Euro Trip Part 1

I recently had the opportunity to travel to the U.K., England specifically, for work. The work, explicitly, was done in Ripon, North Yorkshire, England while we stayed at a hotel in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire. Sadly, I can comment very little from a tourist perspective as I spent the bulk of the time either working or attempting to adjust to the time change. I was there for more-or-less 4 full days. I arrived on a Sunday morning at 9am their time and departed on a Thursday morning at 11am their time. I actually flew into Manchester, England and we drove from there to Boroughbridge.

Things that I learned/experienced as a result:

• Adjusting to a 5-hour time change forward is difficult. It took me a full 3 days to start to feel fairly in sync. Adjusting to the 5-hour change back in also tough, but not quite as much.
• As U.S. residents, we are currently comparably poor in England. At the time of my travel, my U.S. dollar was worth the equivalent of about 45 cents to me there.
• Traditional food there is very bland. I sampled quite a few different items and was overall unimpressed. I'm sure that they have delicious dishes, but I stuck to some of the standards. One surprise side dish was "mushed" peas. Why anyone would take an only moderately tasty vegetable to start with and then make it almost inedible my mashing it to a pulp is beyond me unless it is for the sake of feeding it to an infant. Also present at many meals was black pudding. I steered well clear of that having received fair warning before embarking.
• In the rural town in which we stayed, *nothing* is open beyond 10pm. While attempting to adjust to the time change, I ended up having to nap the first few days after working and by the time I was waking, all was closed. Any form of shopping was unavailable after about 5:30pm as all of the local shops closed at that time. Very bizarre. We didn't really get to spend anytime in actual Ripon or Manchester, but I'm sure that one or the other would have offered at least a little wider time frame for touristy things.
• I did get to visit at least one local pub which was kind of quaint and neat. There were 10 of us travelling together and we pretty much filled the place when we walked in.
• You must order "still" water if you want a standard glass of water. Otherwise, you get carbonated water. Yuck.
• If you wish ice in your beverage, you must specify. Otherwise, prepare for room temperature.
• For the most part, all of the English folk that I encountered were particularly courteous, even to include airport personnel. Go figure.
• A Best Western hotel there does not necessarily mirror that of your typical Best Western stay here. We stayed at two of them, one in Boroughbridge and one in Manchester, and they were both especially old buildings with a Best Western name stamped on the sign out front. My primary room had no form of air conditioning and heating was done with a radiator. In addition, I had bunk beds in addition to my "king sized" bed. The king sized bed was technically two doubles pushed together. As a bonus, one of them was obviously more used than the other, creating a healthy physical divider in the center. Oh yeah, that made for comfortable sleeping. The sides of the mattresses were freaky stiff giving you the pleasure of feeling like you are sleeping in a wooden box. Also, the English are apparently freakishly short as the beds weren't of any length that I am used to. Not like midget short, but definitely shorter than average.
• Driving on the other side of the car and road is bizarre. I was only the passenger throughout, but it was a very strange experience to be on that side of the car without a steering wheel. Almost every time that we went to get into the car, the front seat crew went to the wrong side by habit. Also, roundabouts make for some daredevil driving adventures. That could be a posting all to itself sometime.
• Possibly even more strange than driving on the wrong side of the road was being a pedestrian at an intersection and having to figure out which way to look for what oncoming traffic. It sounds really simple, but it is surreal to experience.
• I still don't like flying. Throw in the fact that it took us 7 hours to get there and 8 hours to get back and I *really* don't like flying for that long. If I have to do it over again, I am willing to pay whatever the difference between coach and business or first class to fly. Wow, those coach seats are pretty frickin' small for that duration. We flew on an Airbus (3 seats on each side with 4 across the middle for a total of 10 across).They served a meal in-flight, but it was very shortly after we took off. Whod've thunk it? I, of course, ate at the airport prior to departure so I wasn't anywhere close to hungry when they served the meal. Fortunately, they served drinks a couple of times and a snack a few hours later so I didn't go to starving partway through the flight.
• There is a duty-free shop *on* the plane. They literally walked around and started selling stuff during the flight. This is something else that I didn't expect. Literally anything from Toblerone chocolate bars to iPod docking stations. You didn't just pay for them from a catalog for pickup later, they literally had the items on the flight to sell to you on the spot. This occurred both on the way to and from the U.K.. Don't think I've mentioned it yet, but we flew USair.

OK, enough for this round. Until Part 2...