Haunted by Transatlantica

Back in the fall of 1985, when I had only been in the United States a few weeks, I read a copy of Vanity Fair magazine that I'd found in the office I shared with several other grad students. One paragraph in the editorial in that particular magazine, written by Tina Brown, resonated enough with me even then that I photocopied it and kept it. I misplaced the photocopy at one point in one of my moves but I found it again today. Here are the words I wanted to keep:

In fact, once you've lived on both sides of the Atlantic, it's impossible to be content with either. One becomes haunted with the perfect place called Transatlantica, which is somewhere in between. Its population shares England's civility and America's energy, England's irony and America's optimism, England's coziness and America's breadth, England's sense of the past and America's belief in the future. Whichever side you settle, your sensibilities are forevermore on the frequent flier's program.

The holiday that nearly wasn't

Our vacation to the UK was almost over before it began. On the flight over, British Airways had assigned me a seat in a different row to DH and the children. We agreed that this was not a bad thing as I really needed to sleep because I would be the one driving when we got to the UK and would need to have my wits about me as it was so long since I 'd driven there.

Sadly, I got no sleep. The children were right behind me and VERY excited to be on a plane. The last time we flew to the UK it was via Reykjavik on IcelandAir and DS howled because he did not have the seatback TV his sister had promised him. This time they had the seatback TVs and what seemed like a gazillion choices of things to watch - not all of them appropriate for kids, but with no way to switch off the inappropriate stuff. I had told them there would be "a" kids' movie, but they had so much choice they decided to try to watch everything! So no sleeping children, lots of commenting on the movies, telling mommy to look out of the window, and a fair amount of kicking mommy's seat. Oh, and during the brief moment that DH actually got to nap, the flight attendant came by and gave my daughter coffee! Add to that, the fact that I was sitting next to two very nice, very chatty, Scottish girls who were determined to drink the plane dry (and stock up with wine bottles for their flight to Glasgow on which they knew the drinks would not be free) and I was knackered by the time we got to Heathrow.

The kids and I, with our British passports, breezed through UK immigration, but DH got stuck in a enormously long queue as several flights appeared to have arrived at the same time. He was not amused when, after half an hour, he finally got to the front of the queue to find out that he could have walked through with us! (He still has suspicions that if he had tried that, they would have sent him back to the foreigners' queue anyway!)

As we exited into the airport, we believed the signs that told us to head to the far end of Terminal 5 for car rental buses. Once we were outside the building we found we had to walk all the way back to the end of the building where we'd started. Grr.

We took the shuttle bus over to Avis car rental and it was here that things really started to go pear-shaped. I went in to deal with the paperwork, while DH stayed outside with the children. Over-tired children. Weasel children. Apparently deaf children because they listened to not a word their father said.

The staff inside the Avis office and their computer system were amazingly inefficient. It ended up taking over 45 minutes for me to get the paperwork sorted for a car that I had already booked and paid for. Admittedly, not all of the delay was their fault - the bloke in front of me spent twenty minutes going around and around with them over the fact that he wanted to pay cash for his rental and just couldn't fathom why they refused to let him leave with a car without giving them a credit card number. I don't know what planet he came from, but clearly no car rental company is going to let you leave without giving them a valid credit card number.

Fortunately, I had my receipt from British Airways because Avis claimed to have no record of the booking in their computer, and the staff member behind the desk commented that this 'always' happened with BA rentals! No record of the booking meant no record of my credit card, which meant they wanted the number again. I explained I had already paid, and although I understood that they needed to have the number on file, I did not expect them to charge my card. "Of course not", she said, and promptly asked if I would give her my card again as it "hadn't gone through" the first time!

When I've rented cars at Heathrow in the past (with another company, that my sister used to work for), they would get done with the paperwork and then tell me to go out and pick any car from a particular row. I don't think this was special treatment for a 'staff' rental. I suddenly realized when the Avis staff member disappeared for 5 minutes to go and look at the cars in the car park that this was not going to happen at Avis - she was about to assign me a specific car, so when she returned and asked if a BMW 1 series would be OK, I asked, "Is that going to have a boot big enough for all our luggage?" and "Can I have a diesel please?" (Diesel=better mpg) "I'll be right back" she said, and then disappeared off into the car park again. Why on earth did her computer system not have that information available? She returned and asked if a BMW 3 series would be OK. Suspicious that she was trying to upgrade me to a more expensive car, I said fine so long as it has a similar boot size to the Vectra, (which was the class of car I had booked), and isn't going to cost me any more money. I had no idea what a BMW 1 or BMW 3 series was, but 3 sounded more expensive than 1!

By the time I finally got the bay number for the car DH, had had it up to here with the children and demanded that the first place I drive should be Terminal 5 so he could figure out how to get a flight home again. We headed out and found the car she'd assigned us, children still being little weasels all the way. The bags fit in the boot. The kids' booster seats fit, sort of, on the back seat. I found where to put the key in, and decided to spend a minute familiarizing myself with the controls. I found the 'Start' button. Oh, no, a car designed by Microsoft - I bet the 'Start' button stops it too. (OK, it did say "Start/Stop".) But the Start button didn't seem to start the engine. With the children getting even more irritating (if that's at all possible) DH was still grumping about wanting to head for Terminal 5. I finally had to ask one of the Avis staff how to start the car. (Depress the clutch while pushing the Start button.) Fortunately, unlike Nappy Valley Mum and her husband, I had kept my ID in the car with me (American habit!) rather than in the boot , so we got out of the Avis car park OK. Well, we bunny-hopped out onto the main road - it was 4+ years since I'd had to change gear after all! Seeing as I was driving, I made the executive decision not to head for Terminal 5, but to go straight to my brother's house instead. (Actually, if only I could have persuaded DH to take the children with him, I might have dropped all 3 of them off at Terminal 5 by then!)

I breathed a sigh of relief once we got onto the empty-at-8-o'clock-on-a-Sunday-morning M25. Now the vacation would begin. Except I made the mistake once we got my brother's house of checking my email and found that Avis had charged my credit card $900 ($300 more than the cost of our rental!), not once but twice :-( Avis' slogan may be "We try harder" but in my experience all that means is "We try harder to piss you off!"

Bugs and meds

I didn't miss the US on our recent trip to the UK, except when we needed an open pharmacy at 8 on a Sunday evening when my son had a strong allergic reaction to the local biting insects and began to look very puffy. My mother was sure the 24 hour Tescos would be open, but '24 hours' means 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. on Sundays. Should you ever be in a similar situation, do not bother trying to find out which is the 'duty chemist' in town. They won't be open either, as their hours are likely to be something like 11 a.m. till 1 p.m. According to Late Night Chemist, Boots claims that they now have a 24 hour pharmacy within a thirty mile drive of most of the UK population, but we had a hospital much closer than that which was a better bet. We were lucky enough that we knew all we needed for DS was over-the-counter antihistamines. The hospital has a truly 24 hour pharmacy which sells OTC meds, and we got in and out fast enough that we weren't even charged the 2 pound parking fee and didn't have to deal with anyone asking us for either NHS cards or (worse) credit cards!

Make sure you know the generic name for any OTC meds you may need when travelling. We wanted Claritin - and found Clarityn was the same thing - loratadine. I would be wary however that similar brand names might not always mean similar products, and sometimes the names are so different that telling the pharmacist what you want will not immediately get you what you need.

Of course, we should have had some loratadine with us. I had my asthma inhaler and never needed it, though had I forgotten it I would have certainly needed it! I was glad I'd remembered the imodium when I was not well on our return flight - especially as we ended up sitting in the plane on the ground at Heathrow for 2 hours after our scheduled departure time! Although I've had a flight attendant offer me meds for an upset stomach in the past, I learned from that experience that the imodium pills are so tiny it's always worth having some with you when you travel. Loratadine now gets added to my packing list, but who knew that bug repellent with DEET would have been a good idea for a trip to the UK? Aiee - not that it would have done anything to ward off the wasps that were everywhere this year . . .

Time warp?

We left the USA on July 31st for a 2 week vacation in the UK. We returned yesterday to find that it is apparently almost Halloween already as the supermarket had a whole aisle dedicated to Halloween candy and decorations and there was an aisle of pumpkin ales at the liquor store. Apparently we missed the whole 'back-to-school' season!

He's making a list and checking it twice

We are going on vacation later this summer and DH, being the organized one in the family, is already planning. He's been making a list of things we need to make sure not to forget. I find it interesting that the very first list he wanted me to sit down and go over with him was the following:

• cell phone
• car charger for cell phone
• iPod
• car charger for iPod
• USB charger for iPod
• Battery-operated USB charger
  
• Adaptor to charge iPod from wall outlet
• cameras (x3)
  
• wall charger for one camera
• car charger for other cameras

Sense a theme here? So I was very surprised, given DH's obvious love of gadgets to hear him say a Luddite "No thanks!" to the offer of the loan of a satnav/GPS. His comment, "I hear people have driven into canals relying on those things! I can read a map just fine." OK, but you should see the size of the pile of maps we're planning on taking!

Planning a trip to the UK

It's been too long since we were last in the UK and it's time to start thinking about another trip there. We used to go a lot more often, but now that we have four plane tickets to buy, it's got significantly more expensive. Still, by planning ahead, there are some ways we can save money.

Direct flights from the east coast of the US are more expensive than a flight with one or more change of planes. For example, we flew IcelandAir via Reykjavik the last time we flew to the UK. You have to weigh the hidden costs of a 'cheaper' flight though. When you're travelling with kids or have a limited amount of vacation time, it's not just a question of money. Is it worth it to spend significantly longer en route? Spending several hours in the middle of the night in an airport that was basically shut down for the night was not particularly entertaining. Nor was it fun to have a three year old screaming for the first several hundred miles because his sister had promised him his own seat-back TV that never materialized because we were on a 'short-haul' flight with TVs that dropped down from the ceiling of the plane. Next time we're paying the extra and flying direct!

In the past, we've had the good fortune to have a family member working for a car rental company in the UK, so we've been able to hire a car at a staff discount. Not so now, but I discovered that if you book a car at the same time as you book your flight with British Airways it is significantly cheaper than booking it separately. I think a manual Vectra for 15 days, including unlimited mileage and all the optional insurance works out at under $300. If you sign up for the BA frequent flyer program you can add a second driver at no charge, which is another savings. (Not that DH ever drives in the UK, but it would be nice to know that he was insured to do so if he had to for some reason.)

Given that we're visiting family when we go to the UK, we are able to save money by staying with them for at least part of the time. On our last few trips, we've made a point of spending a few nights in hotels to visit parts of the country where we don't happen to have any relatives. The first time we did it was for the sheer delight of spending only $9 a night TOTAL for a family of four! The Travelodge chain was having a "Fiver Frenzy" sale - rooms available for five pounds a night! I admit it was close to ten years ago and we've never hit a sale quite that good again, but their regular rates are excellent if you book ahead. The rooms are basic. There are no toiletries provided. (Towels are though.) Breakfast is not included, but there's instant coffee and tea bags in the room along with a kettle, and your room key gets you a discount at the restaurant next door for breakfast. WiFi is available for a fee. Given that we're not there to do anything other than sleep in the hotel room, it suits our purpose fine. If Travelodge is not your style, try checking out vouchercodes.co.uk's voucher codes for hotels.com.

We like to visit pubs when we're in the UK. There are so many though, and it's really easy to pick a bad one, so we rely on the latest edition of the Good Pub Guide. I have too many American friends who have never heard of it and ended up having a bad pub experience and thinking that all pubs in the UK serve naff food. If you're only there for a few days on vacation you don't want to waste your money on a bad meal! Nowadays, we look not just for pubs that have good beer and good food, but also that are child-friendly.

On our last trip we used the Good Pub Guide to find The Mole and Chicken in Buckinghamshire. There was a similarly highly recommended pub not very far away, but the Guide warned us that it was NOT child-friendly. At The Mole and Chicken we had an outstanding evening, and the children had as good a meal as we did. This time we may not even have to buy the Guide if we plan well as it is now online! In fact, the last time I checked, the 2010 guide is not available in the US yet, so we'll be doing our planning using the website! I may buy DH the book for his birthday though as he does like just browsing through it, and it could come in handy if our carefully made plans fall apart once we're in the UK!

If you're going to visit historic sites, don't forget to work out whether it's worth buying a pass rather than single tickets. There's the London Pass for 55 sites in London, CADW has passes for Welsh sites and the British Heritage Pass covers over 500 sites, some of them National Trust sites. The National Trust has both short-term passes and an annual membership that covers over 300 historic sites. Depending on which sites you want to visit, the National Trust annual membership may actually be a better deal than the British Heritage Pass for a limited number of days! An even better deal for Americans is to plan ahead and join the Royal Oak Foundation which is for American members of the National Trust. A family membership is just US$90, as opposed to the 82 pounds it would cost for National Trust membership - and it's 100% deductible as a charitable donation on your US tax return! Oh - and if you have a membership to a local science museum in the US it is often valid at other museums including a few in the UK.

You can also check sites like VoucherCodes.co.uk to find their latest money saving voucher codes and offers, including Hotels.com Discount Codes and Expedia Voucher Codes. While the site is not necessarily geared towards international tourists visiting the UK, there might be some useful offers there. I've seen printable coupons for meal deals at a Covent Garden restaurant for example. If we were going to such a touristy location where the prices are inevitably going to be high, I'd definitely rather have a coupon in hand! I'll be looking to see if they have coupons for some of the chain restaurants we might stop at with the kids as they seem to have a lot of BOGOF deals, which would certainly make it more affordable. (I do hate the acronym BOGOF - looks too much like 'bog off!')

There are lots of things that seem to be more expensive in the UK than in the US, but I suppose I could 'save' some money by stocking up on a few of the things that aren't, like Indian spices. I remember returning to the US in the past with a large quantity of Patak's curry sauce jars in my suitcase! If I didn't already have more than enough knitting needles, I could stock up on the highly desirable Addi needles as they are generally 1/2 to 2/3 the price in the UK that they are in the USA. Tea bags. Custard creams. What else?

Does anyone else have any suggestions for how to save money on a trip to the UK?

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Birthday parties

mom/Mum and Nappy Valley Mum both blogged about kids' birthday parties recently. I blogged about food at birthday parties, but they had both actually given birthday parties for their kids. You see, we haven't actually done a party in a couple of years now because we hit upon the idea of asking the kids if they'd like a party or a family trip instead. Both children, very wisely, have chosen the family trip. Nothing huge or expensive, you understand. Trips down to Maryland to visit their great-aunt and uncle, and the kids get to choose which activities we do when we're down there. Things like the Baltimore Aquarium or the Smithsonian Museum. My favorite memory is of watching them looking through the fence at the White House and DS turning around and saying quite scornfully "I could climb this fence really easily!"

I think in 2010 we may have to have parties for them and I'm thinking I need to start planning now - especially as to what will go in the goody bags! On the other hand, if we do a trip to the UK to visit family, I could avoid the whole goody bag issue that Mom/Mum talked about, by telling them that's their birthday 'party' this year.

Search terms

I do like looking through the list of of search terms used by people who found my blog. Searches for Smarties vs M&Ms seem to have finally stopped. Here are some of the recent ones:

• scared of wasps
  Aren't we all?
  
• black currants, how to eat?
  I could get really sarcastic with this one, something along the lines of 'put them in your mouth', but it's actually not an unreasonable question. How do you eat something that sour? By adding lots of sugar of course!
  
• wasp nest blackcurrant bush
  Not sure how this is any different to a wasp's nest anywhere else. Presumably you don't want it and want to get rid of it.
  
• are there any other plants that look like blackcurrants but may be poisen. please show picture.
  If you think you've just poisoned yourself, looking up the answer on a stranger's potentially unreliable blog is perhaps not the best idea. Did you notice that s/he said please to a computer!
  
• how to learn speaking english well with red lavel
  I have a feeling this person was probably looking for a specific textbook.
  
• i am 9 and liking for a mice
  I wonder who taught this cat to type?
  
• glaswegian accent scary
  It can be, can't it? (For the record, one of my grandmothers was from Glasgow and, despite many years of not living there, never lost her accent!) I wonder just what this person wanted to know about a scary Glaswegian accent though?
  
• how do i wash dishes at a tent campsite?
  A questions asked by someone who's only ever used a dishwashing machine perhaps? Depends a little on the campsite. In France the sites we visited often had sinks dedicated to washing dishes. Camping at state parks here in the US we boil water on the stove, pour it into a bowl and do the dishes in the bowl, remembering of course to have some clean water to wash the suds off in case they poison us ;-)
  
• how long can i drive in the usa on my englishy liecence?
  That depends on the state I believe, though I may be wrong.
  
• pronounce: oregano
  I hate questions like this - people are either trying to make me sound more British or more American than I want to be.
  
• britain has too many rules
  Hmm - the obvious retort if the searcher is not British is to say "Well, go home then!"
  
• american back to the us after london culture shock
  If an American has to leave London because of culture shock, all I can say is they'd better not leave the US again because the rest of the world will probably be even more shocking! Not that you can't get culture shock traveling in the USA!
  

Finally, the following two continue to turn up regularly:

• the reasons americans shouldn't travel
• why americans shouldn't travel
  No one from any country should travel if they're not prepared to tolerate at least a little culture shock, try some new experiences, and accept that one of the delights of traveling is to visit somewhere that is different from home!
  

Visitor from the UK - guest post

Since starting to blog, and choosing to blog much of the time about being an expat, I have met many other expats online. Michael Harling is an American living in the UK. If you haven't visited his blog, Postcards From Across the Pond, I highly recommend it. Although I haven't bought his book yet, I'm thinking it would probably be a good purchase for my husband before we go to the UK again. Actually, given how much I enjoy his writing, I should just buy it for myself. Michael is currently travelling around the world, from one blog to another and I invited him to stop off here.

Quiet day today. I think I had one too many mint juleps at Wendy and Rob's last night. But when you’re embarking upon a World Tour (even if it is the virtual world) you can’t let a little thing like a hangover slow you down, so my pounding head, dry throat, sandpaper eyeballs and I all got up at 5AM to catch the 8:27 flight out of Little Rock. When Almost American picked me up in Chicopee this afternoon, I was still feeling a little fragile so as soon as we got to her place she made me tea and toast; she even cut it into soldiers for me.

It's nice to be back here in Massachusetts, only one of two states whose name I can't spell without having to look it up (the other is Connecticut).

I used to live here, you know; when my first marriage ended, I moved into a flat in Pittsfield with my buddy and his girlfriend and her two-year old child. I had no other place to go and they were kind enough to take me in. Overnight I went from living in a four bedroom house with one and a half baths, dining room, office, full basement and redwood porch to sleeping on a sofa in a second floor walk-up. It was not the high point of my life.

That unhappy incident did not sully my feelings for Massachusetts, however. It's a lovely state, and I have many happy memories of climbing its mountains, visiting its quaint and touristy towns and peeping at its leaves. A drive along the Mass Pike at the peak of autumn is about the prettiest sight in the world (barring, of course, a drive up the The Northway, through the Adirondack State Park). Almost American is lucky—having left England, she is now living in a place just as beautiful.

It is amazing how much Britain and New England resemble each other, terrain-wise, at least. Where I live in Sussex, the weald and downs look much like—and are every bit as fetching as—the Hudson Valley and Berkshire Mountains. And further north, the Scottish highlands have more than a passing resemblance to the Adirondacks and the mountains of Maine. But seeing as how they used to be part of the same land mass (or so they tell me, it was a few years before I was born) perhaps it isn't so amazing after all.

Back then, of course, when we all lived together, we all spoke the same and things were a little less confusing; an elevator was an elevator, not a lift, and a car had a trunk and a hood, not a boot and a bonnet, and aluminium had not yet developed that extraneous syllable. It wasn't until we drifted apart that the Brits started needlessly searching for new ways to pronounce “oregano,” “lieutenant” and “schedule” when they already had perfectly acceptable pronunciations. At least that's how it looks from this side of the Atlantic. Or perhaps my thinking is still a bit muddled by mint julep fallout.

I think I'd better have another cup of tea and some toast soldiers, then I'll get back to you on that language thing.

Would you like to participate in the
2009 KINDNESS of STRANGERS TOUR?
Visit the Tour Page to sign up or to view the latest Tour updates.

Michael Harling is an American author living in the UK undertaking a virtual world tour via the kindness of strangers.

Well trained!

DD went to a classmate's birthday party this afternoon. They had rented a local ice rink. The group had the entire rink to themselves for about an hour and got to watch the Zamboni clean up the ice before they skated. Then when the Zamboni came back out, the girls retreated to a squash court where tables were set up for them to have snacks, cake and ice cream. While they were doing that the public skating session started, so once they were done with snacks they got to go back out on the ice for another hour. DD had a blast. The only other time she's been skating was when she was in pre-school. She was nervous at first this afternoon, but gradually gained in confidence, despite three quite hard falls resulting on one very bruised knee.

I discovered that skating is not like riding a bicycle. Even admitting the fact that I was never particularly good at skating even when I was a teenager, my performance today was pathetic. I could blame the rental skates I suppose. I still have the skates I had as a teenager, and they still fit, which thoroughly confused DD whose feet are still growing. However, even though DH kindly cleaned the rust off them, my blades were in dire need of sharpening and when I discovered that there was no one at the rink who could sharpen them for me I decided it would be safer to go with the rentals. I pottered around the rink a couple of times and that was enough. It was much more fun hanging out at the side of the rink gossiping with the other mommies and taking photos of the kids.

DD enjoyed herself so much that she decided that she wants to go skating again on a regular basis AND she'd like her next birthday party to be at the rink. The last few years she's had the option of taking a family trip to somewhere like Washington D.C. instead of a party and has always chosen the trip. So I asked her if she'd rather have the skating party than a family trip. (The party would probably be the cheaper option!) Her answer proved she is well-trained: "Hmm. Can we go to Canada?"

Tourism gets in the way

When I came to the United States, it was to do a Master's degree. I could have done that in the UK, though quite frankly at the time it would have been harder to find the funding to do it there. One of the main reasons I chose to do it here was because it gave me the chance to live in the United States for a while. Having spent a year living and studying in France, I realized that being a tourist and living somewhere were very different experiences. My family had never gone on package tours when we travelled to France. We went camping and shopped locally. We had more of an 'authentic' experience than many tourists. But it still wasn't the same as actually being immersed in the language and culture.

Rick Steves, an American travel writer, is the antithesis of ethnocentric and his mission is to encourage people to travel and learn that the way they live is not the only way to live. He writes guidebooks and has a travel show on TV encouraging people to travel independently, off the beaten path, and get to know the place they are visiting. (As a savvy business man, however, he does offer guided tours to Europe whilst touting how different they are from 'regular' tours!)

When asked in a recent interview , "What's the most important thing people can learn from traveling?" he responded:

A broader perspective. They can see themselves as part of a family of humankind. It's just quite an adjustment to find out that the people who sit on toilets on this planet are the odd ones. Most people squat. You're raised thinking this is the civilized way to go to the bathroom. But it's not. It's the Western way to go to the bathroom. But it's not more civilized than somebody who squats. A man in Afghanistan once told me that a third of this planet eats with spoons and forks, and a third of the planet eats with chopsticks, and a third eats with their fingers. And they're all just as civilized as one another.

In the same interview, he commented:

A lot of Americans comfort themselves thinking, "Well, everybody wants to be in America because we're the best." But you find that's not true in countries like Norway, Belgium or Bulgaria. I remember a long time ago, I was impressed that my friends in Bulgaria, who lived a bleak existence, wanted to stay there. They wanted their life to be better but they didn't want to abandon their country. That's a very powerful Eureka! moment when you're traveling: to realize that people don't have the American dream. They've got their own dream. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing.

And that's why I call myself 'Almost American' - because so many of the Americans I've met have never travelled and simply cannot understand why everyone wouldn't want to be American. (Yet, at the same time they are angry at the number of people who want so badly to be here that they enter the country illegally!) Rick Steves wants Americans to

get over themselves. He wants us to please shed our geographic ego. "Everybody should travel before they vote," he has written.

It's unrealistic of course, but wouldn't that be nice?

Camping (part one)

When I was growing up, we regularly went camping on our summer holidays. I'm sure my parents would have quite liked to stay in hotels, but with three children and long summer holidays because they were both teachers, camping was the affordable option. It allowed us to spend 5 weeks at a time in continental Europe. Most summers we spent the whole five weeks in France. One summer we started out in the Netherlands, traveled across Europe to northern Italy, and back to Belgium.

DH (an avid camper and Eagle Scout) had a hard time understanding at first when I tried to explain about the camping we did in Europe. He's the kind of guy who goes camping when there's several feet of snow on the ground and WITHOUT a tent just for the fun of it!

My descriptions of our camping trips seemed to leave him confused. A tent with a bedroom, a kitchen inside it and room for a table?

1 Bedroom 2 Kitchen Area 3 Bedroom 4 Bedroom 5 Living Area

Campsites with hot showers? Campsites where fresh bread was delivered every morning? Camping in vineyards or the grounds of a château? Evening meals that took several hours to prepare and just as long to eat?

We had a large frame tent, with an inner tent that was the bedroom area. The outer tent area had room for a stove, a table and stools, and storage for things that didn't fit in the inner tent. There were large windows with curtains, and the entire front of the tent could be opened up in the daytime. It was mostly very civilized, especially when we went camping with our friends.

Their dad was a professional chef. During the day as we were sight-seeing, we would check out the menus posted outside the restaurants and he would tell us which dishes he could prepare on the 4 gas burners and two grills ('broilers') we had between us. Then we'd go food shopping. After a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of fruit cake on our return to the campsite in the late afternoon, he would start work preparing dinner. He cooked most of the evening meals on condition that we were his commis-chefs doing any prep-work he asked us to and he NEVER did any dishes. I remember many an evening staggering off to the toilet block to do the dishes long after the lights on the campsite were out, relying on the moonlight to find our way there and back. Over the course of a five week trip we would eventually break several of the real wine glasses we had brought with us and (horror of horrors) resort to drinking wine out of plastic 'glasses'. (Looking at the few photos I have and realizing that sometimes we bought wine in plastic bottles, I don't think drinking such cheap plonk out of plastic could have been particularly detrimental!) Eventually we discovered Arcoroc tumblers at a French hypermarket. They are made of glass, but they seem to bounce most of the time when they hit the ground! I think eventually we graduated to a slightly better class of vin de table too.

It was not exactly 'camping sauvage', we weren't roughing it, but it wasn't the lap of luxury either. We didn't have a fridge, as the rental tents in France do nowadays. Back then, I don't remember a single site that we stayed at ever having a washing machine and dryer, although I do remember one where there was an iron you could use. There were usually several sets of sinks though - shallow sinks for washing dishes, very deep sinks with built-in washboards for washing clothes, and sinks for washing people. The last were usually indoors, the others outdoors. Depending on the location, there was sometimes a sink designated for gutting fish.

We often stayed at sites where hot water cost extra. In that case, we would heat water on the stove for doing dishes. There was one site in the Netherlands where there was no hot water at all, not even for showers. We stayed there for several days, and I vividly remember the searing headache I got when I finally gave in and washed my hair in the seemingly ice-cold water.

Thinking of 'bathrooms' as Americans call them, many campsites had the 'squat' ('Turkish') toilets. They should have been really easy to keep clean with a high-pressure hose. Unfortunately, we found that when there were lots of people at the site who were unused to them, they were often disgusting. They were usually at their cleanest when we were the only foreigners on the entire campsite.

Although our vacations were not entirely stress-free, certainly not for my parents who did so much of the work and particularly during our teenage years when we were being obnoxious, I have wonderful memories of them. I hope my kids will have good memories of camping with us, but camping with DH is a little different. Remember, he likes camping in the snow with no tent . . .

Driving from Sydney to Boston

"These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, or other events may cause road conditions to differ from the map results."

Similar directions are available for all the locations I tried in Australia - Alice Springs, Tasmania . . . Note that if you start your trip in Australia, the distances are measured in kilometers, but if you start in the USA they are measured in miles. I suspect, like the driving from New York to London directions that I blogged about some time ago, these too will disappear before long. At least this time they suggest that you should kayak across the ocean rather than swim!

Visited states

create your own personalized map of the USA

Over 20 years and this is all I've managed to visit? Pathetic really, especially as 'Florida' really means not much more than Orlando, and 'California' was San Francisco and Lassen National Park.

Still, I remember teaching a college student who told me that at the age of 19 she had never left her home state. She was about to spend a semester in Spain. I never did find out how she did, but I bet the culture shock was amazing!

Not been there! (Or there, or there, or there!)

When a colleague referred yesterday to the landmasses on either side of the Straights of Gibraltar as Russia and the United States, I was unable to bite my tongue and I blurted out, "No, that would be Africa and Europe." If looks could kill . . . I should have kept quiet. No one else in the room would have known, and I wouldn't have shown her up. I keep forgetting that most Americans haven't done the travelling that I have, and indeed many have never left their home state. Still, I am often surprised by their lack of geographical knowledge.

Watching travel shows with my family we would often chorus "Been there!" as they introduced each new place. However, when I put the map below together it was quite humbling to see what a tiny portion of the world I have actually visited. (I didn't include places like Japan or Iceland where I never actually left the airport, and there are a few countries between Greece and Italy that I know I drove through with my parents when I was a baby.) I've never even been to Scotland, although my mother was born there. (We set off to get there on one occasion, but got sidetracked by Hadrian's Wall. Apparently it does a good job of keeping the Sassenachs out!) I have been to very few of the US states, though I admit that there are some that I have no interest in visiting. Highlighting the whole of China is misleading as the portion of China I have actually visited is really very small - half a dozen cities. There are still whole continents I haven't made it to yet. Sadly with the cost of travel going up and up, it is going to be a long time before I get to add any more locations to my map, though there is the slim possiblity of adding Washington state and Alaska in the next year or two. I'd definitely like to add Australia, New Zealand and India to my map eventually. I'd like to go back to China and add Thailand and Vietnam to my list too, but it would have to be without DH as he has no interest in visiting Asia

I would guess many of my fellow expat bloggers have been to far more places than I have - I'd be interested to see your maps!

The other side

Today's post is from a guest blogger (actually, I'm just posting an email she sent me) - my mum, who recently spent a couple of days in London to visit the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O2 Dome and the Terracotta Army exhibit at the British Museum.

London trip really well organized ... it was almost worth the money just to NOT drive in London. Some pathetic members of the group complained that they had expected a champagne reception ... peasants!

Train journey good, fast, clean and on time - probably a first for the company! Excellent dinner and adequate room, with a fine view of the staff garage ... but it was quiet. Really good breakfast then off by coach to the Dome/O2. A ghastly insult to architects the world over ... but it worked. The (included) lunch in Pharaohs Palace was excellent, the talk first-rate, concise and well delivered (by a lady who had worked in the Valley of the Kings) Then we by-passed all the queuing public and were ushered straight up to the exhibition ... I have never before been in a tent with an escalator and an upper floor paved with marble.

We had plenty of time to see everything, and the ecoute device was an extra help when one could not get really close to the printed details, as they were just the same, but with added bits of information in one's ears. There was a lot of gold; some very fine sculpture and art work ... almost everyone commented on the beautifully decorated little woven cane chair for a princess.

Returning to the hotel in Docklands, was an experience ... Saturday traffic in London ... all the lanes stationary, and just as we began to move, the sound of Police sirens and ambulance neenaws gave us to believe that Milwall had lost at home. We got back in time to sit in the bar and watch the second half of the rugby, then another fine dinner.

Next morning, off to the British Museum ... had I been driving, it would have been termed a scenic route, we drove past several landmarks twice ... including the side entrance to the museum ...and indeed the main one. (It turned out that the coach and driver had been imported from Sheffield.) Our timed tickets gave us plenty of time to admire the new main courtyard, have coffee and then go into the reorganized reading room ... again the layout was first class. There was a lot of film and video, but plenty of real stuff ... much of which we had seen in China, but one could get so close here ... even the marks on their feet and shoes and the brushmarks on their hair were clearly visible.

One particularly fine exhibit was a long model ... a bit like a 3d comic strip, showing the entire manufacturing process from digging the clay to positioning the finished warriors ... full of detail, and worth a lengthy scrutiny. There were seven actual warriors, a general and some foot soldiers, plus a chariot complete with horses and charioteer. Two of the horses were fake , and clearly marked as such. One other fine display was a group of musicians, playing to some dancing water birds ... and there were jugglers, strong men and dancers, plus display cases of armour, headdresses, and weapons, much of which we had only seen photos of in the auxiliary museum in Xian, so we felt it was well worth the journey.

One little add on ... as we drove through Greenwich, our driver commented that we had just crossed the meridian and "You are now on the other side." Your father said he had always wondered what it would be like, and there was a general consensus that it was exactly like the world we had left behind. It seemed a fitting comment following two days admiring the tombs and art work of the long ago.

Chinese food

Too many years ago now, I spent a summer living in Taiwan. I lived with a Taiwanese family, took the bus to work every day, and even ate out and went shopping on my own despite not speaking more than a few words of Chinese. I tried all kinds of food, including 'thousand year eggs' - which I was amazed to find I quite liked.

The only thing I was offered and decided I was not even going to try was chicken feet.


A few years later, I went on a package tour to mainland China. I was amazed at how reluctant the Americans on the tour were to try the food. One of their major complaints was that the food wasn't like the Chinese food served at their local restaurant at home in the US. Ironically, one of my complaints about the food we had on the first 2 days of the trip was that it was NOT typically Chinese! Fortunately, there were two Chinese-American families on the tour - I sat with them at mealtimes so I didn't have to put up with constant whining about the food.

On our last day in China we had lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant in Guangzhou. The Chinese-Americans and I had a GREAT lunch - the Americans were all not eating in anticipation of getting to Hong Kong and being able to eat western food again. We did the rounds of all the tables helping ourselves to all the goodies they were ignoring!

The Americans were ecstatic when we finally arrived late at night in Hong Kong and they headed off to the Hard Rock Cafe. One commented that she was looking forward to a milkshake - her first milk product in over 3 weeks. I asked why she hadn't had any milk, yogurt or cheese in China? Although many Chinese are lactose intolerant, they provided those foods for the Americans in the hotels. She hadn't liked the milk because it was served warm. She hadn't seen the yogurt because it was not served in little plastic containers with foil tops. She hadn't wanted the cheese because it was served at breakfast time and "cheese is not breakfast food."

While the others in the group ate bagels, cereal (with cold milk) and yogurt (from plastic containers) for breakfast in the hotel in Hong Kong, I delighted in eating things like teryaki salmon, rice porridge, and steamed buns with barbecued pork filling. Why go abroad and eat the same things I would have at home?

More immigration confusion

My parents recently paid us a visit from the UK. The immigration official at the airport told my father that he had a 'problem' because his fingerprint did not match the fingerprint they took when he entered the US last September. After sending him to another official, they decided that they had simply 'confused' my father's fingerprint with my mother's. He was actually expecting to have more of a problem with the fact that they never took his departure card when he left last year, so technically there is no record of him ever having left the country before returning last month . . . They didn't mention that.

And I was SO hoping that the INS' record-keeping had improved since I last had to deal with them :-(

The British Abroad

To balance my earlier post on why some Americans shouldn't be allowed to travel - the British on vacation abroad don't have a particularly good image. Charles Bremner wrote in his Paris Weblog

In the old days, the Americans stood out among the visitors, for dress and behaviour. Now les anglais often draw attention to themselves while the Americans -- on the defensive in France -- try to blend in more.

Magwitch writes :

"unfortunately the most hideous people I’ve ever met when travelling are ignorant, load mouthed Brits who won’t attempt the language, the food or the culture and are generally obnoxious to everyone."

NoJags Neil writes

The perception of the British abroad is not a good one, and the absence of pissed-up promiscuous British twentysomethings on our recent holiday to Egypt was refreshing.

I don't think it's so much the individual Brit abroad, or even small groups, but mostly the larger groups that create this poor image. The chances are much higher that a Brit on a tour versus one travelling independently will be an obnoxious twit. Ditto for other nationalities.


The dark socks with sandals - such an attractive look - not! And the lobster-colored skin - de rigeur when travelling to warmer climes. Do men really still wear knotted hankies on their heads though? I doubt it nowadays, though I think I remember my grandfather doing that when sitting out in the sun in his garden.

Adam Dalton has written a far more comprehensive article about the British tourist overseas than I have time to attempt: The British Abroad - Not a Pretty Sight!

Why Some Americans Shouldn't be Allowed to Travel

Okay, there are probably some Brits who shouldn't be allowed to travel either, and these stories are probably apocryphal, but this was moderately amusing anyway:

The following are actual stories provided by travel agents