This topic will involve some overlap with other posts, but so be it; we are thorough or we are nothing.

And I hope we can all remember that “surprise,” in and of itself, is not inherently positive or negative: surprise can be positive or negative or neutral; and surprise can be STRONGLY one way, or MILDLY one way, or anything in between. Some of these surprises I am about to tell you about will unavoidably carry the indication of what kind of surprise it was (such as the disheartening dismay of no rice with the Chinese food, which meant we hadn’t ordered anywhere near enough food)—but others are NEUTRAL: just things I noted at the time as things I didn’t know would be the case, and was interested to find were the case, and thought others might be similarly interested to know. And of course some are POSITIVE, such as good bath-product scents and fun yogurt flavors! Or even if the experiences are unavoidably interpreted as MILDLY negative (such as water going out of the shower onto the floor), it was not a particularly negative experience FOR ME, since I don’t OWN or need to CLEAN the bathroom where that’s happening, and am FULLY ABLE to cope with the measure of “putting a towel down to catch the water”—and so it is not a HARSH CRITICISM OF ALL OF ENGLAND AND ALL ITS PEOPLE AND ALSO OF THIS ENTIRE TRIP, it is just something I thought you would be interested to hear about, in a Let’s Marvel at the Wide World and All Its Infinite Variation sort of way, and in the same way as I might tell you about unfamiliar practices I encountered in other regions of my own home country. Let’s practice a little!:

We were surprised when we ordered Chinese take-out food in England and it did not come with, in order of surprise from least to most: fortune cookies (I’d heard elsewhere that fortune cookies were a United-States-Chinese thing), disposable chopsticks, RICE. (Only the rice was impactful: it took a meal we thought would heartily feed seven people and turned it into a hearty snack.) And it DID come with what we have since discovered were PRAWN CRACKERS, which did not seem like either prawn or crackers but instead like some sort of puffed-rice cup; our two vegetarians were alarmed to find out afterward that they’d accidentally eaten prawn.

(Practice round! This was clearly a NEGATIVE surprise, and in fact a BOUQUET of negative surprises. And the timing was particularly bad for this kind of surprise: we had become over-hungry, and then we encountered NUMEROUS hurdles for everything about that meal, from not being able to find anywhere to eat, to not being able to use the hotel-room phone to order delivery, to calling places from the lobby only to find they could not take our order or could not deliver it until, for example, 9:30 at night. And then we finally succeeded in placing an order!!! but then it wasn’t enough food because there was no rice, and our vegetarians unknowingly ate something they wouldn’t have eaten. Nevertheless: we are not trying to blame ALL OF ENGLAND, or ANY of England, for this set of surprises; this could have happened in any unfamiliar ordering situation. It could have been a good lesson for us about being more educated about our options—except that in this case, it never would have occurred to us that Chinese food wouldn’t come with rice: we have lived in and/or traveled to the U.S. west coast, the U.S. east coast, and several places in between, and in all of those places rice has come with the food. For us, this was like needing to know to ask the restaurant if the sandwich comes with bread, and also needing to ask if the bread is vegetarian: we didn’t know that we didn’t know that we didn’t know. So it was more of a lesson in knowing that we won’t always know that we don’t know we don’t know. And that in that case we CAN eat small portions of non-planned food out of hotel mugs with coffee spoons, and search online for anything we don’t recognize, and then fill up on cookies. It is, bottom line, a lesson in making sure we have lots of cookies.)

I was surprised by how much wetter the eggs were cooked: fried eggs with liquid yolks, wet scrambled eggs rather than dry. (Practice round! This was a NEUTRAL surprise! It was interesting that eggs were, routinely and in every case we encountered them, cooked DIFFERENTLY than we would normally encounter eggs where we live. It was neither positive nor negative, just different/surprising. Obviously we could have asked for them to be cooked differently if it had been a negative surprise, and this option occurred to us immediately and without effort!)

I was surprised by the looser alcohol restrictions. Hard liquor was available in regular grocery/convenience stores; 18-year-olds (and even 16-year-olds) were served liquor without being carded. (Practice round! This was a NEUTRAL surprise! It was interesting that the rules and enforcements were so completely different than in our usual experience. It was neither positive nor negative, just different/surprising when compared to the way it is where we are in the United States, where I still get carded sometimes even though I have CHILDREN old enough to drink, and where my 22-year-old was prevented from buying alcohol because he was accompanied by someone who could NOT legally buy alcohol, and where grocery stores can sell only lower-proof items such as wine and beer.)

Okay, enough practice! I will rely on you to handle it from here onward, and I will not feel the need to keep reminding you that “encountering something different, and remarking upon it with interest” does not mean “criticizing it and calling it bad.”

Also: keep in mind that I am a relatively NEW traveler. We do not take vacations: as with “going out to eat,” this was one of the things we voluntarily traded in order to have five children. (Not because NO ONE can do it: I know PLENTY of large families go out to eat, and take vacations. But because WE couldn’t.) The most traveling I’ve done is in the last few years, when I’ve been driving kids to and from college, and going on college visits. So maybe you will be surprised to find that I was surprised by something, and maybe you would like to cherish that silently within your heart!

This may have just been the particular hotels we stayed in, but all of the showers had half-or-less glass doors. Like, half-or-more of the bathtub/shower area was completely open, with unblocked water flying out onto the floor to some extent, ranging from “almost none, how it is almost none when this is wide open??” to “we had to put down a whole towel just to soak up all the water that flew out because there was not enough door/curtain stopping it from doing so.” I can’t claim to have been FULLY SURPRISED by this, because several commenters mentioned it ahead of time—but I still felt a little surprised to see it in actual practice, because it seemed so UNLIKELY, and particularly because several other commenters had said “WHAT?? That was not our experience at all!!,” so I admit I’d wondered if the first group of commenters had encountered something rare.

Again, this may have been just the particular hotels we stayed in, but none of the bathrooms had fans to remove the steamy air. At least one had what seemed to be a non-working fan; more than one had no apparent fan mechanism of any kind.

Again-again, this may have been just the particular hotels we stayed in, but all of them had what were to me DELIGHTFULLY-scented bath products. I am accustomed to the products in the U.S. hotels we usually stay in, which usually smell like public-bathroom handsoap (i.e., cheap/chemical/institutional), or else like artificial coconut.

Again-again-again maybe just the particular hotels, but anyway the light switches were OUTSIDE the bathroom doors. Which would have been fine if the lights for the rest of the room weren’t in the same panel. So if, for example, you got up and did not remember that the bathroom lightswitch was the second one in from the left in this hotel, you would turn on the light for the entire room when you got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night; and, even if you DID remember, you turned on the bathroom light and then had to open the door and let the light flood into the room. Paul, fortunately, had inexplicably assumed I’d want a nightlight for the room (I never sleep with a nightlight), and so he put that nightlight in the bathroom so we wouldn’t have to turn on the bathroom lights at night. I have added “bathroom nightlight” to my Future Travel List.

We were surprised by how extremely hot the water was: many places (hotels and public restrooms) had little stickers warning about the heat of the water, which was easily more than hot enough to scald. In one of our hotel rooms, hot water came scaldingly out of the cold water faucets as well, and we had to let it run for a few minutes until it started being cold. Ample, ample hot water, is what I’m saying.

In one case, the light switches in a hotel room seemed not to work at all. Luckily, we were traveling with a cosmopolitan group, so I thought to group-chat them about it before going down to check with reception: it turned out we were supposed to put our hotel key-card into a slot right inside the door, in order to operate the electricity in the room. Maybe you already knew this, and would like to have a little chuckle! Or maybe instead you will file this away and it will save you later from other people having a little chuckle at you.

This might have been the particular areas we traveled to, but I was surprised to need reservations even for casual pubs and pizza places. The travel agent had advised us to make reservations, but her phrasing made me think she meant we should make reservations if there were PARTICULAR places we had our hearts set on, in order to avoid disappointment. Instead it was Pretty Much Everywhere. One night my half-group went to a pub and I felt self-conscious about our reservation once we arrived and it was three-quarters empty and extremely casual—but then we heard group after group being turned away at the door for not having a reservation, with the server saying they were “completely full for both sittings.”

I was surprised not to be able to buy Dramamine (meclizine hydrochloride); if we traveled again, I would bring TONS of it. Thanks to you, I was not surprised to need to bring our own melatonin, benadryl, and hydrocortisone cream. (There was a later discussion that indicated we could have acquired hydrocortisone cream by asking a pharmacist; still, I was glad to have it with me already when a child acquired an unexpected hive.)

I was surprised at how many women I saw wearing dresses, just out and about, casually. It’s not that dresses are so uncommon in my experience, or anyway I don’t THINK of them as so uncommon. But something about the number of dresses I saw in England was enough to catch my eye as unusual. And lots more fun patterns than I’m used to seeing! It made me want to wear more dresses.

I was surprised at how easy it was to go through Customs, in both directions. Regular airport security was the usual barking unhappy experience both ways: “EVERYTHING OUT OF YOUR POCKETS AND INTO THE BINS”/”SHOES OFF”/”MA’AM THAT NEEDS TO BE IN A SEPARATE BIN”/”SIGH, NO, YOU HAVE TO WALK STRAIGHT THROUGH, DON’T HESITATE”/”HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD”/etc., with several of the kids being put through additional screenings and backpack-searches. But CUSTOMS, which I was MUCH more worried about (especially coming home, because I’d heard U.S. Customs was pretty much The Worst, even to their own citizens, which did not remotely surprise me), was a breeze both times—so that both times, we ended up out of the whole process saying, “Wait: did we do it? Was that all? Did we miss something?” We’d talked to the children ahead of time about how we would be separated and asked questions, maybe odd questions about whether we’d walked in pastures (that specific example came up in Paul’s research), and then none of that happened at all. On our way into England, we weren’t even checked by a person: we just had to stand at a device that scanned our passport and our face; one of us got a “See an agent” alert, but there were no visible agents to see, so that person just started over at a new machine and this time was passed through. On our way into the U.S., we were checked by a person who checked us all together as a group, no separating us, and only checked each passport/face and asked one of us (Paul) if we had any food. I will note that both times, in both directions, I saw people who were not-white being detained for further screening/questioning. I’m not saying it was because they were not-white. But: they were not-white, and it happened both times in both directions, and there was more than one not-white person both times in both directions.

I would be VERY INTERESTED to hear about things that have surprised you in your travels!

I will start by saying this: I wish I’d bought MORE. But it was hard to know what I wanted, especially early on in the trip. And I kept seeing, for example, LONDON-themed souvenirs when we had not been to London, and never really DID go to London (we spent a few hours there the evening before our next-morning flight), and I didn’t want souvenirs from a place I hadn’t gone—but I also wasn’t sure I wanted, say, a lot of Windsor-themed souvenirs specifically, when we were spending a few days there and then going on to Bath and the Cotswolds.

Well. Again: in the future, I will err on the side of buying, because as I was unpacking my suitcase I was happy to see every single thing I’d bought, and wished only that I’d been less careful/restrained.

My old messenger bag BROKE on the trip (it was the zipper), and I VERY MUCH wanted to replace it in England (EXACTLY the kind of Unplanned Souvenir I was hoping for!), but I did not find anything I liked well enough. I wish I had bought something anyway—but I kept thinking maybe later on I would find something I wanted more, and I didn’t want to spend, say, fifty pounds on a bag I was so-so about, and then maybe see one I LOVED. Well. A missed opportunity.

I wish I had bought a RAINCOAT in England. So many people were wearing such cute ones! But I was not in the right frame of mind to be trying on clothes.

I wish we had gone when there was a Queen, because so much merchandise was related to the new Boy Queen, and I am not interested in him.

I wish I had bought birthday cards in England to send over the next year to all the people I went on the trip with! That would have been fun: “I bought you this card ON OUR TRIP TO ENGLAND!!”

That concludes the Didn’t Buy section; now for the Did Buy.

The souvenir umbrellas (one country flag, one London skyline) mentioned in a previous post, plus two decks of cards (the other deck is in the possession of the children) and a set of four egg spoons (for lil yogurts rather than eggs; two of the spoons are in the dishwasher and the other two are a little hard to see against the countertop pattern):

A tea towel I cannot show you because it is not hanging up and it is not in the washing machine so I am not sure where it is, but I suspect it went through the wash when one of the kids did their laundry (we toss used towels/washclothes into the empty washing machine), and is now in a clean laundry basket in a kid’s room. Well, it was the Strawberry Thief pattern, so I was able to get this picture of it off a William Morris shop website:

image from https://wmgallery.shop

Fridge magnets!

The Windsor one is sparkly/metallic, and I bought it at the same place where I bought my first souvenir umbrella. The Trout Farm one I just thought was funny. A trout farm!

Multiple bags of biscuits/cookies, crackers, tea cakes, candy, etc.:

(Also several wee jars of jam lifted from hotel breakfasts.)

A Dutchess mug from Blenheim Castle:

It was an uncharacteristic purchase: I am not usually someone who likes, for example, aprons labeled Queen of My Kitchen or whatever. But I saw it, I liked it, I felt it wasn’t characteristic and I wondered if it would survive the airline flinging it around so I decided not to buy it—and then I kept wanting it, so I thought, “Well, if it’s like twenty pounds I won’t buy it,” and it was seven pounds so I bought it.

The prize of my collection, a Penhaligon’s scent sampler:

There could have been no souvenir more relevant to my interests. It has a 2ml sample of each of ten scents, including The Coveted Duchess Rose, Juniper Sling, and The Favorite. I can’t even open it yet, I am too excited.

As we were packing for this trip, I went to my stash of tiny notebooks to choose one for my purse, so I could write things down if I wanted/needed to. And my stash was not where I thought it was. And it was not any of the places I thought I could have moved it. I had to keep myself from going into Tear the House Apart mode. Anyway when I saw some little notebooks in England, I bought them:

Lavender linen spray:

This was a little iffy because it was so BLATANTLY marketed to tourists. Like, obviously ALL of this is marketed to tourists. But these Cotswold lavender displays were everywhere, and the labeling looked so generic. But…I do like lavender, and I do like the idea of linen spray, and we did visit The Cotswolds where they did talk about lavender, so I bought a bottle and I’m glad I did.

Paul bought this little printed oath from the Oxford Library for me to bring into work:

I bought a Christmas ornament that looks like one of the red post boxes I had fun finding so I could send postcards, but I have already put that away with the Christmas stuff so you will just have to imagine it.

Commenters Annabeth and Sophie suggested buying reusable shopping bags from English shops, and that was a very fun idea I hadn’t thought of. I bought this one at Marks & Spencer:

And finally: POSTCARDS. A small selection:

One of our traveling companions mentioned that x years ago in England (I’m half-remembering she said “ten,” but am not confident), you couldn’t even GET drip coffee. Now apparently you can, but I don’t know if we encountered that option, because I was so busy ordering the widely-available-and-not-expensive cappuccinos simply left and right. Sometimes the server would ask if I wanted chocolate powder on it, and sometimes they would just add it automatically.

I learned on this trip that an “Americano” coffee is an espresso watered down with hot water. My understanding is that this was an earlier attempt to simulate the drip coffee Americans were accustomed to, before drip was available, which apparently it is now, not that I looked, because I had not realized it was an interesting thing to look for. One tactful description said something about how an Americano was “the delicious flavor of espresso” but “less intense.”

At the hotel breakfasts, it was French-press coffee, the little pot delivered to the table; some hotels offered Americano coffee as an alternative. There were two-person pots and one-person pots; I would say the two-person pot was the amount of coffee I wanted for my one person. My sister-in-law and I found we needed to strategize to get as much coffee as we were used to: either we would drink a cup in the hotel room before coming down to breakfast, or we would get a coffee at our first tour stop after breakfast. One of our hotel rooms had a Nespresso machine, and Paul got into the lovely, lovely, can-we-import-that habit of making me an espresso as soon as I started waking up, and bringing it to me while I was still in bed. I would check email on my phone and sip my little espresso.

I did not drink much tea. I know: I should have! I should have! I’d thought I WOULD; I’m disappointed that I didn’t! But it turns out that if I am offered coffee or tea, I find it difficult to choose tea. I find it difficult every single time. Even when I ordered “a cream tea” (a scone with clotted cream and jam, plus tea or coffee), I went for the coffee option. The only time I drank tea was when we Went For Tea (like, with the tiered trays and so forth); then I ordered Earl Grey. If we ever go back to England, I am going to COMMIT to drinking more tea, if only so that I can SAY I drank lots of tea.

Many, many people told us ahead of time that in England you can’t get ice in your drinks and/or can’t get as much ice as you’re used to. I wanted to offer a personal report, but I am having trouble remembering. I don’t think I ordered soda a single time while we were there; when we asked for water, I don’t think it ever came with ice, but actually I am not completely sure.

I was sometimes puzzled by water choices: we would ask for it at a restaurant, and the server would say “Sparkling, still, or tap?” Well, let’s see. I know what sparkling is, and I WOULD know what still was, except that they offered tap, so now I’m not sure. My guess was that if I said “still,” it would be bottled and I would see it on the bill, and if I said “tap” it would be free, but I did not do enough testing to draw a firm conclusion.

I see no ice

Two of our nights in England, we went to a pub within walking distance of our hotel; going to a pub for drinks was one of my England Trip Goals. I had never been to a bar, let alone a pub, so there was some learning. I knew what “a tab” was, but not how to start or manage or pay one. I knew about people “buying rounds,” but didn’t know how to do that, or how to make it come out right, or how to stop caring about it coming out right. I felt like the most sensible arrangement would be for everyone to pay for their own drinks so no one has to keep mental track of anything while tipsy and everyone can make their own financial decisions in re beer vs cocktails and so forth—but once someone buys a round, there’s no stopping it and you have to join in.

Even though I found pub-round etiquette uncomfy and incompatible with my natural-born temperament, I enjoyed going to the pubs and would want to do that again the next time. And I DID like how “buying a round” made it easier to add snacks to the table that everyone could share: if I’m buying this round, and I also get some chips (I MEAN CRISPS), then it’s clearer that those are for everyone to eat, not just for me to eat. They’re part of the round.

One night we had dinner at a pub, and wanted to order a beer with my meal but didn’t know how. The server brought food menus but no drink menus. At the table next to us, I heard someone say “Do you have a dry white wine?” and the server said “Yes; small, medium, or large pour?” But…how did the person ordering it know how much it would cost, then? Or what sizes small/medium/large were? And wouldn’t you want to know what all the drink options were, rather than asking individually if each option existed? Well, I am sure there must have been a way to do it, because I saw other people drinking beer and wine, but I couldn’t figure it out. Obviously I should have asked—but by the time I realized it wouldn’t be intuitive, it felt too late.

Speaking of pubs: the legal drinking age in England is 18. The twins are 18, so I told them to bring their licenses if they wanted to try a legal drink in England. BUT ALSO: there seemed to be approximately zero carding. At one restaurant, the ordering was done using a device at the table, and we ordered two hard ciders, one for Elizabeth and one for William. Then I went to use the bathroom, and the drinks were delivered to the table of kids while I was gone—and no one checked the kids’ IDs. On another occasional, William ordered a beer; he was not carded. One restaurant brought everyone a little glass of champagne, including one for Henry, age 16; no one even ASKED how old anyone was.

In the U.S., I am more accustomed to card-everyone policies, or AT LEAST to card-everyone-who-looks-under-40 policies. Businesses can get into serious trouble if they sell alcohol to anyone not old enough to drink it. When the kids were trying to buy us a bottle of champagne for our anniversary, the store wouldn’t sell it to William, age 22 and therefore allowed to buy alcohol, because Elizabeth was with him. We wondered if in England there are not such severe penalties for violations, so the enforcement doesn’t have to be so rigid. Or maybe with a lower drinking age, there just aren’t anywhere near as many violations to worry about.

I still have so many things to say about England, but also other things are happening: my supervisor is putting me at the library check-out desk one day a week, and that is a role for which is it more difficult to justify my cargo shorts and graphic t-shirts and Converse sneakers. Not impossible (we are a casual workplace), but more difficult. Also: supportive shoes are important, because I find standing still MUCH more physically difficult than the constant motion of shelving.

My friend J already recommended this POCKETED skort, which she was wearing at the time and in which she looked SMOKING (PROFESSIONAL/COMFY-STYLE SMOKE) (ALSO REGULAR SMOKE) in:

(image from Amazon.com)

I am definitely buying at least one, when I can decide on a pattern. My idea is that I will wear it with my usual graphic t-shirts, so maybe I should get it in plain navy or black—but I am more drawn to the patterns.

And then I am thinking I need shoes. Maybe I do not need shoes! Maybe a skirt + a graphic tee + Converse is good! But I think I would feel comfier in a nice supportive mary jane shoe, or else something pseudo-dressy like GLITTER sneakers. Or GLITTER MARY JANES. Let me know if you have seen such a thing. Should I wear them with knee socks? Maybe fun knee socks! COMPRESSION knee socks, for the aging calves in need of support! I could wear the ones I bought for the flight to England and never used!

I think what I am looking for is a very-slightly-dressier version of my normal everyday clothes, but still conforming to my resolution from a few years ago to buy clothes that are More Fun: Converse in colors/patterns, and all the fun graphic tees that are the equivalent of what you can buy in the girls 4-16 section, but in my size. (Annoyingly, most of those links will default to men’s/black, even though I selected women’s/color; the ones that DON’T default are the ones that are NOT AVAILABLE in men’s/black. I have the tulip shirt in GREEN, I have the rose shirt and the flamingo shirt in PINK, I have the Hello Sunshine shirt in YELLOW, I have the butterfly shirt and the rainbow shirt in BABY BLUE, I have the wildflower shirt and the Hot Disney Robin Hood Fox shirt and the autumn leaves shirt in OLIVE, etc.)

(image from Amazon.com)

So, like, maybe a stretchy skirt with pockets, and a graphic t-shirt, and stripey knee socks, and supportive glitter mary-janes? Okay, fine: plain black mary-janes, to keep it professional—maybe these or these, since I already know Skechers fit me well. Or/and maybe this is my moment to try a big poufy/swirl skirt? If you have seen things that seem like they’d fall into this category (ESPECIALLY supportive-but-fun shoes and comfortable-skirts-with-pockets), please point me in that direction!

As many of you mentioned, it was pretty easy to deal with vegetarianism and a tree-nut allergy in England: restaurant menus were marked with vegetarian/vegan options, and many restaurants had an additional card that gave more detailed information. If anything, we encountered TOO MUCH carefulness: like, a server might caution against Elizabeth having salad, because it was too hard to know if it might have encountered a tree nut, even though they didn’t serve any salads containing tree nuts. And there seemed to be some conflation of vegetarian and vegan, so that frequently the vegetarian options would also be eggless and cheeseless, and eggs/cheese are two of the main things Elizabeth eats. But we found restaurants very flexible: if we said “Could she have this, but with an egg instead of bacon?,” no one ever said no—and in fact they tended to say yes with large willingness, as if they were glad we’d asked, even HOPING we’d ask.

Eating IN GENERAL, though, was a constant burden/stress. It felt like having a small baby, where you feed them, and then by the time you get them changed and dressed and get yourself ready to go, it’s already time to feed them again. It seemed like we were constantly, constantly dealing with the issue of needing to eat.

(The meat pie at lower left was not pretty, but was one of the most delicious things I ate in England. Now I CRAVE it. It was minced beef with cheesy mashed potatoes on top. SO GOOD.)

The MAIN issue was our group size: there are SEVEN of us, which is EXPONENTIALLY more difficult than if it were, say, just Paul and me. We don’t all of us go out to eat even at home, because seven is a big group even for fast food, let alone sit-down restaurants; and because it’s so expensive to take a group of seven out to eat, and because it’s difficult for seven people to agree on a restaurant. This is one of the trade-offs we deliberately made when deciding to have a large family: we don’t go out to eat. Also, I don’t think I have ever made a dinner reservation before: I’m not inclined toward restaurants that need them, and I don’t live in an area where many restaurants DO need them.

Take that starting point, and then imagine us in England, where we HAVE TO eat out twice a day, AND even the pizza places and casual pubs need reservations, AND everything costs much more than at home, AND it’s hard to make group decisions. Combine that with someone (me, it’s me) who gets stressed by unfamiliar things.

One of our best solutions was to split into two groups, even if we were planning to eat at the same restaurant. It was interesting to me, the different reaction we got as one group of three and one group of four. Often we were even seated at adjacent tables. But if we went in as a group of seven, the restaurant staff would get agitated/flustered.

I also found it much, much, MUCH easier to figure out our order when I was only dealing with a group of three or four, and when I didn’t have to coordinate that effort with another parent. And of course this was easier on the server as well.

And splitting into two groups helped with the vegetarian situation: all the restaurants had vegetarian options, but some of those options appealed to Picky Elizabeth and some didn’t. This way, Paul could take three of the kids to a gourmet burger restaurant they wanted to try, and I could take the two vegetarians to a restaurant that had some appealing vegetarian pasta dishes. Or Paul could take the picky vegetarian with the group going to a pizza place, while I took the easy vegetarian to a pub I wanted to try.

And splitting helped me cope mentally with the cost, since I was only seeing 3/7ths or 4/7ths of it. I KNEW the other 4/7ths or 3/7ths was happening, but my brain was soothed anyway by seeing a bill for 65 pounds instead of a bill for 150 pounds.

Oh, and another thing! Some of you had mentioned that restaurants WORKED differently in England than in the U.S., but I was too pre-trip agitated to take any of the details on board. Still, this meant I was not surprised when we found differences. But I find Unfamiliar Things stressful, so I needed a work-around to cope. Here was my work-around, which is going to seem so simple as to make some of you cross your eyes at me, but it took me significant time/effort to come up with it, so I will share it in case anyone else is in my boat: I ASKED.

I figured it like this: not everyone knows everything! And all of us humans know that to be true, because we have all personally experienced Not Knowing Things! So it is not weird that I don’t magically know how a new-to-me system works! And the humans who work there DO know how it works, and they are being paid to deal with customers, and I am a customer! So what I would do is, I would snag a server, or someone bussing tables, or someone standing at a cash register, and I would say in my absolutely blazing American accent, “Oh, hi! This is our first time here; can you tell me how this ordering system works / how we pay when we’re ready / how we add some cake to our order?” And each time, the person would just TELL ME! And usually I was very glad I’d asked, because the system was not difficult but nor was it intuitive: at one place, for example, we had to notice that there was a number on our table, which I had not noticed, and then we needed to go to the register and tell them our table number and pay there.

For me, the key was “This is our first time here.” It FOCUSES the issue. It’s not that I’m from another country and also a newbie traveler and also kind of an anxious person overall and also over-panicking about a relatively simple situation; it’s just that this is my first time at this particular restaurant. A laidback cosmopolitan who lives just down the street might have the same question I am about to ask!

I have just realized this entire post is about the LOGISTICS of eating, with no mention of the FOOD of eating. ACHIEVING food always felt difficult, but EATING it was delightful.

I wanted to try a lot of things that sounded familiar but I’d never tried—mostly things I’ve encountered in books/shows set in England. Here are some of the things we tried: a meat pie in a pub; Victoria sponge; jam roly poly with custard; a cream tea (scone with clotted cream and jam, plus coffee or tea); sticky toffee pudding; coronation chicken; mushy peas; sausage rolls; pasties; rock cakes; Hobnobs; McVitie’s Digestives; Cheddars; Tunnock’s tea cakes; lots of Cadbury things. And I can get fish and chips at home, but I think of it as an English thing (“chips” is the hint), so I made sure to get fish and chips there.

There were a lot of things that were familiar but in unfamiliar flavors: for example, the hotels would have familiar little individual yogurts, or familiar little jams, but the yogurt would be rhubarb, and the jam would be currant. The rock cakes were available in chocolate chip (familiar) and sultana (at first glance unfamiliar, but turned out to be another word for golden raisins). (A currant is also a raisin, from a different kind of grape.)

In our experience, cheese was always better than what we’d expect. For example, we ordered “chips and cheese,” which was french fries with cheese on them, and the cheese was like a high-quality sharp cheddar just barely rouxed to make it softer. I got a meat pie with “cheesy mash” (cheesy mashed potatoes) on top, and the cheese was the same sort of very good sharp cheddar taste.

In our experience, eggs were always much wetter than what we’d expect. Fried eggs had liquid yokes. Scrambled eggs were…well, I don’t know how to describe them in a way that doesn’t sound negative. “A wet heap” is what comes to mind. They were good!

In our experience, English restaurants know their way around a potato: the chips (fries) were excellent, the jacket potatoes (baked potatoes with skin) were excellent, the mash (mashed potatoes) was excellent.

Oh! A very surprising thing to us: one evening we got take-out Chinese food, and IT DID NOT COME WITH RICE. We despaired a bit about the rice, thinking “Oh no, this is one of those cultural things and we were supposed to order it separately!”—and then looked back at the menu, where rice was not even listed. The food came with some puffed scoopy things—something in the neighborhood of rice cakes or pork rinds. We don’t know if this is typical in England or if we encountered an anomaly.

Scones, famously, were different/better than the scones I’ve had in the United States. I’ve had the U.S. dry triangles; the English scones were round and biscuity (in the United States sense of the word biscuit, not in the British sense) and soft. I had heard people rave about clotted cream and jam on scones, and the first one I had, I thought “Oh, sure, that’s nice,” but didn’t see the big deal. But then a day or two later I had the opportunity to add a cream tea (that’s the scone/cream/jam plus a coffee or tea) to my lunch, and I did. And a day or two after that I found myself questing for more, and now that we’re home I’m pining, and Paul is experimenting with making clotted cream from raw milk he bought at a local farm, and we’re both browsing scone recipes online. So apparently it just takes a little time for the addiction to take hold.

To continue the Post-England-Trip Packing Thoughts:

I was VERY GLAD we brought a jar of peanut butter for the picky vegetarian. (They do sell peanut butter in England! But not Jif. You heard me say picky.) We DID find MANY vegetarian options in England, and Rob ate well because Rob will eat normal vegetarian things such as beans and spices and noodles and, like, VEGETABLES; Elizabeth ate a fair amount of potatoes and cheese, and then I would later find her eating spoonfuls of peanut butter straight from the jar (we never did acquire bread, though easily could have; she didn’t want it).

I was also very glad that William had thought somehow to bring some disposable cutlery: Elizabeth used one of his spoons for the peanut butter, and we ALL used them the night we ordered Chinese food delivered and discovered it did not come with disposable chopsticks. We wished we had also brought disposable bowls; Paul usually travels with them but hadn’t brought them this time, and we ended up eating Chinese food out of hotel coffee mugs, which worked fine but felt wrong. (We rinsed the mugs in the sink afterward, so the hotel cleaners would not be surprised.)

I was glad I brought my bath pouf. It feels like such a hassle to bring it (shaking out all the water, putting it inevitably-still-damp in a ziploc bag, bringing it out at each hotel and remembering to take it with us when we leave, the feeling that it might be picking up International Spores), but it’s really not such a big deal, and also I dislike using wash cloths for body-washing so it was a nice little familiar comfort to have my usual pouf.

I don’t have an extensive Face Routine, but I do use toner after seeing it mentioned on Twitter as a response to a question about what little life-changing thing would you recommend to others: someone replied that people should use toner even if they don’t know what it’s for or how to use it perfectly. Sold! I also use a crepe corrector on my neck, and a nice face-washing bar or cream in the shower (right now I’m using Yes to Avocado, and I’m excited because I have on deck a very reduced bottle of Confidence in a Cleanser, which I originally tried when a friend bought it for me as a birthday gift). (If it’s still $20.40 for the 5-ounce when you read this, and if it looks right for your skin and you’re willing to spend that much on an untried cleanser, I recommend it: the 5-ounce has been $34 as long as I’ve had it in my cart, and I was EXCITED to find the 1.7-ounce at T.J. Maxx for $6.99-marked-down-to-$4: the 1.7-ounce is what my friend gave me, and used sparingly but almost-daily it lasted me MONTHS.) I did not bring any of these things with us, and I was not sorry: everything while traveling takes so much EFFORT (bringing all my things into the bathroom every day, instead of accessing them where they already live), I was glad to skip some steps. I used the hotel’s body wash on my face in the shower, and I used my usual day moisturizer and one of of my three usual night moisturizers (that is, I have three different night moisturizers I like, and I pick one each night; I don’t use three different things each night).

Speaking of which: the travel agent had advised us to consider bringing our own shampoo/conditioner/soap/lotion: she said most hotels WOULD provide them, but that they would be VERY strongly scented. I remembered the “institutional public bathroom” scent of the products in most hotels I’ve been to in the U.S., so I bought a million travel sizes for us and had each person make themselves a ziploc bag full of the ones they needed.

We did not use them at all. The hotels we went to had scented stuff that WAS strongly scented, but in EXACTLY the way I personally like: sharp unsweetened (no vanilla or powder) botanicals such as lavender, rose, verbena, geranium, and neroli. And the kids didn’t care enough to take out their ziploc bags, and ONE kid liked one of the conditioners so much, they had us all take home any extras we had. We ended up with a lot of unused travel bottles, but that’s fine, they DO get used for other things, such as traveling to hotels in the U.S., which I will be doing a LOT with the twins in college 8 hours away.

I was glad to have brought British cash, which I was nervous about after many, many, MANY people said don’t bring cash, no one takes cash, you can’t even use cash, you will not need cash. Everywhere I tried to use cash did in fact take cash (though I did overhear someone saying they didn’t take cash, at a place where I was not planning to use it). And here were the things we absolutely needed cash for: tipping housekeeping at hotels; tipping at restaurants that did not have a thingie for adding a tip; tipping the tour guides and drivers; giving money to panhandlers/buskers; paying to use a bathroom that cost 50p and had a little box and no other way to pay. Here were things I LIKED having cash for: buying a few postcards at a somewhat dicey little shop; putting a small donation in a box at a church we were touring, which asked for a donation if you wished to take photos; having the leftover cash as pleasing little souvenirs. I wish I’d used cash for MORE things, so that I would have had enough pound and two-pound coins to give to all the children to keep.

Speaking of tipping, that was another thing I kept hearing, which was that tipping Was Not Done in England and in fact Should Not Be Done as it indicated some sort of class insult. Perhaps it was that we were only in touristy areas, but tipping was Absolutely Done, as I was glad some of you had already told me. The travel agent in fact gave us what we all considered pretty wildly-high estimates of what we should tip tour guides and tour-bus drivers, which we did not follow but we DID tip, and I think the wildly-high estimates made us tip higher than we otherwise would have. But it was true that restaurants were different: sometimes the tip was added automatically, but it was an amount we’d consider unacceptably low in the U.S., like 5% or 10%; sometimes there was no way to add a tip to the credit-card payment, and I was nervous about leaving cash on the table because I wondered if that was okay. There were no taxis big enough for all of us and our luggage, so we took TWO taxis from the airport to our first hotel, and Paul’s taxi had a way to add a tip but mine did not. And we were not CONSTANTLY ASKED for tips the way it has started to happen in the U.S., where for example there is a tipping option even if you buy something up at the cash register where no tipping should be expected.

I was very glad to have a HAT. I don’t normally wear a hat or like hats, but I remembered other times when I was outside for much of the day (typically I am The Indoors Type), and I don’t have bangs so my forehead can get pretty pink/freckly even if I use sunscreen; and also I wear glasses which makes sunglasses tricky (I do know about prescription and transition lenses, but I’ve tried them and I don’t like them), so the sun glare can be irritating. When I saw a $10 grey cap with an embroidered daisy (I can’t find it online because there’s no brand on it, but it’s similar in appearance to this one) at T.J. Maxx, and it was big enough to fit not only my big head but also the bulk of a casual-French-twist hairstyle, I bought it—and I used it often and was glad to have it.

Perhaps it goes without saying that I was also glad to have sunscreen. I used it relentlessly, and STILL ended up with a little bit of a tan on my arms/neck.

I brought my trekking poles but did not use them; I felt too self-conscious, and also felt like they’d be burdens to carry around when I wasn’t using them. (They were GREAT, though, when I was visiting my parents and we did a lot of hiking: my knees appreciated not only the support but also the stabilization.) (Also: I saw LOTS of tourists using them, so I think I would bring them again next time.) I did however wear and HUGELY appreciate the Incrediwear knee sleeve/brace (I got the grey one in XXL) commenter Katrina recommended, which I bought not only because of her personal recommendation of it but also because she said her physical therapist recommended it and uses it herself. I found it snugly comfy and comforting on my knee, and frankly I thought it looked surprisingly sporty and even cute emerging from the bottom of my shorts.

I did buy compression socks, and then didn’t use them. I bought them because a number of people mentioned using them, but then I thought, “Wait. Have my legs/feet ever swelled or been uncomfortable on a flight?” and no, they have not. And I was going to be wearing shorts on the plane. And it all seemed like too much, in the stress of the final packing. So I didn’t wear them, and I have put them aside with our suitcases in case I want/need them in the future.

I was glad to have brought a list of ADDRESSES! I wanted to send postcards! And I regret not sending MORE postcards, but (1) it was 2 pounds 20 pence per stamp, and (2) I didn’t find a place to buy stamps until the last few days of the trip. But I was still glad to have BROUGHT the addresses, and would do so again in the future, because now I know for sure that I LOVE sending postcards and would like to do more of that next time, and now I know that I did not feel AFTER the purchase of the stamps that it hadn’t been worth it.

Okay, I think that’s all my packing notes for now. Next up: Things That Were Surprising in England, and/or Things I Bought as Souvenirs, and/or Things We Ate!

Good morning, we are back from England! I have coffee brewing in my own coffee pot and a second load of laundry in the washing machine!

Since I am unpacking right now, I am going to jot down some notes about packing: what we used, what we didn’t use, what we wished we’d had, etc. When people gave us advice ahead of time, I noticed it was EXTREMELY MIXED: one person’s “Make sure you bring X” was another person’s “Don’t waste space bringing X.” My newly cosmopolitan conclusion is this: it makes much more sense to use phrasings such as “We found X essential” or “We thought we’d use X but we didn’t” (as opposed to saying OTHER PEOPLE won’t need it or OTHER PEOPLE will find it essential), ESPECIALLY if there is some information about WHY—because people vary enormously, and people’s travel experiences vary enormously, and one person’s “Didn’t need it, didn’t want it, didn’t use it” is another person’s “We relied on it for our happiness.”

For example: a coworker told me NOT to bring a dress for Tea, because their family packed dresses and never used them. Fortunately for me, she added a Why: instead of the dresses, they just wore their Nicer Clothes, like trousers and blouses. Well, I do not even OWN trousers or blouses. So I brought a dress, and I wore it not once but twice: once to a fancy tea, and once to an unexpected dinner at the kind of place where one does not wear a graphic t-shirt and cargo shorts. And I am making a resolution for the future to purchase at least one semi-dressy outfit: pants nicer than jeans or cargo shorts; shirt nicer than a t-shirt.

Many, many people told me raincoats were ESSENTIAL. And I would say this: raincoats would have been nice to have, because it rained at least a little bit almost every single day, and often rained on-and-off all day. But I was not going to buy seven raincoats for a single trip (well, six raincoats: Rob is grown and can buy his own raincoat if he wants one) (but he’s RECENTLY grown, so we were trying to help cover some of his expenses for this trip, and raincoats acquired for the trip would have been something I would have included him in), and although several times I envied people who had raincoats, I did not wish I’d bought seven (six) (seven) raincoats; and right now I am glad not to be trying to find space in the house for them. Also: I don’t know about you, but if I wear a raincoat when I don’t need a raincoat, I find it hot/oppressive. We did bring some of those $1.79 emergency ponchos, and a couple of us used them when there was a serious downpour, but most of us just got wet and/or used umbrellas. If we were to start traveling regularly to places where it tends to rain pretty much every day, I would likely buy raincoats; if any of us already owned raincoats, I would have brought them along; if only two of us were going on the trip instead of seven of us, I would have bought them.

Shoes, though. I was trying to pack light, but I should absolutely have brought two pairs, because my sneakers kept getting wet—and would have gotten wet even if I’d been wearing a raincoat. It would have been very nice to have a dry pair to wear while the other pair was drying. (Fellow travelers from my group strongly recommend good supportive sandals instead, and I can see how sensible that would be, but I cannot stannnnnnnnnnd the feeling of dusty feet, it makes me truly deep-down physically miserable, so this is from my sneakers-wearing point of view.) I was glad I hadn’t bought new special walking shoes for the trip, because sneakers were fine; again, if we started regularly traveling, I might want to invest in something different/better, but I was glad not to have bought seven (six) new pairs of shoes, or to be trying to find space in the house for them now.

I’d been planning to pack umbrellas, but I took the advice of commenters Em and Sophie who suggested buying souvenir umbrellas in England, and this was great: it was fun to choose them, and the commenters were correct that the umbrellas were inexpensive (7-10 pounds) and cute and readily available. I bought one subtle tones-of-grey London skyline and one British flag pattern, and if anything I wish I’d bought a third.

I was very glad to have a little travel bottle of Febreze, because I used it on my damp sneakers and on clothing I wanted to wear again.

I was very glad to have some laundry detergent with us (my sister-in-law put travel Tide in our stockings at Christmas), so that I could wash clothes in the sink. Even things I’d thought I’d brought plenty of, such as socks, ran out because I got sweaty/wet more often than I’d expected.

I will have to go back and look, but I don’t think anyone mentioned that we should bring allllllll the less-drowsy Dramamine we thought we’d need plus perhaps two extra bottles. We ran out (I had budgeted for the plane, but had forgotten to budget for bus excursions), and I went to half a dozen stores and could not find it. All I could find (and I had to ask at a pharmacy for it, because they kept it behind the counter) was something called Stugeron 15 (cinnarizine) which one kid said did not work well and made them very sleepy. Fortunately I’d brought plenty of motion sickness patches, which I originally tried only because Chrissy Teigen said on Twitter that they worked, and they DO seem to work; they don’t work as thoroughly as Dramamine, but I can use them for shorter and/or less problematic travel.

I was glad I’d brought plenty of benadryl and melatonin; the jet lag was rough, and also some of us have trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places. I was glad some commenters mentioned that we would not be able to buy hydrocortisone cream in England; I tossed a tube into my suitcase, and we DID end up using it: one kid got some sort of mystery hive, and another kid got a little rash on their arm.

This is just going to have to be a series of posts, because look how long this is already, and all I have covered is rain gear and laundry stuff and medications and shoes.

Yesterday evening, as I was locking up, the door out to the garage was being difficult, so I pulled it back and shut it again with more firmness. This caused a breeze that knocked a nearby spider out of its web and onto the floor. As I prepared to scream and run (I ALLOW spiders, but I do not want them SKITTERING TOWARD ME), a much, much larger spider came darting out from behind a shelf, grabbed the fallen, struggling spider, and dragged it back behind the shelf. I think I’ve mentioned that when I was a young child my dad was a pastor; immediately I began thinking of how to build a sermon around this incident.

As my, let’s call it agitation, ramps up before the England trip (last night I sent myself five emails from my phone between 10:02 and 10:44, as I kept thinking of more things after going to bed), I am once again practicing the art and science of separating Nice from Important.

Wouldn’t it be nice to come home to a clean house after an exhausting vacation? Oh it certainly would! But if I don’t get to it, that is not Important: the messy house might be Less Nice to come home to, but that’s fine. It’s not WRONG to spend an extra ten minutes bleaching/scrubbing the shower before work, especially when it’s too early to pack and my agitation needs something to occupy it; and definitely I know from experience I will fervently thank myself for anything I DO do—but it’s not Important. Even if the shower mildew Took Charge in our absence, and I came home and saw it and felt like crying, I would nevertheless manage to bleach the hell out of it, and all would once again be well. (Still, I was glad I got around to cleaning our shower, and that the kids were managed into cleaning theirs.)

It would be Nice if we could remember to toss all the perishables before we go. But if we forget, or if tossing them in the trash would mean the trash would be revolting to come home to, then that’s not Important: we can toss out some moldy sour cream when we get home, we can pour out the iffy milk when we get home. It would be really, really nice if I would remember to wash out the coffee pot and leave it in the drying rack; but if I don’t, and I come home to week-and-a-half old coffee, I will wash it out then. Coming home is going to be a giant to-do list no matter what, and I have the next day off from work.

There are already some items that it turns out we are Just Not Going To Acquire, despite being told to acquire them (for example, several days before the trip, the travel agency said many places won’t allow backpacks so each of us should have a smaller bag; that does not appear likely to happen), and some of those things are making me nervous—but if we desperately regret not having them, we can acquire them in England. It’s not important that we get them ahead of time; it might not be important to acquire them at all. I’m remembering when a child went to camp, and the camp list said they HAD to have rain boots, were absolutely REQUIRED to have rain boots, and we did NOT have much spare money so I was very grateful to find some at 75% off at Target, and the child did not wear them one single time at camp.

But leaving an authorization (for emergency cat/home repairs) for the cat-sitter is Important. Making sure windows/doors are closed and locked is Important. Bringing Edward’s essential medications and Elizabeth’s Epi-pens is Important. Our passports and driver’s licenses are Important: if we forget those, we CANNOT GO.

Then there are some things that are in the middle: they’re Important, but they’re manageable in an emergency, and/or the consequences might be Quite Unpleasant But Not Life/Trip-Threatening. Having enough cat food and cat litter in the house is in this category. Sure, in a true emergency (oh no, raccoons broke in and ate all the cat food!!) the cat-sitter could go to the store and buy some, but we REALLY DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO ASK HER TO DO THAT, so acquiring plenty of both items was a priority and has been accomplished. Running the dishwasher and/or washing dishes and/or getting all dishes out of the kids’ rooms is likewise in this category: no one would die, and the trip would still happen, but the nasty dishes/aromas/flies would be so very unpleasant to come home to and have to deal with.