Our first foray into cottages was a few years ago when another couple travelled with us to England. We decided that it would be better for us to have a two bedroom cottage than to have to pay for two hotel rooms. So with that in mind, Marsha went on a search.
She found Updown Cottage and we knew by the information provided that it was going to be special. Updown Cottage is situated on …
Take a look at this typical street sign from London. Notice anything? That’s right, it doesn’t say London! How can that be? I’m in London, right?
Well, yes and no. London is not a “planned” city with everything neat and tidy. According to legend, as told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, London was first founded by Brutus of Troy in about 1000-1100 B.C. Geoffrey also said that an early king in the area was named …
Let us talk money, in particular, currency. We don’t mean the actual expenses of the trip but, rather, the current currency in the United Kingdom. We’re talking pounds and pence.
The currency of the UK is the British Pound Sterling, or just the Pound. Another slang term for it is a “quid.” The symbol for the Pound is “£.” The Pound is divided into 100 pence, abbreviated with “p” and pronounced “pee.” In folding money, …
You are in England, at the airport, have passed through His Majesty’s Customs and have entered into the Arrivals area of the airport. What will you see? What is next?
First, you’ll see a couple of hundred people holding up signs with names of people, or companies, or organizations, written or printed on paper, or on an electronic tablet. 
If you have booked a driver to take you somewhere (we’ll touch on that subject later.) …
On one of our journeys in 2016, we wanted to spend some time in Kent, a county in the South East of England we had previously only visited briefly. Arriving at our rented cottage we asked the owner where we could get a good meal and she recommended The George, in Molash. Having some sightseeing to do first we didn’t get to The George until the third day. Being Americans who tend to eat dinner …
In Part One we covered two options on when to fly to London Heathrow airport. The two options are what we call the “lost day” and the “red-eye” flight. For the details, go back to that post. Bottom line, if you fly all day, you end up losing that day just in travel. But the good news about the lost day plan is that we can just go to bed, have a nice long …
(UPDATE: I have updated this article to get the most recent schedule for flights and to add multi-leg journeys. The original article only considered non-stop flights.)
Let’s take a look at the subject of flights from the US to London. We live near the Washington, DC area so the focus will be on that area as we know it pretty well, but we have looked at other cities (Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and …
Not every trip to England is all about London. Don’t miss an opportunity to get outside of London to visit some fantastic sights: Windsor Castle, Winchester for the cathedral; Portsmouth for the D-Day Tapestry; Bath for the Roman Baths, the Abbey, the Royal Crescent and Jane Austen Museum; the city of York for Yorkminster and the Shambles; the Yorkshire Downs, Lake District and the Peak District for scenic beauty; Land’s End, Penzance, Salisbury, Stoke-on-Trent, Chester, …
(UPDATE: This post was made back in 2018 and since then the economic culture in the UK has shifted quite a bit. Today, in 2024, cash is used much less than before. In fact, some businesses are now cash-free, that is, they ONLY accept credit/debit cards. And virtually everywhere now takes credit cards, using the “tap and pay” cards with smart chips in them for speed. However, you will use some cash for things like …
Let’s talk electricity. It is something that we think we know, but then it turns out maybe we don’t know so much after all.
Here in the US the standard electricity in home use is 120v/60Hz. (Hz is the standard abbreviation for “Hertz,” which is a measure of frequency.) What that standard means is that the voltage varies between plus 120 volts and minus 120 volts 60 times each second. So, devices made for use …