“What I Did on My Summer Vacation”

I have recently returned from a two-week whirlwind tour of England. I started in the north and worked my way south, finishing with a day and a bit in London before flying home. I was able to spend several days each with three friends I hadn’t seen in eons. I ate too much, I drank too much, and I had a wonderful time.

Of course, I now find myself in need of a ‘vacation from my vacation’, but never mind.

For those of you who are not aware (apologies to those who are,) I spent two non-consecutive years in England during my college career. Thanks to the internet, I still have relationships with several people over that side, and I decided it was high time to pay them a visit. It had been too long. They had all gotten married, and had babies who were now old enough to be left with a sitter if we wanted some grown-up time, and moved around the country to places I hadn’t been before.

Yeah, okay, I thought. Now seems like a pretty good time to do this.

‘Now’ being a year from when I had the original thought. Booking international flights needs to be done forever in advance, and when you’re planning to visit people you want to give them as much notice as possible, especially when they have small humans to be dealing with. Emails were sent. Dates were negotiated. Flights were booked.

And then I sat around for months with people asking me if I was excited to be going, and I would respond, “Oh, yeah, that. It’s months away. I’ll get excited later.”

And then suddenly it was a few weeks away and I realized I needed a raincoat. And a bunch of other stuff because I’m a girl and sometimes I like shiny things, okay? Anyway, a flurry of Amazon orders later, I was ready to go.

And go I did. For sixteen days.

I was as far north as Kendal and as far south as Staplehurst. I was in the Midlands. I covered a whole lot of ground in between — on trains. Lots and lots of trains. So many trains. Side note: trains in the UK are so much better than trains in the US. They actually get you to where you need to go in a reasonable amount of time. It’s amazing! It’s as though they were built just for that purpose! But I digress.

I just spent two weeks with people I don’t get to see, like, ever. It was awesome.

I miss a lot of things about England. I miss the ease of transportation and the junk food and spending time in the pub. I miss places and things, but mostly I miss the friends I made there. I didn’t have the funds or the time to make it to their weddings. Their babies were born without a visit from their American auntie. A lot can happen in a decade, and a lot got missed because there were a few thousand miles between them and me. It’s kind of a bummer when you think about it.

But, I was just able to spend two whole weeks there and I am thrilled about it.

I got to scramble up a hill in the Lake District before a quick change of venue which led me to tootling around the city of York where I was able to see the Minster that figured so heavily in my college art history textbooks, and the city walls, and The Shambles (the street they based Diagon Alley on in the Harry Potter films), with a little side trip to the beautifully kept grounds and gardens of Castle Howard.

I got to have tea at the restaurant in the newly rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Company theatre followed by a performance of the current RSC production of Macbeth on a standing-room-only ticket (which was super lucky because it’s pretty much sold out for the remainder of its run in Stratford-Upon-Avon before it transfers to the Barbican in London). I got to visit to a really stellar butterfly farm and wander around the Cotswolds.

I got to go for a really nice walk in the Kentish countryside with an impromptu visit to a farm shop, and to spend some time at Leeds Castle (which isn’t in Leeds at all), and then there was a brief meander around in a building housing over eight thousand teapots and a town full of shops selling goods made by UK-based artists and craftsmen.

But the best part of all was that I got to share all of those experiences with friends I cherish. I guess what I’m saying with all of this is that friendships take persistence, and sometimes they also take uncomfortably long airplane trips. But they’re worth it. I try to live by the mantra, “We make time for what’s important to us,” and this was me making time. I’m really glad I did. Who knows? If I hadn’t done it, maybe everything would have quietly drifted further and further apart until these friendships were nothing but memories. Happy ones, but memories nonetheless.

But instead I decided that memories weren’t good enough.

Next time, though? They can suffer through eleven hours of pretending to be an airborne sardine…



***You will probably get more thoughts from this trip in the future, so stay tuned. Unless you don’t care, in which case, whatever.***