My family made it safely to Norwich, bringing with them not only their delightful selves but also my winter coat, homemade cookies, and this wonderful new vocab term, which they picked up in Cambridge. I of course got the flu and couldn't make it to Cambridge, but after three days of bedridden misery during which the housekeeper probably thought that I had died, I discovered that the cure for the flu is actually Cheerios and A Very Potter Musical. Who knew? Anyway, tangent. Back to the narrative at hand!
The crazy woman running through the streets of Norwich to the train station on the 23 December was in fact me. I wasn't supposed to be running, but let me take this moment to explain some of the possible scenarios that pop up when you try to be timely and efficient in England. (Yes, another tangent. Sorry about that.) It's like If You Giva a Mouse a Cookie, gone terribly wrong:
1. You go to the post office with the simple idea of mailing a Christmas present to your best friend in the States. You bring a box loosely taped, with her address in the appropriate place and your return address written in the top left corner. So far so good, yes? You bring said box to the counter and the postal worker tells you to put it on the scale before staring at it skeptically and asking, "You're going to mail it like that?" in the tone of a snarky postal diva. A little taken aback, you still trust the postal system and reply, "Well, it needs a bit more tape." He quickly interjects, "We don't have tape here. Oh, and is that the return address? You should probably write that on the side, otherwise they might get confused and send it back to you." Then he returns to whatever menial task he was doing while you stand there, dumbfounded that the post office a) does not have tape and b) employs people who might confuse the return address with the sendee address. What? So you end up buying a role of tape, taping the package so tightly that your friend will need dynamite to open it, writing RETURN ADDRESS in all caps on the side of said box, and handing the package and the tape to the postal worker, telling him, "Keep this for the next American who will expect this establishment to have tape."
2. You go to your friendly local SpecSavers to get another referral to the NHS eye clinic, since you missed your last appointment while you had the flu and the gentleman on the phone refused to let you reschedule without another referral even though you used your best "please take pity on my, I'm sick and pathetic" voice. After explaining this story to three different people at SpecSavers, a kindly contact lens specialist sits you down and gives you a complete eye exam instead of a referral. This is very generous of him and he assures you that you're not going blind, but that you might, but you don't actually need to go to the clinic, but you might want to, but you shouldn't have to unless you feel pain in your eye, but it might be safe to check anyway, and why don't you make another appointment for ten days from now? This means that you end up sprinting down Prince of Wales Road and are five minutes late to the train station, even though you planned to get there thirty minutes ahead of time and even brought a book for that purpose.*sigh*
Eventually I made it to the train station and to my family, which was too many kinds of wonderful to put into words. They had just come from a delightful day in Cambridge, and we got them checked into the most amazing bed and breakfast in the world. Seriously, if you're ever considering a vacation to Norwich, stay at the Arrandale House Guest Lodge on Earlham Road. Maurice and Olga, the owners, are the most delightful people in the entire world, and that is not an exaggeration. He's Irish and she's South African, so everything is this awesome hybrid of two cultures. Also, the place is gorgeous, and they serve amazing breakfasts. Kyle stayed with me at UEA, but we went for full English/Irish breakfasts every morning with Mom and Dad. We tried black pudding (tastes like haggis) and even had Christmas morning champaigne with Maurice and Olga. They would come and talk to us and forget about taking our breakfast orders because they had so many interesting stories to tell.
Our adventures in Norwich included eating delicious sticky toffee pudding next to a party of drunken senior citizens wearing paper crowns at the Wig and Pen pub, seeing most of Norwich's major historical sites, watching the Christmas episode of QI, and attending a midnight Christmas Eve service at Norwich Cathedral. The cathedral itself was absolutely beautiful with all of the Christmas decorations, and it was a very nice service. It was an Anglican service with the bishop and everything, so very different from what we're used to at home. And their Christmas carols are different! Same words, different tunes. I was most distressed until we got to "Joy to the World," which thankfully remained the same. Change is fine, but I am a stickler for Christmas traditions, including the melody of "O Little Town of Bethlehem." We spent Christmas day in our pajamas, just relaxing and doing not much of anything. It was lovely just to be with my family.
We celebrated Boxing Day, the origins of which are up for debate, by taking a very early coach to Bath, which is probably my favourite city in England. We ran into a bit of a kerfuffle over the directions to our bed and breakfast, however. I swore that we had to go one way, but Dad thought that we had to go the other way. We took a short cut recommended by one local, which proved to be the long way around, and then took a wrong turn upon the advice of another local. After dealing with British signage and directions for the past four months, I managed to not say, "Told you so," when Dad's way proved to be the wrong one. So we lugged our suitcases all over Bath and learned an important lesson: never trust a Brit with directions. Ever. Our bed and breakfast, once we located it, proved to be very nice. Most everything was closed due to Boxing Day, so we got dinner at a local pub and then retired early to watch marathons of Friends, which seems to be all that they show on TV here. The room that Kyle and I shared had a gigantic wardrobe in it that clearly leads to Narnia, and a shower that we could not figure out. I mean, the controls look like something from Doctor Who. Since I left my sonic screwdriver at UEA, we gave up and asked for help the next day. So, irony of ironies, we could not figure out how to bathe in Bath (don't worry, we got it the next morning).
We walked into the centre of Bath the next morning and walked around Bath Abbey, which is beautiful. Bath is such a pretty city, even though the weather was grey and dismal while we were there. It's also a very manageable city - everything is centrally located and it's very easy to get your bearings. I dropped Mom, Dad, and Kyle at the Roman baths since I had already toured them (check September's blogs for my first trip to Bath), and headed to the Assembly Rooms and the Fashion Museum. The Assembly Rooms were the place to see and be seen in Georgian Bath, and it's where many of the social gatherings take place in Northanger Abbey. See, you thought that I just connected everything to Harry Potter, but no! I can do it with Jane Austen, too! The Fashion Museum, which is in the basement of the Assembly Rooms, was really cool, and they had some very ugly clothes as well as an exhibition of Princess Diana's dresses. It's amazing how loved she is in this country, even now. The Assembly Rooms themselves were beautiful - there's the Octagon Room, where card games and whatnot would take place because everyone in Georgian England gambled, the tea room where refreshments would be taken in between dances, and then the ball room where the actual dancing happened.
My family very much enjoyed the Roman Baths, and Mom and Dad even sampled the delightful waters of Bath. Cheers!
After a hasty lunch we embarked on a tour to Stonehenge and the surrounding countryside. It was freezing and we couldn't walk all of the way around Stonehenge because there are no shovels in this country so no one had cleared the path, but it looked very cool in the snow! 
After defrosting in the van, we set off to see some thatched cottages in teeny tiny villages, and then we visited the lovely village of Lacock. The entire village is a National Heritage site and it still looks like the quintessential nineteenth-century English village. There are no wires above ground, and if it weren't for the cars in the streets you would think that you had gone back in time. Film companies love Lacock, and it's been used in Cranford, Steven Spielberg's upcoming film adaptation of War Horse, the BBC's extremely long and ill-cast Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth (he wasn't the ill-cast part. And this is just my opinion - I know that there are many Austen purists out there who uphold this adaptation as something sacred. Please don't hurt me), and... Harry Potter!!!! I know, Jane Austen and Harry Potter in the same place. It was a Christmas miracle. Lacock has been used as Hogsmeade and as the Potter's house in the first movie. 
Our busy day ended with dinner at Jamie Oliver's restaurant in Bath, and then Kyle and I found a television special on the 50 most annoying people/things/events of 2010. Some highlights included: Paul the Octopus, Sarah Palin, snow, and everything to do with the World Cup. About half of the team made it onto the list separately, the coach made it, and the entire team was the number one most annoying thing of 2010.
The next day also dawned grey and misty, but we took a walking tour of the city and got to see the Royal Circle and the Royal Crescent, the number one real estate locations in Georgian Bath. This was a good opportunity for me to realize how much useless knowledge I have amassed about life in Jane Austen's day.
After lunch in a pub, we wandered around the city, seeing all of the things that we hadn't got to the day before, including the Jane Austen Centre, a store called FCUK (yeah, it required a doubletake), and the amazing Minerva Chocolates. This looks like something out of Chocolat, and it was amazing. They make their own chocolates in the store, and everything is so good! I'm already planning my midlife crisis, and it looks like the inside of that store. Or the cupcake truck. I've got time to decide still. 
The late afternoon and evening were taken up by the coach ride to London, where we stayed right off of Brick Lane in the East End. I won't torture you with more London history, but if you'll recall, the East End and specifically Brick Lane, is home to most of London's Bangladeshi population, and it's an area with a very checkered history. Think prostitutes, Jack the Ripper, etc... I loved it. In a couple of years I think that the area will have been swallowed up by the financial district at Canary Wharf, but for now it's a really vibrant area with amazing food. And the fence opposite our window was plastered with fake newspaper headlines that read "Gollum to Wed Using 'Precious.'" I mean, does it get cooler than that?
I'll leave most of our time in London to my parents, who swear that they're going to make a picture slideshow and put it on our television to show people. We did cover a lot of ground, though: Westminster, the Churchill War Rooms, Picadilly Circus, Oxford Street, SoHo, Chinatown, the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Borough Market, the South Bank, the Globe, Millennium Bridge, St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, Abbey Road, and the East End. Whew! Lots and lots of walking! I managed to not get us lost ever, and I was very proud of how well I knew my way around. Point for me! We also took full advantage of Sandemans New London tours, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Sandemans is the company of Ninja Scot and the tour that I took in Dublin, and their London tour was just as good as those in Edinburgh and Dublin. If you're going to a major city in Europe, definitely check them out - they're fantastic. We did the Royal London tour around Westminster and then the Grim Ripper tour in the East End. I spent that entire tour scanning the area in case anyone tried to jump out at us while we were listening to stories about Jack the Ripper. I learned my lesson during the ghost tour in Edinburgh! But the only people who intruded were a couple of drunken boys outside of a pub. We actually spent a very quiet New Years Eve because a) everything in London closes around 5 on New Years Eve, b) we didn't want to stand outside for hours waiting for fireworks in the cold, and c) we had to get up early so that my family could get to Heathrow. So no stories of our amazing night out in London, but that's okay.
Trying to find somewhere to eat that night taught us an interesting lesson, however. Everywhere stopped serving food incredibly early so that their employees could clean up and get out to their own celebrations, which, while extremely invconvenient, is very nice if you think about it. If enough of the bars close, however, I'm not sure where these employees were planning on going, but that's okay. It was just so different from what we are used to in the States, where New Years is a huge night for restaurants. America tends to cater towards the individual moreso than the U.K. does - we expect to be able to go out and do or get whatever we want whenever we want, but employees in England expect to be able to sleep and enjoy their nights like everyone else, meaning that there's no bus or Tube service in the days surrounding Christmas, restaurants and stores are closed, and people stop caring about the almighty dollar for a few days. It was an adjustment. (This is not to say that England doesn't do other, really stupid things, like not letting you pay with a credit card to get into Westminster Abbey after 4.30 in the afternoon, or only selling eye drops for conjunctivitis but not other eye infections. Seriously. I cannot buy medicated eye drops here because I don't have pink eye, so no one is licensed to sell it to me. Oh, England... *seethes quietly*).
Anyway, minor inconveniences aside, it was a great vacation and it was so, so good to see my family. I may or may not have started crying in the middle of the Tube station after sending them on their way to Heathrow the other morning. It seemed like they just got here, and I was not ready to say goodbye yet! Six months is a very long time. I am definitely looking forward to it and I'm confident that I'll enjoy it, but I miss my family.
I'm taking a break from England for the next two weeks, however, and heading over to the Continent to see Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, and Salzburg. It's my Christmas present to myself. I hope that you all enjoyed the holidays, and Happy New Year!!! I wish you all the best in 2011, and good luck sticking to those resolutions! Mine are to think more positively in order to laugh off all of the silly things that England does, and to put others first more. Blogs are a very self-absorbed medium, as I expect all of you to read and care about my ramblings and adventures, so that might be more of a face-to-face thing. Unless you all create blogs, in which case I will endeavor to read all of them!
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