THE FIRST LONG DAY

After landing at Heathrow, taking the tube to Earl's Court and checking our bags at the secure baggage closet at our hotel, we headed back to the Underground, and deciphered the train route to King's Cross. We had another leg of our trip to start already.

We got to the train station and instead of doing things the easy way, by going to the automated ticket counter, my dad insisted on waiting in line and speaking to the ticket agents, who told him information he already knew. We got our tickets to Grantham, England, and went to the spartan food court to get something of substance. The beginning of my frustrations with my mom emerged because she took literally ten minutes to get a buttered bagel. She didn't understand the money because she didn't take the two minutes to look at the currency in her guidebook, and we made the train with less than a minute until takeoff. I am hard on my parents, but my mom especially makes it easy to hate being in public with her.

I played with my new camera on the hourlong train ride, and my family tried to take a nap. The only other person in our car was directly across from us, and he and I started talking. You know the "where-are-you-froms." He said he was the head homicide investigator from Leeds, heading back home after a week in London investigating the murder of that female police officer who was shot in the back on her daughter's birthday. He said Leeds is the third largest city in the country and had a lot of crime. The July London bombers where from there, he said. I do not envy his job.

We got to Grantham and took a cab 2 miles to the castle Ray stayed in, Harlaxton. Built by a guy named Gregory Gregory, to out castle a nearby rival. There's a gold room. It has been retrofitted to house a couple hundred students, so some of it is less castle and more dorm, but it's still pretty flippin' surreal to live in a castle. We got the tour and then called a cab because we had to make a certain train.

We got back to London and had an afternoon meal at Casa Mama, an Italian restaurant we found. We had tried two pubs but it was between 3 and 5, and they don't serve food in that window. Plus my mom and sister don't like many kinds of food, so Italian it almost always is. I had the best lasagna I've every had; I have not had Mary's yet.

It started pouring and so after I fell asleep at the table, we stumbled back to the tube and to our hotel. We went down for a 3 hour nap. Long 36 hours....

WHAT A CARVER

I went to Boston Market today for lunch and the cashier, as I was hawing about which side item to order, interrupted me. "I'm sorry for the ignorant people," she said. I looked around and saw only two other people, an Asian father who couldn't speak English and his adult son, who could. I hadn't heard a word out of them. So I didn't know if she was calling them ignorant, or me, who lightheartedly said "damnit" when she told me, that at 2:01 I was too late for the lunch special. I just thought the whole thing was odd.