Gulliver's Ramblings

Since we never finished blogging Normandy before leaving for England, I sort of feel like Gulliver, tied down with my feet in two different countries; France and England.  I suppose it would be fitting if the left were in France and the right was in England..  Anyway, there are hundreds out there (well, maybe dozens, okay, one or two) readers still interested in pictures from both trips.  There may be some “first timers” visiting the blog from the England trip so we’ll lean on that foot first..

MFO and I returned last night about midnight from from England.  We did get a new stamp in our well worn passport as our inbound route took us through Frankfurt (another story for that proverbial other time).  As an interesting aside, it is clever how international airports just happen to be arranged so that your path to the gates takes you through multiple “Duty Free” zones manned by painted ladies at the makeup/perfume vendors and charming manly young dudes at the liquor stores.  So your gate may be hundreds of yards from you (after you suffer security) trying to relieve you of whatever currency is appropriate to that country.

Anyway, since this is allegedly a food blog (really) I will brush on a foodie topic I noticed throughout our trip.  It concerns breakfast, the first meal of the day.   I'll describe a typical setup for breakfast, this one happens to be in our first hotel in Salisbury.

 

With very slight variation this is what we saw everywhere.  There are usually a couple of tables, one containing juices, fruits of some sort, granola, and so forth

and another that will have pastries, cold meats, cheeses (ranging from real blocks to cellophane wrapped stuff),  and then a steam table with hot buffet

This one happened to have all the items covered 

To help you figure it out, they provided a road map

 

 

Which is convenient (not only for this breakfast) but because it provides a complete list of the items contained on the hot breakfast buffets we saw throughout England.  Always

So you make either one or two trips through the lines (I usually tended to do two) taking your first choices of cold

(cold sliced ham, salami, cheese extracted from that red wax coatin)

 

And another trip to get hot items

(my normal fried egg, bacon, black pudding, and a sausage)

 

Coffee or tea would be supplied by the servers.  I usually went through twice, but you could of load up your plate like a contractor at an AYCE place.

While not shown, the scrambled eggs usually were a grainy, watery consistency as if out of a carton, the “Rosti” potatoes were a great imitation of McDonalds hash browns, always in a triangular shape, and the mushrooms were quite well received as were the tomatoes.  I don’t believe I ever saw any of our group with the baked beans.  The fried eggs varied as to how long they were under the heat lamp, rendering the yolk from runny to solid, the sausage was of a very fine consistency, the black pudding usually firm, and then there was the bacon.  They normally referred to it as “back bacon” and what is pictured was very common.  It had the remarkable quality of little bits of it finding all those small crevices in your teeth providing you with endless prying of your tongue or driving you to the use of a toothpick.

Once you found your stride, it provided a hearty breakfast to start your day.  Every day.

My whole point (yes, I do have one) of this is that this menu was found in every place we were.  Same stuff, everywhere.  Which makes a lot of sense somehow and seems appropriate for the British,  with their rich tradition, history, and consistency.  Know what you expect and you get it..

There was however, a complete reversal of form when it came to….. the bathroom.  The variation in the contrivance to get your daily shower was astonishing.  Knobs here, levers there, dials, clickers, faucets, sliding things, endless schemes.  Every day was an adventure to obtain your morning shower.  I found a good trick was to say “oh, go ahead dear, you go first” and after the shrieks resulting from boiling or iced water subsided, your shower was adjusted pretty well.  And since this is getting long, I won’t dwell on the slippery bottoms of tubs that are always at least a foot above the regular floor, causing you to make the step of death getting out..

Anyway, that was all part of the adventure, and why you travel away from home.  We’ll get back to business next time as we did have some excellent meals (yes, we’re still talking England here).

Speaking of excellent meals, take a guess which country this is from..

In all cases we were

DFD