiskey and shortbread, of course.
We're going to try something a bit new with communication this trip: simply using our existing phones and phone numbers while overseas. Now we did this once before with Verizon but the costs were steep. However, our phones have been unlocked since we changed services last year, and our present mobile carrier, Xfinity, does not charge a fee for activating the international roaming feature while the costs for using their services abroad are small (sort of):
10 cents for each minute of talk, in or out
10 cents for each text, in or out, and
10 cents per mb of data used
Since we still have our old UK clamshell we also plan to buy a local SIM card as a backup once we arrive at Heathrow.
While the weekly painting posts will be on hiatus until later this autumn when I hope to return with some truly wonderful art to share with you: works by Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, William Bougereau, Jean Béraud , Marie Bashkirtseff , George Seurat, and so many more from my September presentations at Aquinas on 19th century French art so stay tuned!
 |
| “The Elder Sister” 1869 by Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905) Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |
No comments:
Post a Comment