Quips from Kay

I want to take you with me again and this time we are going to London to explore that fabulous city. By now I had become rather confident about riding the train and I wanted to see the Tower of London, so off I went. Going to London and not seeing the Tower is like going to New York and not seeing the Statue of Liberty. Of course, we all know the Tower is the place where Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey and a bunch of others lost their heads. For a few moments there I thought maybe I had lost mine, in a manner of speaking. The first thing I learned was that the Tower is actually a castle and the only one in the city of London. I got on a riverboat with at least fifty people and rode up the River Thames looking at interesting sights, some which I had read about and some I'd never heard of. The "freeman", as those who work the ferries call themselves, gave a great running commentary on everything we passed. He had a delightful accent which told me he was from the East End of Lon...

I want to continue taking you with me around England so next we are going to Guildford, down the road a piece from Cobham. In 2014, as I have told you before, while visiting my daughter and her husband, I traveled around by train to see parts of that country. Guildford is south of London on the Wey River and there is a very old castle there. (well, they're all old, aren't they?)  What I thought would be a small old city turned out to be a huge modern one with this poor old castle clinging to the side of a hill, but with beautiful well-kept grounds around it. There are no available tours of the inside of the castle. The train station was so far from where I wanted to go that when I got there I took a taxi to the castle. There are little shops and neighborhoods which are interesting but the city was just too big for my liking. I ate at a place called Bill's and had Eggs Royale which is poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and salmon over sour dough bread. It was very good but,...

The Prince of Wales owns all the whales The Queen owns all the swans. The Prime Minister looks very sinister and no one wants the snails.

 Here's an account of my adventures on August 6, 2014. I decided to go to Claremont Landscape Gardens, one of England's Historical Trust sites. They're like our national parks. This one is right outside Cobham where my daughter lived. It was created by the Duke of Newcastle in about 1738 and it's really beautiful. Not WOW beautiful, but GOLLY-GEE beautiful! The royals used to go there to "get away" from it all. This one doesn't have any big flower gardens, mostly just lovely lawns, lakes and trees. I did get to see a strange bird called a "coot". I think God was laughing when he made that one. I remember a phrase about "the old coot" when they wanted to insult someone and I recently heard a lady remark that her grandfather was as bald as a coot. I will try to insert a photo of one. My patient son-in-law dropped me off at Claremont and the plan, once again, was for me to catch the bus back into Cobham where he could pick me up. Well, I f...