Embracing the voyage across the sea, I brought my copy of Anthony Burgess’s Nothing Like the Sun, a novel about young Will Shakespeare, a glove maker’s son, bored with his party buddies in Stratford and moving on to much more exciting things. I was glad I’d read it before, because my vacation was too much […]

When I’m in a different country, it’s the little details I notice.  When we first arrived in England, we did three very ordinary things — we used the bathroom at the airport, got cash out of an ATM and exited the parking garage. 
One thing that I would find was pretty common about using public toilets in England […]

When people ask me what I saw when I went to England, I say, “Oh, the usual – Stonehenge, Buckingham Palace, the Sistine Chapel.”  When D’s aunt told us not to make any plans for Wednesday, that she had a special surprise for us, none of us could have guessed we’d be taking a day trip […]