Back in the USA

Late Saturday night we arrived back in Southern Maryland. But, with all the massive jetlag and lawn mowing I had to contend with, I'm just now getting around to making a follow-up post.

During the meetings on Thursday, I was informed if the name of a city ends in -chester, then it was at one time occupied by the Romans. See? You learn something new everyday. It's probably just a U.K. thing though, because I'm guessing the Romans never made it to Winchester, Indiana. Or the other 28 US Winchesters. Moving along!

I have to say, this was my most pleasant trip to England yet. Every other time I've been there it was nothing but cold, gray skies and rain every day. This week was fantastic! It was warm and sunny everyday, until Friday, which happened to be the day we decided to do some touristy stuff.

The meetings in Preston ended early on Friday, so we decided to go to York, which is an old walled city in Northeastern England. It's an interesting contrast- they've left much of the old city intact, while still managing to function as a modern city (albeit with nowhere to park). It's kind of like "We don't want to alter the 800 year-old buildings, so you'll just have to fit the Burger King in this little nook." I didn't bring a camera, on account of the fact that I brought a camera on previous trips and never found anything worthy of photographing, so I've stolen some picture from other websites. Nothing much has changed in the last few hundred years, so they should do. The first picture is basically what every street in York looks like, and you can see the Minster (what Brits call cathedrals) in the background.

The only tourist attraction that we actually were able to see was Cliffords Tower, which you see in the second picture. It functioned as the lookout for York, sitting up on a big hill next to the castle. There's not much to it- it's mostly a lookout deck with terrifyingly small spiral staircases in which each step is worn to a perfectly slick downward slope by a thousand years or foot traffic. The rain was really appreciated there. But, I am a nut for old stuff like that, and that's why I love Europe. In the US the oldest buildings you ever see were built maybe 200 years ago.

So why was it the only thing we got to see? Because everything in York closes at 5:00. I guess that's another U.K. tip- stuff closes earlier than you'd think. Plus, traveling that day was a complete disaster. The stories are too long to list here, but they include getting completely separated, almost running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and circling downtown Manchester for over an hour.

Friday night we stayed in the aforementioned downtown Manchester so we were closer to the airport. Saturday morning Joey and I wanted to hit the heath club for a run before our noon flight, but get this: The local gym is only open from 9:00 am. to 4:00 pm. That's right, 7 whole hours of availability. So not only does stuff close early, they open late. Since we couldn't run, we decided to walk a few blocks to the mall and look for souvenirs (Joey was supposed to buy some soccer stuff for a friend). We went in several sporting goods stores, and those people love their soccer, followed by rugby and not much else.

Here's the interesting thing- in all these sports stores, I saw 3 different American NFL jerseys. The most common was Tom Brady. The other two were Charles Woodson of the Oakland Raiders, and Tiki Barber of the NY Giants. What makes those three special enough to have British appeal? I've asked the Sports Guy, and I'm really hoping he uses the question, because there are so many ways he could go with it.

In conclusion, I'm back home in the daily grind, and this post seems a little long.