Trip Planning

I spent last evening reading Fodor's guidebook for England 2011.  I checked it out from the public library, and it is well-organized, easy to read, and very helpful.  I think it's an interesting read even if you're not about to travel there.  

I read through the section on London, making sure there weren't any places missing from my list, and I became so thankful that I am traveling with a man who loves maps and has a photographic memory of them, thereby making him an excellent tour guide.  I am simply free to enjoy and say, "Yes, I would like to go there and see that."  Last night KJ sat at the computer laboring over which was the best deal on a rental car and e-mailing a Bed and Breakfast to see if they would keep our luggage until check-in time.  He walked in the bedroom, where I informed him I was doing my part of trip planning by planning out my outfits.  He laughed and said, "Well, at least that will save us some time when we get there."  I love him.

I did find out some helpful tips from my guidebook-reading, so I am not completely useless in the planning department.  My favorite parts, of course, were phrases like these:

"...ladies in the corner sipping their halves (half pints) and having a natter (gossip)."

"...you may even be privy to the occasional barney (harmless argument)."

"The large, beamed, and galleried sitting room holds a snooker table." 

"...refrigerators stocked with drinks and nibbles..."

I love the way they talk.  

Added to my London list last night were The Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum, which has been preserved almost as it was when the war ended.  There's a Map Room, where the "Allied campaign is charted on wall-to-wall maps."  I also learned/was reminded that Benjamin Franklin lived in London for 16 years before the American Revolution.  You can visit his house there, as well as the house where Charles Dickens lived when he wrote Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and completed Pickwick Papers.  I'm also pumped about the British Library which houses the "Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible, Jane Austen's writings, Shakespeare's First Folio, and musical manuscripts by Handel as well as Sir Paul McCartney..."  Don't you like Handel's music being displayed along with Paul McCartney's?  That made me laugh.

London, here I come.