#50 Travels in England and (a little in) Scotland

Good morning. 

Kathy and I spent two weeks in England and Scotland at the end of September into early October.  Here are a few travel notes and pictures (many of the latter swiped from Kathy's Facebook page).  Some of the pictures repeat what appeared on Facebook.

Even though airplane travel has become among the more aversive ways to get from place to place, for the most part the process has been made reasonably efficient even if it's not particularly pleasant.  I've finally conceded that we don't have to go to the airport four hours in advance of an international flight.  But not every element of travel in every place is quick and painless.  When we landed at Heathrow, in London, we got into a long line that snaked down a concourse; we stood in that line for perhaps 20-30 minutes.  When we got to the bottom of the concourse, where it spilled around a corner into a large room, our hearts sank.  People were lined up between those temporary barriers, snaking back and forth, maybe 40-50 people in each line maybe 10-12 lines deep.  We guessed somewhere between 400 and 500 people slowly trudging back and forth across the room as they moved gradually to the front to the immigration officers' check-in stands.

This was especially disheartening because we usually rent European accommodations beginning the night before we arrive so when the overnight flight arrives in the early morning we can go to the flat immediately and take a short nap (rather than await an afternoon check in).  We don't sleep on flights very well, if at all, so we're pooped when we land.  It was clear that that plan had gone awry for this trip, courtesy of British immigration.

Depressed and tired, we got in the line.  We noticed there was a sign ahead of us for expedited access (I don't remember the exact wording); no one seemed to be using it.  Another American couple behind us in the line, equally depressed, decided to ask one of the immigration officials standing around if "Skypriority" status on Delta Airlines qualified someone to go in the expedited line.  She said it did.  We had Skypriority status so we marched up to the immigration official in that line, waited about 5 minutes for people ahead of us, and zipped right through.  I still don't know how we obtained Skypriority status, and I'm even less clear about why British immigration officials would distinguish between incoming visitors on the basis of flight status granted by an American airline.  We did not ask questions, however.  So we did get to our flat early and got to lie down for a couple of hours.

That Skypriority status served us well on the return trip as well.  At 7:00 on a Friday morning, the Edinburgh airport was jammed.  The line to check in for our flight to Amsterdam was, again, long and snaking between those temporary barriers.  This time I went to whatever the higher-status check-in desk was and told the woman agent that we had Skypriority status and asked if we could check in with her.  She said, "if you want to."  We did, so we did, and again zipped right through.  Of course, all that did was give us more time to hang around the airport waiting for our flight, but I suppose that's better than standing in line and fretting about whether we'll get through in time to get to the gate for boarding.

Anyway, we got to London and checked in and took our lay down for a couple of hours.  Over the next several days we saw many of the usual tourist highlights in London (not all of which I will mention).

The one gray shadow over the trip was colds:  Kathy came down with one the second day we were in London and it lasted the entire trip; I picked it up half way through the trip.  They were not so debilitating that we couldn't do and see things, but they made us tire easily, so we did skip a few sites/events because one or both of us was just too tired.

We toured Sir John Soane's Museum, which anyone who goes to London should do; it's a fabulous small and wildly variegated collection.  We sat in the park across the street from the museum awaiting our tour time.  (Those amazingly fashionable sunglasses have the University's block "M" on the bows; they were a giveaway at the State Fair.  There were many left over, so Kathy brought me home a pair.)

One of the sites most worth visiting in London, in my opinion, is the Victoria & Albert Museum.  It is not an art museum; here's from the V&A website:

The V&A is the world's leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity. The Museum holds many of the UK's national collections and houses some of the greatest resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics, book arts, Asian art and design, theatre and performance.

It is a very large museum with an endlessly fascinating collection.  Like many of the great museums of the world, one could spend weeks there and not see the entire collection.  (2.3 million objects x viewing each for 30 seconds = 1.15 million minutes = ~192,000 hours ÷ 8 = 24,000 days, and so on.)  As a tiny demonstration of the diversity of its holdings, here's a picture of the Hereford Screen and one of its history (the photo is from the web but it's where the screen is sitting in the V&A; my picture of it turned out lousy):

(The website whence this picture insists I have to give credit, so:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8929877)  At the bottom of the picture above is a railing overlooking a foyer or lobby (this photo was taken from a position floating above that lobby).  So if, after looking at the Hereford Screen, you turn around 180 degrees, you see this (my photo, which did turn out):

Chihuly!

One shot from inside the museum:

That's Kathy in the black slacks and light top; we were in the ironworks section of the museum.  You can barely see the vast hallway behind Kathy; it goes for many arches.

            Item one from the Department of Vanishingly Small Chances:  While Kathy and I were admiring the ironwork, I noticed a guy who, from the back, looked familiar.  When he turned, he was indeed familiar, one of the University attorneys with whom I worked over a number of years on matters related to state and federal research policies and regulations.  A very nice guy with whom I enjoyed interacting.  But what are the odds of meeting anyone I knew in that setting?  In London, a huge city, in the V&A, a huge museum?  We could have been in the same room in the V&A and not encountered one another.

            You may be familiar with Littlewood's Law.  Cambridge University mathematics professor John Littlewood

defines a miracle as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million. He assumes that during the hours in which a human is awake and alert, a human will see or hear one "event" per second, which may be either exceptional or unexceptional. Additionally, Littlewood supposes that a human is alert for about eight hours per day.

As a result, a human will in 35 days have experienced under these suppositions about one million events. Accepting this definition of a miracle, one can expect to observe one miraculous event for every 35 days' time, on average – and therefore, according to this reasoning, seemingly miraculous events are actually commonplace.  (Wikipedia)

Seems to me a conservative assumption that humans are only alert for eight hours per day.  I'd like to think I'm alert for more than that!  If so, then miraculous events occur even more often than every 35 days.

I'm inclined to think that the chances of running into my colleague at the V&A (or anyone else that I know) are significantly less than one in a million, although I have not a clue how to calculate those odds.  (The factors involved must include the number of people I know in the Twin Cities, the number who are affluent enough to travel abroad, the number who will be in London at the same time I am, the number who will be at the V&A the same time I am, and the number who will be in the same room at the V&A at the same time I am such that we encounter each other). 

            Anyway, we had a nice chat for about 10 minutes.

            Probably the highlight of the entire trip, apart from being able to spend time with our Scottish friends, was the concert at the Royal Albert Hall.  The Royal Philharmonic performed Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto and his Ninth Symphony.  The performances were superb.  I continue to marvel at musicians, both performers and composers.  The pianist played the Emperor, all 45 minutes of it, from memory; that Beethoven could compose it still dazzles me.

            The Royal Albert Hall is named after (was constructed in memory of) Queen Victoria's husband, who died in 1861 when he and Victoria were both 42 (leaving her with nine children, one of whom was the great-grandfather of Elizabeth II).  Victoria was devastated by his death and mourned him to the day she died in 1901.  Americans (perhaps just Yankees) owe Albert a debt of gratitude:  he intervened in a dispute between the U.S. government and Great Britain about the capture of Confederate officials on a British mail carrier.  There was a danger that Great Britain would declare war on the U.S., and thus support the Confederacy; Albert's intervention basically calmed everyone down and avoided war.  He was a leader in the anti-slavery movement and did not want Great Britain to support the Confederacy; Victoria and her prime ministers respected his wishes.  Had Britain supported the South, it is quite likely the outcome would have been quite different.  (And some of us now muse that perhaps the U.S. would be better off without the South. . . .)

            Here, Kathy in our box with her back to the stage before the performance began:

And me, with the rear of the hall in view:

             Earlier the day of the concert we went to see the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace (which have only been open to the public since 1993).  Nothing really to show because photography isn't allowed, but here's the back side of the Palace on the day we were there:  gray and drizzly.  It's really not a very attractive building, and there's scaffolding over large parts of it because, after years of neglect, the Crown finally realized that water was leaking in, ceilings were falling down, and the general infrastructure of the building hadn't been maintained.  So, now a 10-year renovation project at a cost of $369 million.  During the audio tour we heard HRH Prince Charles talk about several aspects of the State Rooms.  His comments were OK, although a little condescending.  The guy's a doofus.

             From the Department of Doing Stupid Things.  Anyone who goes outside the U.S. knows that electrical systems are different.  The U.S. uses 120V (for residential electricity); the rest of the world uses 220V.  We have a bag full of converters and adaptors and try to remember to bring the right ones to the right country.  I wasn't paying close enough attention to what I was doing when I went to use my beard trimmer.  (I had to use it in the kitchen of the flat we were staying in because, we were told, the construction code of the U.K. does not permit outlets in bathrooms.  Talk about a different approach to code requirements. . . .)  So I fiddle with the little mirror on a stand and at the same time plug in what I absent-mindedly thought was a converter and then plugged in my beard trimmer.  It was an adapter, not a converter.

            When I turned on the trimmer, there was a sharp retort, almost like a gunshot, the little transformer that plugs in for the trimmer flew off the outlet and across the counter, split open from the current, and emitted an awful smell.  That black box is not supposed to be open.

            We are all accustomed to seeing television screens in bars and pubs and some restaurants that are showing sporting events.  We went to a pub on our first full day in London after we took our customary nap.  The pub had a TV screens with sporting events.  I was both surprised and amused that the screen we could see was showing the Temple-Tulsa football game.  There cannot have been one person in that pub who gave a rat's behind about the outcome of a second-tier U.S. college football game.  And perhaps no more than a dozen people in all of London who cared—if that many.  (Temple won, 31-17.)

            Lunch (1):  Gary's lunch in a pub, including several things I hadn't eaten before--and more food altogether than I could eat.

We visited, merely in passing, Southwark Cathedral.  The cathedral was rebuilt after a fire in 1212; the church that exists today is that building, although modified and renovated several times in the intervening centuries.  A photo that I could have taken (during the day) but didn't think of doing so until a couple of hours later, unfortunately:  the cathedral juxtaposed with the Shard, a 95-story skyscraper completed in 2012.  My guess is that the cathedral will be there long after the Shard is gone.

             Kathy didn't get to see one of London's landmarks.  Here's the present appearance of Big Ben.  It is undergoing renovation; the Palace of Westminster (aka the Houses of Parliament) is scheduled to be renovated starting in 2025, for $3.5 billion and lasting several years.

             Those of you who listen to classical music know of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, led for many years by Sir Neville Marriner.  St. Martin in the Fields is an Anglican church on Trafalgar Square in London (completed 1726), right next door to the National Gallery.  Unlike many churches and cathedrals in England (and Europe), St. Martin is striking in its simplicity.

 While we were at the church, I used the restroom.  One of the more amusing signs I've read in traveling, in the men's room:

I didn't know the origin of the phrase "spending a penny."  Of course I made a donation!

            Here's Kathy in front of the National Gallery (on your left as you look at the photo); in the rear, the church with the spire is St. Martin in the Fields.

The front of the National Gallery and part of Trafalgar Square.

One highlight of the National Gallery was Hans Holbein's "The Ambassadors."  As she wrote on her Facebook post:  "Always wanted to see this in person. See the skull? Not really? Check the next pic."  It took me a little time to see it.

I know it's all in the history of the city of London, but at one point I amused myself by wondering why we can't have train stations with names like Elephant & Castle, Cockfosters, Peckham Rye, Pudding Mill Lane, Tooting Broadway, Bromley-by-Bow, Shepherd's Bush, Barking, and Chalfont & Latimer.  (Yes, those are all stops on the London Underground/the Tube).  It's true that there are many other more pedestrian station names, but even those are more interesting than ours (e.g., 54^th Street, Franklin Avenue).  As long as I'm on the subject of the Tube, here's a photo.  It has some of the longest escalators I have ever seen, with Kathy riding one of them.  (This wasn't the longest one, just one I happened to get a picture of.)  Some of the train lines on the Underground are *really* underground, way deep.

One of the Underground stations (Westminster) looked like a 1940s sci-fi vision of cities of the future (the first two I cribbed from the web; the third is Kathy's photo).

            Lunch 2:  One day we stopped at the Sherlock Holmes pub (which, despite its name, didn't appear to be as much of a tourist stop as one might expect).  Kathy had a good lunch:  "chicken and mushroom pie with gravy and mash."

             A random shot Kathy took of me while on the Jubilee Bridge, two walking bridges on either side of a railroad bridge, built in celebration of Elizabeth II's 50 years on the throne.

             The last day we were in London we went to the Churchill War Rooms (which everyone who saw the movie "Darkest Hour" is familiar with).  It's one of those cases where you had to be there to really get a sense of the spaces.  Here's Churchill's bedroom:

And just a couple more pictures.

The war rooms include a large Churchill museum, in which we spent well over an hour.  By that time, late in the afternoon, we were a little fatigued, so we sat down to relax in St. James's Park.

 Kale is popular in London salads.  I have decided, after having it several times here and cooking it at home once, that it is one of those foods that needs to be chopped into tiny pieces to eliminate its rubbery texture and then drenched in spices and/or liquids to disguise its flavor.  Other than that, I'm sure it's good and good for you.

A couple of notes on male attire in London about males dressed professionally, apparently for work.  (1) Quite a number wear brighter, livelier socks than men in the U.S.  Like orange and green and multi-colored stripes.  (2) A significantly higher number than in the U.S. (I think) wear cuff links.  I can't remember the last time I've seen anyone wearing cuff links in daily life.  It may be that in the case of cuff links, I didn't see many because I was in a university setting; my friends who work or worked in business settings can perhaps inform me if they are more widespread than I thought.

            After our week in London, we took the train to Oxford and stayed one night.  The ride was only about an hour, so we arrived mid-morning and met our guide for a scheduled walking tour right after lunch.

            Oxford University consists of 38 different colleges, the oldest of which date from the 12^th century.  The colleges are independent; here's how the University describes itself:

There are 38 Oxford colleges, which are financially independent and self-governing, but relate to the central University in a kind of federal system.

Almost every student at Oxford is a member of a college. Most colleges admit both graduate and undergraduate students.

Admissions

The undergraduate admissions process is co-ordinated by the University, but colleges are ultimately responsible for selecting and admitting their undergraduate students.

The University admits graduate students, but once they have been offered a place by the University, graduate students are also selected by a college.

Facilities and resources

Colleges provide accommodation, catering, social spaces, pastoral care and other facilities for their students.

The University provides centralised student services, including careers and counselling, as well as resources such as libraries, laboratories and museums.

Teaching

Colleges organise tutorial teaching for undergraduates. Tutorials are central to studying at Oxford, giving students an opportunity to discuss and explore their subject in small groups with an expert in the field.

The University supervises graduate students and examines graduate theses.

The University determines the content of degree courses, and organises lectures, seminars and lab work for both undergraduate and graduate students.

The University sets and marks examinations, and awards degrees to students.

So a college at Oxford isn't quite the same as a college at the University of Minnesota.  We walked around a few of the colleges in central Oxford; they're scattered all over the town.  Both Kathy and I decided we could have been perfectly happy spending our college years at/in Oxford.  A charming place.

  Item two from the Department of Vanishingly Small Chances.  Our tour guide, Brigitte, was Austrian by birth (but at Oxford for 40 years, including two degrees from it).  There were 10 people in the walking tour, so a total of 11 people.  Brigitte began by asking us all where we were from.  When she got to us, I said Minnesota in the United States.  She exclaimed in response that her son-in-law just finished his law degree at the University of Minnesota.  I was startled, to say the least.  One of the people in the tour group, an American from Nevada, then turned to me and told me that her daughter was in her fourth year of medical school at the University of Minnesota.  Startled became astonished.  I don't know how to calculate those odds, but "vanishingly small" seems like an exaggeration:  out of nine people (excluding Kathy and me, of course), on a tour in Oxford, England, two of them had direct family connections with the University of Minnesota.

As Kathy put it on her Facebook post, "a little walk to our little hotel."  The sign is for our hotel, which dates from the 17^th century.

Divinity School:  originally for oral examinations, now the robing room.

Robing room, this part used for an infirmary scene in one of the Harry Potter movies:

Door into the Divinity School:

             Here's a wide-angle view of Christ Church College and Cathedral:

The quad at Christ Church:

And here's the dining hall, which was the model for the Hogwarts dining hall in the Harry Potter movies.  Yes, the students and dons have dinner in this room; at the far end is the high table, where the dons sit.

Other scenes from Oxford.  Hertford College and the "bridge of sighs" (which it isn't) linking two of the college buildings.

 

 After our overnight in Oxford, we took the train to Oxenholme, where our friends Rod & Morag picked us up.  They brought us to the cottage they'd rented in Ambleside.  Here it is:

            Yep, it's only as wide as it appears:  from the white door on the left to the window on the right over to the white drain pipe.  Perhaps 10 feet wide.  It dates from the Napoleonic wars, built about 1804, and was originally for local workers of some sort.  (The third story, which was our bedroom, was added later.)

The road from town to our cottage:

An afternoon walk in the woods near our cottage after we arrived:

 And here are Kathy and Rod on the street in Ambleside:

             One element of the scenery in the Lake District struck me immediately and repeatedly:  the slate.  Everything is built of slate.  (Well, almost everything.)  Our cottage wall is partly slate. Look at the buildings in the photo above; the buildings on the right are slate.  Here's a photo of a short wall (or maybe it's a fence):

These little walls, some higher, some lower, run for (I think in total) hundreds of miles along the roads and through the fields.  I can barely imagine the number of manhours (and I'm sure 99% of it was man) that went into building and maintaining them.  They are still maintained in most places, as far as I could tell.  So are the buildings.  In the picture of our cottage, you can see slate mixed in with the stones.

            Wordsworth, Potter, and Ruskin, P.A.  OK, there wasn't really a Professional Association, but the three names conjoined sure sound like a law firm.  We arrived in the Lake District of England (the far northwest of the country) after a week in London.  The three full days we were there were spent in part visiting—in this order—the homes of William Wordsworth (1770-1850, the great Romantic English poet), Beatrix Potter (1866-1943, Peter Rabbit and many other books), and John Ruskin (1819-1900, art critic, social reformer, and many other things, considered by many to be the greatest mind of Victorian England).  They all lived within a few miles of each other, although not at the same time.  I knew of all three—but not very much.

            One question that occurred to me was whether the three of them knew or had met, with Ruskin being the link between Wordsworth and Potter.  It turns out that they had, in a way.  According to the website spartacus-educational.com, "Ruskin spent most of his time reading books and writing and in 1839 won the Newdigate Poetry Competition. Ruskin had the pleasure of meeting one of his heroes, William Wordsworth, when presented with the prize."  And Wikipedia tells me that "In 1884, the 17-year-old Beatrix Potter spotted Ruskin at the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition. She wrote in her journal, 'Mr Ruskin was one of the most ridiculous figures I have seen. A very old hat, much necktie and aged coat buttoned up on his neck, humpbacked, not particularly clean looking. He had on high boots, and one of his trousers was tucked up on the top of one. He became aware of this half way round the room, and stood on one leg to put it right, but in doing so hitched up the other trouser worse than the first one had been.'"

            Here are the three primary residences:

(1) Rydal House (Wordsworth), from the gardens; this was the house he bought after living in the smaller Dove Cottage for eight years, where he wrote some of his best poetry:

The view from the gardens at Rydal House:

            In the Department of Some Things Never Change, here is a little plaque in Dorothy Wordsworth's garden at Dove Cottage (on, of course, a piece of slate):

("The peas are beaten down.  The scarlet beans want sticking.  The garden is overrun with weeds.  D. W. 1802")

What the U.K. is doing with many of those red telephone boxes (and more slate):

(2) Hill Top (Potter), with me walking toward it:

Potter had a residence in London as well; in this house, she refused to have electricity or running water (and she lived here into the 1940s, when both were available).  One docent told me she hated electricity and was afraid it would burn the house down.  Potter's approach to her work foreshadowed the work of many artists:  she was a careful guardian of her brand and was involved in every major decision about commercializing the Peter Rabbit books.  She made a great deal of money and invested some of it in farms.  When she died, she donated her estate to the nation—it was the largest land donation the National Trust had ever received, something like 4000 acres.  The trustees decided to put in electricity (and maybe running water—not sure about that)—but they only allow lighting to the extent the rooms would have been lit by candles or gas lamps.  So, for instance, the dining room:

A road sign near Potter's house:

(3) Brantwood (Ruskin) (note the slate wall):

Kathy and Morag walking up toward Brantwood.  The row of windows above and to the left of Kathy's head is the dining room (next photo).

I would love to have friends for dinner in this dining room in this setting!

And I could spend much time in Ruskin's study:

The view from the dock at Brantwood, with the clouds kissing the hilltops.  We took a Victorian-era steamer from town to the house; here's the view across Coniston Waters as we were awaiting the return of the boat to pick us up (with the ubiquitous slate wall):

A great picture of our friends Rod & Morag, on the boat:

             On the way back from Brantwood, we stopped at a Victorian structure that now serves as an overlook to Coniston Waters.

             One of the odder places we have visited while traveling was a bobbin factory (you know, spools for thread).  It operated for about 150 years, only put out of business by the spread of plastic bobbins.  The factory made all kinds of other wooden items as well, but the diversification wasn't enough.  The factory was saved, however, and turned into a museum—and it still produces bobbins (and maybe other items, I don't recall).  Our tour guide was among the more enthusiastic we've run into; she *really* liked her bobbin factory history.  We also had a live demonstration of how a bobbin was made.  I was prepared to find this utterly boring—but it wasn't at all.  (I can remember sitting on the living room floor of my current home as a child, visiting my great aunt and uncle, and building things with wooden spools, of which my aunt had a great many.)

Surely among the most picturesque settings for a mini-golf course (we didn't play).

            After pleasant touring and walking days in Ambleside, Rod & Morag brought us to their home in Musselburgh, Scotland (now a suburb of Edinburgh).  We had busy days there as well.

            One night we went out to dinner with a guy I had worked with at Edinburgh University when I was there on leave in 2006.  We have stayed in touch over the years; he and his wife joined Kathy and me at the Tower restaurant, atop the Scottish National Museum (and right next door to the building I worked in while at the University).  Here was our view from part of our dinner table (Edinburgh Castle):

             We went to Stirling Castle, a classic medieval castle that's fully intact (and one that saw a lot of battle between the English and the Scots over a period of about 500 years).  A picture from the web:

The Great Hall, in white (actually a tan/yellow wash) has been restored to its original finish.

A view from one of the interior gardens (the Great Hall is peeking above the wall):

The gardens and countryside:

The view of the Scottish countryside from the Stirling Castle ramparts:

            On our last day in Scotland, we drove to the new V&A museum in Dundee.  It's brand new; had only been open a little over two weeks when we were there. 

We were surprised at how little gallery space there is in the building.  What we saw was fun, but there's not a lot to see.  The café, however, was excellent:  looking out over the River Tay from our lunch table:

             On our way back from Dundee, we stopped along the shore of the Firth of Forth (the large inlet of the North Sea upon which Edinburgh sits).  There are now three enormous bridges that cross the Firth, and the shoreline provided an opportunity to get all three in one photo.  Farthest away, the orange, is a railroad bridge finished in 1890 after eight years of construction; it's a UNESCO World Heritage site (but also continues to be a working railroad bridge).  With work on it in recent years, it is expected to last for at least another 100 years.  In the middle, barely visible, is the Forth Road Bridge, which carried vehicular traffic from 1964 until a year ago or so.  Closest in the photo is Queensferry Crossing, the new suspension bridge opened in 2017 (that cost about $1.6 billion).

(Firth Road Bridge, from the web:)

(Queensferry Crossing, from the web:)

             The Queensferry Crossing was built because it was determined that the Firth Road Bridge was unsafe for the volume of traffic on it.  We were told that in evaluating the cables holding up the roadway on the Firth Road Bridge, engineers could hear "pings" as the small cables within the larger ones were snapping; there were also small cracks appearing in some of the steel trusses.  When we lived in Scotland, we drove across the Firth Road Bridge a number of times; now we drove across the new one.  It's a pretty spectacular feat of engineering.  (The Firth Road Bridge is undergoing repairs but will apparently be limited to buses and bikes and pedestrians.)

              If you were driving along the road one day, and saw indications of road construction ahead, what would you think you were coming upon if the caution sign "adverse camber"?  As Rod was driving, that was the sign, twice.  Kathy and I wondered aloud what it meant; we figured that if one of us had been driving, we'd just keep going (along with the rest of the traffic, unperturbed) and see what came.  It's the opposite of a banked curve:  the inside of the curve is higher than the road's edge, in this case during road work and construction of a temporary lane.  (I learned after getting home, by Googling the phrase, that there are also visual representations of it on some signs, which we might then have figured out.  But when we saw them, the signs had only the two words.)  Maybe we're just inexperienced drivers!

            One form of plant life that I don't think I'd ever seen before (which came as a surprise to Kathy, Morag, and Rod) is holly with the berries.  This isn't a great picture, but that's because the holly leaves are so highly reflective that it's difficult to get a clear photo.  Holly is all over the place in northern England and Scotland.  If we saw it when we lived there in 2006, my memory of it has long ago faded.

           

             We got up the next morning, flew to Amsterdam, sat there for three hours, and flew home to Minneapolis.  Of course, the first time that both of felt like we were back to normal health was when we were sitting in Amsterdam waiting for our flight home.

            My best to you all.

Gary