Friday, February 15, 2019
Five highlights come to mind from my January 22-February 8 trip to Bournemouth, England to visit my sister, who was house sitting there.
First, the huge house had three floors, six bathrooms, a sun room, stone countertops, a sunken lawn in the backyard frequented by a red fox, and a thin bush separating it from a local golf course in this city on the English south coast west of Southampton.
Second, midway through my visit, snow fell. We made a snowman on the golf course. We then found several groups, mostly adults and children, doing likewise. The snow melted within a few days.
Third, we saw many sights as we strolled along the beach of the English Channel, the sound of the waves a rhythmic washing of the shoreline. There were small boats, a couple tankers, a platform for drilling for gas and oil beneath the ocean floor, and many people walking many, mostly small dogs along the water. A day trip by train to Winchester brought us to its famous cathedral, and to St. Peter's, a church with a display noting various Roman Catholics executed during England's suppression of Catholicism from the 16-19th centuries.
Fourth, we ate well. My sister is an inventive cook: moussaka, stews, Yorkshire pudding, spicy Indian food with homemade naan bread, homemade buns with seeds, and haggis twice, once with meat, once without. The home Yorkshire pudding followed a Yorkshire pudding full of chicken and vegetables and dressing and gravy in a local cafe called Norwegian Wood, its walls boasting Beatles memorabilia. The home haggis was because my visit coincided with Robbie Burns Day, January 25. Pub French fries here, nachos at a 1950s-themed beach cafe there, and fish and chips soon after my plane reached London helped make my holiday delicious.
Fifth, I was amazed that I could fly a third of the way around the world, eight time zones, in less than ten hours, from Vancouver to London. Rows of three seats on each side and four seats down the middle of the plane, more than 60 rows from front to back, and all the baggage, people, and food and drink, got up in the air, across Canada, and across the Atlantic Ocean. Wow.
Our ancestors came by boat from Europe to North America. Our dad went to Europe with the Royal Canadian Navy during World War Two in the early-1940s. Our parents flew from Canada to England in 1977. A few years ago I never thought I would see Europe. I have now been five times, amazing.
