June 2005
In honour of Kassie's eighth birthday, which in England falls without fail during the Whit half-term break, we made a quick trip to London.
London
After driving down in the morning, we spent the afternoon of our first day in London exploring Oxford Street. As Kassie and John travelled at a snail's pace seated at the top of a double decker bus – Kassie's dream for some time now – I nipped into a few shops to find most of them in chaos due to a power cut. Luckily by the time we were to meet at Selfridges, the doors were once again open. After making the long, hot climb to the third floor, Kassie proclaimed her relief that the store had re-opened and then proceeded to complain about the "dead boring" ride she'd just had on a London bus.
The next day we visited the London Zoo in misty rain, and in the evening Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and Leicester Square, where we managed to find an antique map of pre-Trianon Hungary and dined at our current favourite London eatery, Browns.
Charlecote Park
On the way back from London we stopped off near Stratford to visit Charlecote Park, home to the Lucy family for over 800 years. Queen Elizabeth I spent two nights at Charlecote in 1572, and rumour has it that Shakespeare, who was caught poaching the estate deer, was arrested and sentenced by Sir Thomas Lucy, whom the playwright later ridiculed in his plays. For me, Charlecote is the marital home of Mary Elizabeth Lucy, whose memoirs are published in Mistress Of Charlecote, an engaging read for those interested in the lives of 19th-century women.