Richters in England, 2003

Trip report to UK with more details than you wanted

Thursday (June 19th) Chuck was requested to travel to ALSTOM's office near London for a three-day meeting. Chris exclaimed that it wasn't fair, and that she wanted to go too. She said, "I'm small and Charlie is even smaller and we can fit in your luggage.... please! please! Can we go? Can we?" The tickets were extremely expensive ($2000+), so it was not to be. But not one to give up easily, on Friday morning, she ran into a mom (Nalini) in her play group telling about her own last minute plans to travel London, and the great inexpensive airfare ($799 / person) she found. Following up we found that the $799 was actually canadian "money"--which meant they would be paying us to fly (just kidding)--Chuck cancelled his spendy flight and the Richters were set to fly on the same flight as Nalini from Vancouver, BC direct to London.

After carpooling to Vancouver Canada with Nalini and her daughter Ailsa on Sunday night, we took a red-eye flight and arrived in England on Monday evening. Charlie and Chuck were able to get some sleep on the plane, Chris read magazines. We rented a car with a manual transmission--shifting with the left hand takes some getting used to, as does driving on the wrong side of the road. The signage on the highways is not exactly what US drivers would call intuitive, but we finally arrived at our hotel near Farnham. Farnham (where our ALSTOM office is) is about an hour from London. As Chuck still had work to do before the presentation, he worked on the computer and needed to connect to the internet--which was an ordeal. Eventually Chuck purchased a calling card and used the Medieval dial-up line at the hotel to dial in. Working till 2:00am, Chris and Charlie kept Chuck company since back home it was still afternoon and our sleeping schedules were all goofed up. It was so funny seeing Charlie happy and wide-awake in the middle of the night.

Tuesday, while Chris and Charlie tried to catch up on their sleep and pool-time, Chuck went into the office. That evening we met for dinner and ate meat and potatoes at a restaurant with some of the colleagues from the Farnham office. The weather was nice. It was another late night and Wednesday afternoon Chuck was thinking about using adhesive tape to hold his eye-lids open. After leaving the office, Chuck meet Charlie and Chris at a nearby park and we drove for an hour to the town of Kemsing, where Ann-Veronique and Benoit (Chuck's friends from ISU) are living. We drove for an additional hour with periodic phone calls attempting to locate their place. We arrived around 9:00pm. and they decided to take us to their favorite brew pub for dinner. Unfortunately they would not serve us food, because Charlie was under-aged. So they just served us beer. We left after one drink and drove to a 24-hour supermarket and got the fixings for a nice home-cooked meal. At 1:00am we left their historic 17th century home and headed back to Farnham. (Thanks guys, for your wonderful hospitality!)

It turns out that Chuck Richter's birthday is not universally celebrated, and Thursday morning's meeting started on schedule at 9am. Fortunately it was over by 1pm. Ending early allowed Chris, Charlie and Birthday-Boy to start on our trip to Stonehenge. We toured Stonehenge, set among fields that could easily be mistaken for many South Dakota farm fields, and then drove west to the city of Bath. Bath is fed by geothermal springs and was home to Roman baths/spas in the 300 and 400s when the Romans made it into the UK. The ancient spas live on. The roman tradition of driving on the right side of the road does not. Bath was a very neat European city full of history. We spent Friday morning touring the Roman baths before driving east to first Windsor (home of the Windsor castle, which closed 15 minutes before we arrived (See picture of pouting Chris), and then onto London where we saw Trafalgar square, Picadilly Circus, Big Ben, the parliment, and other attractions (including Mathew Perry from "Friends" signing autographs outside a theatre). Friday night we found a downtown hotel that was right next to the giant ferris wheel that had very large rooms for only 79 pounds (35 kg).

Saturday morning was a bit hectic. Like the rest of the week, we were not early-risers and got a late start in the morning. We were able to ride the London Eye and tour Westminster Abbey before leaving for the airport at noon. Arriving in London and especially leaving for the airport, we found how bad the traffic is--Chris and Chuck had to carry our car for part of the trip (See picture). It took two hours to get from downtown London to Gatwick. The flight went well, and by Sat. evening we were in back in Kenmore, WA. Sunday morning before church, Charlie was wide-eyed and bushy tailed at 5:00am.