So we arrived Wednesday morning to a drizzle and at an airport that requires you to walk across the tarmac. It seemed so very … English. My cousin Angela met us at the airport and escorted us on a whirlwind tour of unclassified roads between the Bristol airport and her home. I feared several times we’d end up in the hedgerow lining the road, but I should have had more faith in Rudi’s driving abilities.

From Bristol, we headed to Bath, where we wandered the city, doing some window shopping before we checked into our guest house for the night where I promptly fell asleep for three hours. Oops. We ate dinner at a cute French bistro, which had delicious, but semi-pricey food. It was the first night — and we just couldn’t contemplate thinking more in depth about dinner. We then went to a local pub and sat in the beer garden under the stars for an hour or so before wandering home to sleep.

The next day we shopped at Marks and Spencer for a little bit and then lunched at Sally Lunn’s (I had the Jane Austen cream tea — tea plus a Sally Lunn bun with raspberry jam and clotted cream. Yum!)

Then off to Wales! We arrived in Abergavenny at 4:30 to find the city center bustling with people shopping. We thought it charming until 5:30 when everything closed. Everything. We did manage to find a chip shop open and ate cod and chips in the car before driving through Brecon Beacons National Park to Brecon where we immediately fell asleep after checking into a hotel attached to the ruins of the city’s old castle.

This morning we got a bit of a late start (self-tanning takes a bit of time, I was surprised to realize), but left Brecon before 11 after hitting a couple of town bakeries. (Back in the room we have Welsh cakes and custard tarts awaiting us.) We arrived in Hay-on-Wye (“Town of Books”) just before noon and spent two blissful hours wandering from one shop to another. Just as we’d given up on finding an affordable lunch spot (I had to give up on having Welsh rarebit in Wales), we turned down a sunlit alley to find a tiny sandwich spot. Two sandwiches, two mugs of tea, and a dessert bar (I think it might have been called tilley?) cost me under £7. Quite reasonable!

This evening finds us in Oxford. Unfortunately, we have discovered that major English towns are not like major American towns — things close between 5:30 and 7 just like they do in small towns. This all seems very civilized in theory, but is remarkably frustrating in practice when you’re looking for something to do and someplace to check your email.

Tomorrow we turn southwards for some family time — Caroline’s wedding tomorrow afternoon and then on Sunday and Monday some time in the town my grandmother grew up. I’m hoping she’ll show me some of the places where her stories take place. The old flour mill where her father worked, the private school she got into on a scholarship, the church where she and my American G.I. grandfather wed over the objections of most of her family…

As predicted, I am not getting enough rest, but thanks to Marks and Spencer, I do have more of a tan than I did when I began the trip. And I’m having a fantastic time. I’m so glad I came.

More updates when I have time and internet access…

Oxford is home to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Lewis Carroll. At one point or another I have had trouble finishing their works, but I eventually did and am so glad I did.

1. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith (I read about half of it before putting it down at the start of a semester in grad school. I still haven’t gotten back to it yet.)
2. Ulysses, by James Joyce (I only made it through a few pages of it before I had to return it to the library.)
3. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (I got further into this one than Ulysses, but not much further. But at least I own my copy of this one.)
4. How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby (I hated it from the beginning. Really couldn’t get into it.)
5. How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn (I read a surprising amount of this before reaching one of those moments in the text where the main character, whom you’ve come to love, is about to screw up his life. I couldn’t prevent him, so I just stopped reading. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.)

We’re visiting Hay-on-Wye today, so I thought I’d share some favorite authors.

1. Jane Austen
2. J.R.R. Tolkein
3. J.K. Rowling
4. Jasper Fforde
5. James Herriot

My best friend Karen’s birthday is today.

I’ve written about Karen in many other posts, but I want to extol her virtues again today. (Because, after all, what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t gush about your friends periodically?)

We met my junior year in high school when we shared an AP history class with Mr. Doyle. We had friends (or at least friends of friends) in common. I don’t actually remember when we transitioned from knowing each other to being friends, but it happened sometime that year before we started studying for the AP exam together (it may have been the study sessions that cemented the friendship, though).

Karen was my lifeline through the second half of high school. Things felt very tumultuous in my life and she was always there to provide moral support, a wry comment, or a friendly voice late at night.

Somehow she seemed to know that I just needed to know she was there. One night we played word association games over the phone, getting stranger and stranger as the night went on.

Always up for a challenge, together we have tried on scary gold lamé dresses at Filene’s, played piano at Steinway in Boston, and driven, lost and off-roading, through the hills of the Housatonic Valley. We’ve seen Erin McKeown play in a New Haven living room, Mary Chapin Carpenter play in Madison Square Garden, and Sting play at the Meadows.

When I’m feeling sad or depressed or down, there’s no one else who will do. Rudi’s even learned to ask if I’ve spoken to Karen recently when he can’t figure out how to cheer me up. He knows that no matter how blue I am when I begin a phone call with her, I’ll be in much better spirits later on.

In addition to playing the piano beautifully, Karen also is remarkably clever and creative. In college, her letters were the envy of all my friends because they were so colorful and full of stickers and quotes and facts. One letter, in particular, she wrote in a variety of codes that I had to solve before I could find out what her latest news was. Unfortunately, that was a day I stopped by the post office before my environmental studies class, so I’m not sure I learned a whole lot from Professor Niering that day. She now employs her ingenuity for a company that creates and sells word puzzle books.

We have one of those friendships that transcend time and place. We can go weeks without talking and pick up as if it had been yesterday. Our visits last late into the night. But I never am ready for visits to end and I wish now that we could still talk every day like we did back in high school. Some people never find a person who understands them and who feels comfortable telling them when they’re being unpleasant (finding people who think those things but don’t care enough to tell you is much more common). And I’ve had that person in my life for a full half of it now. How tremendously blessed and lucky I am…

I’m not home to call her and wish her a merry day and happy wishes and a fortuitous future. So I will ask anyone reading to do so for me in the comments. (Kare, if no one leaves you a message, it will simply indiate that all my other readers are in England…)

So, Kare, have a happy, happy, happy birthday. May it bring you blue skies, cheerful animals (at appropriate hours), and great joy over the year to come.

1. Posey, Della, and Jeremiah (Because they’re lovey and cuddly and wonderful.)
2. Sleeping in (Our trip has us headed all over the place, so I can’t imagine we’ll be getting a whole lot of rest.)
3. The National Book Festival (Last year was a ton of fun — I got to meet Mr. McFeeley from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and Maria from Sesame Street!)
4. The first game of the final Mets-Nationals series (to which we had tickets)
5. The beginning of the season and series tv premieres (I like to see what’s worth watching and what’s not.)

We should be heading out in the next half hour or so, so it’s time to put the computer to bed for the duration of our vacation. We’ll log in from internet cafés in the U.K., so stay tuned for some updates. Also, I’ve already set up posts to appear on a daily basis for the next week. So make sure you check back to see what’s up.

Talk to you all later!