The British customs agent looked at the space that said “occupation” on the form I filled out on the plane.
He looked at me and said, “So you think you’re good with words?”
Just getting off an overseas red-eye flight a bit jet-lagged, I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“I like to think so,” I said.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery“Well, tell me how it’s impossible you’re on vacation right now.”
Uh, what?
It was about 1:30 a.m. in Indiana as the morning sun shined Sept. 8 at Heathrow Airport in London, the busiest airport on the European continent.
I’d been standing in a hot, humid line for 90 minutes with my over-packed carry-on backpack clutched under one arm, my purse and sweater tucked under the other. My back hurt.
I just wanted to sit down.
My brain stalled again. I tried to smile.
He finally let me in on the little riddle: “What’s the root word of vacation?”
Laughing, I said “vacate.”
He said, “So that’s what you did when you left the U.S. — you were on vacation. Now that you’ve arrived in England, you’re on holiday.”
And so began our adventure in England, a trip that took our tour group across the pond, through London and Oxford and a beautiful slice of the southern English countryside of the Cotswolds. We got to see where Harry Potter and Downton Abbey were filmed and walked in the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
Tilson Travel’s literary tour of England benefited the Friends of the Greenwood Public Library and gave us a chance to see all these very cool sites.
The country whose history is more intertwined with that of our own than any other nation is what attracted me to the trip in the first place (that and being able to walk in the footsteps of some of its greatest writers) — and what awed me at every place we visited.
As we rode through London just after we arrived, I couldn’t stop taking photos of the streets through the windows of our tour bus. London seemed one endless sea of vintage row houses. It was like watching PBS on wheels. I was stoked.
We saw narrow twisted streets that may have inspired J.K. Rowling, and stopped at Picadilly Circus — another spot where “Harry Potter” was filmed. Our trek ended outside Baker Street.
Of course, a trip to Europe is never complete without experiencing some of the history for yourself — also known to some as staying in authentic accommodations. In our case, an unairconditioned closet they called a hotel room seemed both terrible and appropriate. Not only was the air conditioner broken, but my sister (my travel mate for the trip) and I were nearly in tears after not sleeping for more than 24 hours. Having flashbacks to a trip to Greece we’d taken years earlier with similar luxury, we just figured the whole hotel was like that and fell asleep with the window open to the street.
The next day saw us up bright and early as we traveled to Potterworld itself — the Warner brothers studios where the movies were shot. If you ever wanted to see Dobby in person or the Hogworts train, this is the place to do it. Not so much history here, but the photo I have of my sister on Hagrid’s motorcycle is pretty priceless.
Our trip was geared mostly toward shooting locations of Harry Potter and other cultural locations where shows such as Downtown Abbey were shot, but we quickly realized there’s much more history and culture to learn about than what you see on TV. Getting just a taste of the majesty of Oxford’s Bodleian Library — which I’m just sure will be what heaven will look like — only lit a fire in my imagination, and I was dying to know more.
This is the problem with touring — you plan so many stops, but there’s just never enough time to see everything.
So I did what always presents a really difficult problem when you’re across an ocean away from your home office — I began buying books like the print apocalypse was coming. If I couldn’t spend all the hours at these places in England, I’d spend hours in them via print back home.
Every museum bookstore I went into, I came out of many British Pounds and even more U.S. dollars the poorer, with a renewed sense of sweaty panic about how I was going to get them all home. It started when we found an inexpensive bookstore in Oxford, and I got my first armload of the trip. It continued every single day after.
Our longsuffering tour guide, Paul, ever the patient English gentleman, strained, got red in the face and huffed and puffed as he hefted my suitcase onto the bus. This was about halfway through the trip and panting, said simply, “Don’t buy any more.”
I promised not to.
We both knew I was lying.
You see, long before they were Harry Potter shooting locations, real, everyday people were in the streets and cathedrals of Gloucester — about a thousand years before. Where you now see cloisters of plain stone, historians tell us they were likely full of colorful religious paintings before Henry VIII decided to rid England of everything Roman Catholic — decorations and all.
We were walking where the early Christian monks would have walked, the stone benches where monks sat studying in complete silence, the towering archways of the sanctuary and the tombs underneath your feet in these places — the sense of the past is nearly palpable and irresistible.
I just had to take (several hundred pages) the history with me somehow. I left with books from every gift shop.
Gloucester allowed us another historic accommodation — a hotel in a building that dated back to 1770 and once housed a girls reformatory.
At this hotel, Paul insisted I try what I initially thought was really dark-looking toast for breakfast. I excitedly tried a bite and found that it wasn’t bread, but pudding. Black pudding.
“You know what’s in that?” he asked, gleefully smiling in a way that seemed very cheerful for 7:30 a.m.
I told him no as I poured my first cup of coffee for the day.
“Pig’s blood! This is a very traditional English breakfast,” he excitedly explained.
Black pudding really wasn’t bad, but once the cat (pig?) was out of that bag, other members of our group weren’t so adventuresome at breakfast that morning.
And more culinary wonders awaited us, though steak pies and bangers and mash didn’t have as many fun surprises in the ingredients category.
For example, ordering water in the U.K.: there are questions to answer — chiefly whether you want your water “still” (what we’d call tap water) or “sparkling” (like drinking a completely flavorless soft drink).
And ice?
You have to order that special. Oftentimes, the eastern Europeans waiting on you in restaurants can see you’re American and fill your glass up with ice right off the bat, but sometimes not.
You’ve heard of the Brits’ famous fish and chips, right? Fish and chips are on the menu everywhere you go. You have to remember to say “chips” when you mean “fries” — that’s easy enough — but you have to remember to ask for ketchup.
Back to the literary and historical wonders.
In Stratford-Upon-Avon we saw the Shakespeare houses. The original building of his birthplace still stands, including the portion that his father would have worked in making leather goods. We trekked through five Shakespeare houses — not only his, but also his daughter’s and where his mother grew up. We got to see furniture the family would have owned.
Jane Austen was the “literary” reason we visited Bath, but the ancient Roman baths were among the most must-see sites in the city. They dated back to 100 A.D. when the Romans came to England and bathed in the hot springs for medical and religious purposes.
I thought a dip might do me good. That day we went on a two-hour walking tour of the city where we saw theaters, ballrooms, and the Austen museum. I recorded in my journal “My ankles are so swollen they look like they’re sprained …”
Holiday? Vacation?
At times, it seemed more like work.
On my next trip, I’m visiting the Bath spas.
Also contributing to my soreness was the ever-increasing pounds of books I was hauling in and out of hotel rooms every other day. Also that night, I wrote: “Alarmed at how much all the books weigh when I tried them in my suitcase this evening…..”
I put all the books in my suitcase and tried to lift it. I almost threw out my back, so I decided I needed to strategize. I started scribbling down ideas about how I might get them all home — throw away all my clothes, check my backpack with the books, mail them home. I didn’t know what to do.
This was causing very real stress.
In the end, I bought another suitcase. On the last day of the trip, which we spent in London, I traveled via Underground to one of London’s main shopping districts for my final major purchase of trip — and what I think is most important.
Our last day, I picked myself up off the airport floor after they told me it would be close to $100 to check the bag of books, and handed them my credit card, finally deciding this was the price I have to pay to bring home all these great new literary jewels that will help me get ready for my next trip to the U.K.
That’s the great thing about books — the journey never ends. Now, my new British mini-library is at home in Indiana, I’m continuing my travels through Winchester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Lacock Abbey and many other places — and coming up with a new list of tour spots.
