We are in England!!

Glorious Paddington Station—I love the beautiful, arching skylit roof
with decorated ribs. It was the first moment I felt I was Somewhere New...

It still seems like an astonishing miracle to me that people can climb into a large metal tube, spend hours flying through the air, and come out of the tube alive and in a place thousands of miles away from where  they started. But that's what we did, climbing aboard a Virgin Atlantic flight Friday at 6:30ish in San Francisco, and less than ten hours later (the pilot saved time on the flight), emerging from the flight at London's Heathrow airport!

(Departing SFO photo courtesy of Nick, as part of his limo service)

The flight

The flight we were on was conveniently scheduled in the evening so that one could theoretically spend much of the flight time sleeping. Unfortunately, both of us had a very hard time getting comfortable enough to sleep, and did a lot of fidgeting all night long. Also, somehow the plane had a notably bad audio system; flight announcements were foggy and hard to hear, and though the flight offered 117 movies (!!), including recent ones I was interested in, in the end I found the sound (through provided headphones) too sketchy to make it worth it. One highlight of the flight though, was that we both happened to wake up around 1am (6.5 hours into the flight) and saw what we think was icy Greenland from the air!

Arrival process at Heathrow

The process for international arrivals was thankfully quite straightforward, if not very glamorous. By not glamorous, I mean that there was never any really cool "Welcome to London" sort of graphics, as we've encountered in other airports. 

You got shunted into a large arrivals area, with arrivals from selected countries going through one line, and any others going through another line. The selected countries included the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Economic Area (EU + a few others), Japan, Singapore, and South Korea—check an official UK site for the exact list. The vast majority of arrivals were in the selected countries line. If you have a passport with the biometric symbol (circle with a line on each side), you can go through the eGates. At the eGate, you feed your passport into a reader and then the machine snaps a photo of you on the spot, and if your in-person photo matches your passport photo well enough, you pass through. Doug did not pass through—he thinks it was because he forgot to take off his glasses, thereby failing to match. He had to go through another line staffed with a real person, but it was pretty fast still. 

Getting to Bath from Heathrow

Doug had psyched out that we could get to Bath by train (postponing the need for an expensive car rental until Tuesday), and had already gotten us digital tickets. We took a Heathrow Express to Paddington and then a Great Western Railway train to Bath (~1.5 hour ride). The process was very smooth, and the trains were great! Doug commented on how much better the train experience was than say, Caltrans. Not that Caltrans is bad, but the English train was newer and the ride was smoother and quieter.

The COVID/masking situation

As daughter Allison had told us, in general outdoor settings, most people don't mask anymore. We have found this to be true. There are still signs of COVID precautions (e.g. stand 6 ft. apart signage and spots on the ground), but overall people here seem pretty relaxed about COVID now. 

Most passengers on the plane flight were still masked (maybe 60-75%?), and also I'd say more than half on the train were masked. But I was surprised that the Virgin Atlantic flight attendants weren't masked (because it's a high-contact role) and our hotel concierge wasn't masked (again a high-contact role). Hopefully this degree of relaxation is warranted... we'll know if we manage not to get sick on the trip!

On being in England

England is an easy country to visit, as foreign countries go. The language is the same, and there's a lot of cultural overlap, too. However one difference has caught our attention, besides the standard vocabulary differences (lifts instead of elevators, crisps instead of potato chips, a "stopping train" instead of a local). The announcements on the train were so cheery, perky, organized! It was hard to put a finger on the exact difference, as a lot of the content was the same: don't forget your belongings, the next stop is XXX, etc.  Something about the tone just seemed different than in the US; I tried to record an announcement, but didn't think of it early enough to be successful.

On being in Bath

I will write a lot more about Bath tomorrow, but it is a very charming, touristy kind of town. We spent about five hours today just wandering around the town. What makes it so visually charming is that much of the central architecture dates back to the Georgian period (early 18th century) or even earlier, including a couple of beautiful churches, and an arched bridge. It's also famous as the locale for ancient Roman baths (hence the name Bath!).

Arriving on a Saturday, we found the place thick with tourists, mostly English tourists. We could tell because of listening for what languages you overhear. We rarely heard languages other than English, and much of the English we heard had a British accent. The central tourist area was lined wall-to-wall with shops; Doug said it made him think of the Stanford Shopping Center; we also thought of the touristy areas of Santa Cruz. Still, the natural beauty of the town shines through.

Here are just a few photos from Bath; more to come...

On the left is a bridge Bath is famous for.
On the right are kayakers preparing to take on the spillway waters.
We watched them start on the upper level and kayak down the artificial waterfalls.

A beautiful old cobblestoned square with a magnificent tree.
(Doug is standing by it for scale.)

What did I find funny here, that caused me to take this photo?

Unusual dessert at a lovely little vegetarian restaurant, Oak.
It's rhubarb (on the right), with star anise 
ice cream under an almond tuile

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.

First major COVID-era trip!

New packing essentials: masks, tests, sanitizer

Venturing out of our cocoon

Our trip to England will be the first major travel we've done since the start of the "COVID-era." We did do two local road trips last spring, in that brief halcyon period after getting vaccinated and before the Delta variant's summer surge. This will be our first trip by plane, and our first trip abroad, since the pandemic started.

Many friends and acquaintances have already traveled by plane with no adverse outcome, especially in the past year or so (post vaccines). So it doesn't seem as scary as it once did, though I personally wish the mask mandate on planes had not been lifted before our trip. However, things in both the US and UK do seem to be at a reasonable point. We're hoping for an enjoyable, COVID-free trip, but we're certainly bringing good masks and some test kits.

How are things in the US?

Sign as of 4/26

Things have settled down a lot in the US, although the possibility of another variant and another surge is always lurking. California lifted its indoor mask mandate on February 15th; now it's more of a personal choice whether to mask or not. I've been happy that significant numbers of people still wear masks, because it makes it an easier option to take, if one feels the need. Also some businesses do still encourage mask wearing.

As luck would have it, due to a fluky ruling by a Florida judge, as of April 18th, masks are no longer required on plane flights. We still plan to wear them, especially in the airports, which we understand can actually be riskier than the well-ventilated airplanes.

How are things in the UK?

Things also look relatively good in the UK, by now. COVID restrictions and requirements within the UK were lifted on February 21st. Mask wearing is still encouraged on public transit and in certain other contexts, but it is no longer required. As of March 18th, there are also no longer any particular requirements for international arrivals to the UK (such as needing to test and/or show proof of vaccination). The US will require a negative test from us upon re-entry, at the end of May, but we hear it's easy enough to get at the airport.

A second booster

Being older and more at risk, we were already interested in the option of getting a second booster--but it seemed even more advisable now, given that we don't want to get sick on our trip!

Within the past two weeks, both of us have gotten a second booster, at CVS stores, and both of us have taken the "mix and match" approach, which theoretically can give you a slight added edge of protection. There's not definitive proof of the advantages of mixing and matching, but there's no known downsides either, so it seems a reasonable thing to do as long as it's equally convenient to get either one, which it is in our area.

In my case, I'd gotten Pfizer for my first two shots and booster, and switched to Moderna just for this second booster. I was a little afraid the side effects might be worse with Moderna; I hadn't been affected much at all by the Pfizer shots, so I was apprehensive that I might get more woozy with this one, while at the same time thinking that then I'd be more assured that something was happening. As it turned out, I wasn't affected much by the Moderna shot either, other than my arm hurting for a few days, and maybe feeling very slightly more tired. I never had a fever or needed to doze for several hours though.

Next Post

In the next post I'll outline our planned itinerary and talk more about the nature of our trip—why are we going to England anyway? Where in England are we going? Are we going to rent a car??