From Newark Liberty to London Heathrow to Oxfordshire

All right. We’re back in business. Although this seems to be becoming as much of a travel blog as a debate blog. Sorry about that, but you’ll just have to learn to roll with the punches. Nobody ever said that life in the VCA was going to be easy.

Our trip was planned to cover a number of locations in the UK. The problem is, international travel at this particular moment is plagued by wrath of the Icelanders, spewing the rest of us with their so-called “ash cloud.” As if. The truth is, their economy went bust, and none of us, certainly not you and not even me, as close as I am to these people, sent them even a single ruble to help them get over it. So now they are wreaking their revenge, the frigid bastids. We were planned to take off at around 9:00 on the starting Friday night. Thanks to the “ash cloud,” which was apparently generated by the same special effects group that photographed “man landing on the moon,” our flight was delayed over two hours. As it turned out, this was not a bad thing. By the time we were in the air it was midnight, and I was out like the proverbial (northern) light. Of course, I drifted in and out of sleep as I tend to do (I don’t need a plane to be an insomniac), but overall we both did pretty well, despite the usual squeezing in like (northern) herring. Needless to say, I spent the next two weeks tracking the “ash cloud” in the news, figuring that we would be stranded at Heathrow for a couple of months when we wanted to get back home. The good news was that, aside from an article claiming that the ash cloud was, indeed, an “ash cloud” in quotations (the Brits are just as good as anyone in doing Monday morning tabloid quarterbacking), there was nothing. But I will admit, I was worried. Add to this the threat of a strike on BA (which we weren’t flying, but strikes among furriners tend to be contagious, especially among the French which, thank God, the Brits aren’t), which in fact did come to pass the day after we arrived back home, and I spent much of my vacation in what my friend Jules would call a state of permanent depression, but, as it turned out, all for naught.

Our first port of call was Oxford, which one accesses from Paddington, after first taking the express from Heathrow to that station. The Heathrow Express is one of the wonders of airplane travel, probably the fastest and easiest airport to city center there is, and certainly the fastest I’ve ever used. 15 minute trains every 15 minutes. Hard to beat. So after getting through customs in record time—because our flight was delayed we didn’t hit the rush—we were on either one train or the other, et voila! Oxford! Our hotel (actually B&B) was a short walk from the station, and before long we were checked in, washed up (as in clean hands and face, not on the shore like a piece of driftwood) and on our way. It was cool and slightly rainy, which was the last we saw of rain for the next two weeks. Perfect England weather? Whoda thunk it? In any case, we had arrived, and we were on vacation.

Let the revelry begin.