Recently, my wife, two daughters, and I returned from a two-week visit to the United Kingdom. This note describes where we went and what we did.

We left on June 9th from the Atlanta Airport. As with most U.S.-European flights, it started in the late afternoon, and arrived early the next morning. The carrier was British Air, and aside from densely-packed seating, the flight featured decent food and two movies. We landed at Gatwick and took the Gatwick Express train to London's Victoria Station and lugged our bags to the nearby Royal Westminster hotel. It was only 8:00am, and we hoped to be able to check our bags and do a little exploring until our room was available. However, we were told that the room was already vacated and, as soon as it was made up, we could have it. While this was happening, we left our two teenage daughters in the lobby and walked back to Victoria Station to buy passes for the Underground. Although they both occupy the same site, the Underground station and the train station are administered separately, and we had to locate the Underground office to explore our ticketing options. And there were several, but not the three-day pass we were looking for. We ended up with three one-day passes, which meant making sure we used the right ones at the right time, but otherwise worked fine.

When we got back to the hotel, we found that the girls were no longer in the lobby, but, in fact, had been encouraged to go up to the now-ready room where they were fast asleep. On a previous trip to London two years ago, my wife and I had tried the "stay awake all the first day"; technique to adjust our internal clocks. Although this worked well for us, our teenagers, who routinely sleep fourteen hours when given the chance, were completely conked out. We knew however that if we slept too long, we would be awake in the middle of the night with nothing to do, so we opted for the "two-hour nap" technique, which worked about as well as the other.

London is a great place to visit, and we had had difficulty selecting what to see. On the previous trip, we were there for a week and experienced no real disappointments. This time, we only had three days, and we wanted to mix the best of the old with some new sites as well. We opted for the Tower of London on the first afternoon. On the first trip, we had found the Beefeaters and their stories fascinating, but the Crown Jewels only okay. The girls however had just the opposite impression. Unwilling to fight their way to the front of the tour group to hear the Beefeaters' tales, their eyes lit up when viewing the coronation of Elizabeth and the accompanying opulence.

As with our previous trip, we opted for a convenient, inexpensive, first-night, American-style dinner in Victoria Station, saving the more typical London fare for later days when it would be more appreciated. Victoria Station has an adjacent mall with a food court featuring many options including, both fast food and sit-down. We chose the latter, ate a satisfactory meal, walked to the hotel, and had a long night's sleep.

The next morning, we had breakfast in the Victoria Station mall, in one of the several pastry shops there, and then went to Madame Tussard's. This is one of the most popular attractions in London, and we had not seen it on our previous trip. I would definitely recommend buying tickets in advance, for example, at the Tourist Information center at Victoria Station. We did not do this and so had to queue for one-half hour before getting in. I suspect that Madame Tussard's is not for all tastes, but everyone seemed to be having a good time having their picture taken with celebrity re-creations. And the section where they described how the figures were made was fascinating.

After Madame Tussard's, we wanted to show the girls Westminster Abbey, a highlight of our previous trip. Unfortunately, when we got there, the most interesting parts, Poet's Corner and the whole back half, were temporarily closed. This meant missing the graves of people like T.S. Elliot who the girls had just finished studying in school, but also Edward the Confessor and Mary, Queen of Scots. However, a highlight, which I had missed on the previous trip was the marker for Edward Halley, uniquely modern and appropriate to his scientific contributions. We finished the day introducing the girls to Tanduri Indian food, a London specialty, by eating at the Buckingham Palace Balti restaurant on Westminster street, near the hotel. We had tried to find Temple Tanduri, recommended by this newsgroup, but it was not listed in the phone book.

On the 11th, we went to the National Gallery and Covent Garden. The Gallery has a large collection covering a wide range of art. We could not hope to cover it all, but we particularly enjoyed the Impressionist paintings in the modern section. We had lunch in the Gallery's Cafe. I knew the girls would like to shop at Covent Gardens, and the various street entertainers were also interesting. We spent the afternoon there before taking the Underground to Nottinghill Station for Fish and Chips at Geals. This restaurant was also recommended by the newsgroup, and we had eaten there on our previous trip. Once again, it served up excellent fare.

The next morning, we took a taxi with our luggage to Paddington Station where we caught a train to Worcester in the Cotswolds. We were going to be staying in a rented house in Broadway, and Worcester was the nearest place where we could pick up a rented car. The trip, on the always-pleasant British Rail system, took about two hours. At the Worcester station, we got another taxi to the Avis rental-car location, only to learn that they had never heard of us. We had booked the car through an organization called Auto-Europe, who had never told Avis about us. However, there were plenty of cars available, and we crammed our luggage and ourselves in, ready to experience driving on the left-hand side of the road for the first time. Not only are cars smaller in Europe, but they invariably have manual transmissions. I have lots of experience with this, but always shifting with my right hand. However, shifting was not a problem, and neither was remembering which lane to use, what with three vocal passengers helping. Actually, the most difficult parts were not drifting too close to the curb on the left and navigating the roundabouts. These ubiquitous intersections are best managed by remembering the rules of yielding to everyone on your right, and, if you don't have time to read the sign indicating which outward spoke to take, go around again.

Before leaving Avis, I invested in several road maps, one of the Cotswolds and one of the U.K. These proved invaluable, and we were able to find our way to Broadway and our rented house without incident. We were joined in Broadway by several other family members, including my father-in-law, his wife, her daughter, my brother-in-law, and his girl friend. The nine of us fit nicely into the five bedroom house, complete with awesome kitchen, living room with fire place, laundry room (!!!), and barbecue pit. Of course the house conformed stylistically with all of the other buildings in the Cotswolds, particularly, the yellow stone, slate roofs, and beautiful gardens.

On the 14th, we had tickets for the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon to see Hamlet. We got there early, picked up our tickets, and then wandered the town, having a pub lunch in the Rose & Crown. Although the service was a little slow, the food fine was fine, including our first taste of what would turn out to be a trip highlight: the fresh-baked bread.

The production of Hamlet was initially a little off-putting, set as it was in the 1920's. But we soon were drawn in by the powerful acting and directing. Also, even though our seats were in the rear, we had no trouble seeing or hearing. We all concluded afterwards, that it was the best Shakespeare we had ever experienced.

One of the things that we really wanted to do on this trip was to experience the countryside by hiking, and the Cotswolds gave us plenty of opportunities for this. On the 15th, we chose the nearby town of Chipping Campden as the starting point for a hike. We had a written description of the landmarks to look for, and we were able to find our way successfully for the first half of the hike. But we soon made a "wrong" turn which eventually led us to a beautiful picnic site. We later learned what our mistake was, but we were not sorry that we had made it.

The 16th was another day for hiking, this one more ambitious. We drove South to Bristol on the "M" (the equivalent of the Interstate highway) and went over the bridge into Wales. We left one car at Chepstow Castle and crammed in together to drive to Tinturn Abbey. This site had been immortalized in a poem by Wordsworth, and we spent several hours wandering beautiful grounds and reading the plaques describing life in an abbey in the Middle Ages. The hike to Chepstow started across the street and was well-marked the whole way. It followed the Wye valley and featured awesome views, shaded walks, and up-close-and-personal meetings with sheep. It was mostly downhill and led us back to our car at the Castle. While the men retrieved the other cars back at the Abbey, the women visited a nearby pub. After we reconvened, we spent some time visiting the Castle before returning to Broadway. Definitely one of the highlight days of the trip.

The next day featured another trip highlight, a visit to Blenheim Palace. Awarded to the Duke of Marlborough for his defeat of the French in Austria and birthplace of Winston Churchill, the Palace mixes tasteful opulence, beautiful grounds (including a classical English hedge maze), a picturesque lake, and a sense of history.

On the 18th we split up, with my daughters going with their Uncle and his girl friend to Stonehenge. Later, they would meet up with my father-in-law, his wife, and her daughter in Bath. My wife and I stayed in Broadway so we could exchange our car for a larger one. Avis was kind enough to deliver the replacement to us, so we did not have to drive back up to Worcester. We did the exchange because we knew we would need more luggage space for our drive to Scotland. On our previous trip, my wife and I had visited Stonehenge and Bath, so after the exchange, we drove to nearby Snowshill ("Snozzle") Manor. Besides pleasant grounds and gardens, the manor featured an impressive collection of hand-made "collectibles". The collector had spent most of his life filling the manor (with armor, chests, model villages, ship models, bicycles, ...) while living in an outbuilding. His criterion seemed to be to preserve artifacts that were no longer being made by hand. The collection was so broad that it was difficult to feel anything but overwhelmed.

Reunited, the whole group went back to Snowshill on the 19th, this time to hike. Although we walked by the manor and the adjacent village, we spent most of our time in sheep meadows yielding impressive views of the English countryside. We returned to Broadway to do wash in preparation for driving to Scotland the next day.

Our drive took a day and a half. The first day was almost entirely on the M going due north. We spent the night in the Bruce Hotel in East Kilbride (outside of Glasgow) and had the best meal of the vacation. The hotel is in the Swallow chain and, in addition to the great food had excellent service and accommodations.

The purpose of the trip to Scotland was to dig up roots. My father-in-laws wife and her daughter were of the Frazier clan, while everyone else but my brother-in-law's girl friend and I derived from the McDonald clan. So we split up with the Fraziers driving to Inverness where they had dinner at a castle with some distant relatives while the rest of us were headed for Glencoe in the highlands.

Once we got off of the M, traveling changed considerably. The roads were quite windy and narrow, sometimes even one lane. If you met another car, one of you pulled over to allow the other to pass. However, the scenery compensated and the roads were well maintained. After several tangents to look in graveyards, we made our way to the King's Cross in Glencoe, Scotland. The King's Cross is ideally situated to view the Glencoe highlands. It features convenience, excellent food, and nightly visits by local deer.

A word of history here. The McDonald clan dominated western Scotland and the adjacent islands for 500 years.

Dominance ended with the Glencoe massacre where British loyalists killed 30 McDonalds after enjoying their hospitality for two weeks. The remaining Glencoe McDonalds escaped in a snowstorm through Hidden Valley, or so the story goes.

In any case, the rolling English hills and forests were replaced by the starker, but no less appealing Scottish mountains. On the 22nd, we went to the Visitor's center to see a video on the massacre and then hiked to Hidden Valley, another trip highlight. There has been some debate about making Hidden Valley, part of the Scottish National Trust more accessible. It had been deeded to the Trust under condition that it not be changed, however a bridge and some trail maintenance has opened it up. I suspect without further trail architecting, such as done in U.S. National parks, the trail will seriously deteriorate.

In the afternoon, we drove into Glencoe proper to visit the memorial to the massacre. The site had been overgrown until an American McDonald, after a disappointing visit, had donated money to resurrect it. Now it is a well-manicured remembrance to a historical episode.

The next day, we drove to the Isle of Skye. Actually, we drove to Mallaig where we took the ferry to Skye. Although there is now a bridge, it connects to the northeast corner of Skye and would have taken us considerable longer to get to our destination, the McDonald Center in Armadale. Within walking distance of the ferry, the center features a museum, abandoned castle, gardens, genealogical library, and hiking trails with a view of the Straight of Sleat, all devoted to the McDonald clan. While my brother-in-law dove into the library books, the rest of us explored the gardens and museum. We reconvened for lunch in the visitor's center before hiking. Although I am sure Skye has much more to offer, the McDonald center itself was worth the drive and the ferry ride.

The Fraziers met us back in Glencoe that evening for a farewell dinner. The next day the four in my immediate family and my brother-in-law and his girl friend were driving to Edinburgh, the other three were headed to the Lake Country for a few days before finishing their vacation in London. My brother-in-law and his girl friend were to meet her father in Edinburgh for a few days, while my family was going to fly out the next morning to the U.S.

The drive eastward across the Scottish countryside was beautiful with a gradual change from the peaks of the highlands to the more open and rolling hills of Argyle. Vistas that must have spanned 50 miles interleaved with lake views to make a pleasant journey ending just over the Firth of Forth bridge outside of Edinburgh.

As our flight was set for 5:30 the next morning, we wanted a hotel near the airport. And we chose another Swallow hotel. Although we wanted to see Edinburgh, exhaustion and a desire to turn in the rental car that day instead of early the next morning confined us to the hotel.

The next morning we were driven to the airport where a short flight took us to Gatwick and then a much longer but uneventful flight back to Atlanta, completing our U.K. adventure.