Where are we going?

Our itinerary: We will start off going to Bath, then Oxford/Cotswolds,
Lake District, York, and end with 4 days in London 

Why England? Where in England?

Most people reading this probably know why we're going to England—we're going to England to visit our Most Beloved and Extraordinary Daughter, who is doing an MBA at Oxford University's Saïd Business School. Our daughter has been the root cause of most of our wonderful trips abroad—she goes somewhere different and interesting (India, China, Australia, Taiwan), and we take advantage of the opportunity to go there, too! We are spending the longest part of our England trip in the Oxford area, to spend time with her, but as long as we're going all the way to England, we figured we might as well see some of the rest of the country too. 

Doug planned the trip using suggestions from Rick Steves Great Britain (23rd edition). We like Rick's approach to travel, which tries to get you away from just seeing other tourists at touristy spots. His advice led to our staying in a wonderfully perfect location in Paris, 23 years ago (!) when we were there for three days. Anyway, it is his advice that is leading us to see London at the end of our trip rather at the beginning. We did see London once before, on the same long ago trip where we went to Paris, and we already saw many of the classic tourist sites at that time—changing of the guard, crown jewels, the prime meridian at Greenwich, etc. It'll be nice to get a different take on the city this time, and also to see more of England's countryside.

I'm really looking forward to the excitement and adventure of being somewhere new. 

Understanding the British Isles vs. the United Kingdom vs. Great Britain

I've always been a bit fuzzy and unclear about the differences in the above terms; fortunately daughter Allison showed us a meme that helps sort it all out. Here are the key three terms:

The British Isles (bottom white layer) is the term that encompasses all the bits of land in the general area.

The United Kingdom (light orange layer) is England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It is what functions as a "country" in many respects; it is the unit that exited the EU.

Great Britain (orange layer) refers to the large island that contains Scotland, England, Wales.

Here's also a helpful article on British/English terminology from the Smithsonian magazine.  It points out that the term "British" is actually rather ambiguous.

I was surprised to read in Wikipedia that the original coming together of the Great Britain countries as a United Kingdom happened back in 1707. Ireland was added in 1801 but then much of it left in 1922. The UK seems unique (in my limited knowledge of world politics) in that the UK is a country but its four constituent parts are also widely referred to as countries. We will only be visiting England this time, but at least I better understand now how everything fits together.

Next Post

The next post will be written from England! England is over 5,000 miles away, and 8 time zones later than California. If we get up at 8am here, it's already 4pm in England. To help himself acclimate, Doug has been shifting towards English time already this week, getting up earlier and earlier, to more closely approximate being awake when he'll need to be awake when we're there...

Our elapsed flight time will be about 10 hours; 
with the time change we'll arrive 18 hours later.