Beans on toast:

As mentioned in the previous post, I traveled to England and Italy... I am now back, and I have much to report.

Flew to England on Tuesday the 19th, leaving Boston at 7:00 PM. Our flight was marked most notably by dinner served around 9:00 Boston time, with breakfast following about an hour later in order to trick our bodies into some semblance of circadian adjustment. Also worthy of mention was this: most flights to Europe fly north almost to the Arctic Circle, which meant that the sun never really set for us. Roughly three hours of gorgeous sunset across the horizon was replaced by an equally long sunrise with only an hour of near darkness as intermission. The brilliant sun shining above the clouds and off the ocean will always be an amazing sight to me, no matter how old I get or how many times I fly.

We disembarked in London around 6:30 AM local time and set off on an odyssey for our hotel, breakfast, and some rest. Outside the airport we attempted to hail the most outrageously coloured cab we could, but instead settled for a less spectacular but more convenient one at the front of the line. Our driver, Colin (whose name my dad miraculously remembered and referred to often during the trip like an old friend) must have had the best life of any cabby I have ever heard. I imagine he enjoys making the lives of his passengers feel insubstantial and empty on a daily basis, as he regaled us with stories of his impressive existence. Apparently, he only drives the cab five months a year, split usually into two-week segments. The other seven months, he flies to Vienna, Austria, where his actual house is (or, as he told us, his actual two houses - one in the town and one lakeside), where he spends his time either driving one of his three cars or swimming and running every morning with his wife, who --although I was afraid to ask -- I suspect was Gisele Bundchen. How this is all possible on a cabby’s salary, I do not know, but Mafia ties probably help.

Eventually, we arrived at our hotel, the Langorf, and bid farewell to Colin. An interesting thing about the Langorf: evidently the hotel was named after its street, Frognal, as unlikely as this seems. How a word as obscure as Frognal could have existed prior to a more common-sounding Langorf is beyond me, but again, this is a foreign land. The combination of the two does, however, invite the creation of palindromes, and my best (on short notice) is “Langorf not on Frognal,” which would probably present problems for the hotel’s business. I decided to keep it to myself.


On the whole, London was much as expected: cars drove on the wrong side of the road, the city was remarkable, and accents abounded. After a day or two in the city I found myself spontaneously bursting into a little Cockney accent myself, sometimes involuntarily. Otherwise, London was nice but uneventful. I had beans as often as possible, and found the most entertaining thing to be a cricket game I watched on the tellie. Though impossible to understand, it was wildly entertaining, especially when after a particularly good hit the commentators announced, “Ooh, right into the Jacuzzi!” To my surprise (and delight), sure enough, there was a full Jacuzzi sitting field-side.

After three days in the city, it was time to move on to Italy, where the real adventures began.