A quaint & cute town... now we know why the Derbys live there

We were invited by Ken's close friend, Michael Derby, and his fiance, Rachel, to their wedding in the UK.  They live in Winchester, England and their wedding is to be at the Tithe Barn in Petersfield, England near Winchester.  We definitely wanted to be a part of their celebration.

This also gives us an opportunity to see the UK outside of London.   I haven’t  really found the London that many of my friends falls in love with so I wanted to see if I would enjoy the English suburbs and countryside more.

“Recalculating Route…. Why don’t you guys understand my directions?” says the GPS voice.

Before we can get to Winchester though, we had to go through driving hell.  We landed at Heathrow and this is the first time Ken drove outside of North America.   We got to Hertz and the lines moved to a snail's pace but this gave me the opportunity to see all the some of the cars available here.  We were shocked to see some of the car brands that sell into the U.S. having such different and better looking models than the ones in the U.S.   If they had these designs selling in the U.S., I think they might have been more competitive.  I would have considered buying the Ford Focus models that are selling here.

After getting our second car (the first one we found had a broken rear view mirror), we got to drive out of the rental car area.  We put on our GPS and read the instructions a bit since neither of us but neither of us had much experience driving using the GPS tool.   So Ken now needed to learn how to do 4 new things all at once: 1-drive on the right side of the car, 2-how to interpret the GPS, 3- how to navigate the round-abouts with the help of the GPS system,  and 4 - having to drive on very narrow roads.   We have some small round-abouts at home but it’s no where as complicated as the ones in England. It was even hard to know when we had reached a round-about.  It was so stressful and suggest it be a really good test for anyone wanting to try to get onto the Amazing Race or test if their relationship can survive by going through the UK navigate and drive.  “Recalculating route" is what the GPS voice said but I swear she wanted to say "why don’t you guys understand my directions?” .

Somehow after taking many, many wrong turns we made it to Michael and Rachel’s house.  Their house is very cute and they made it very quaint and full of character.   They had a nice English garden with a lot more herbs and veggies.  I liked their non-social cat, Rubie, even if Rubie didn’t like me.  It made me miss my doggies at home, even more than I already did.

We met Michael's friends - Mike V, Liv, and Desmon.  They were cool cats that also came to the wedding. I liked them for their energy, interesting personality, and love  for travel.  Good thing we liked them because we were going to see them quite a few more times during our trip.

On the first day, we lasted til the very late time of 6pm!  We stayed at the Winchester Hotel and it was decent, bordering on boutique but nothing memorable.   Since it was sunny, we pushed ourselves to go out and see some things.  We saw Winchester’s downtown and “main street” -- High Street.  It was small area but full of nice small retail stores.  It was similar to University Ave in Palo Alto except the stores and houses were much older and had much more characters.

At the end of it, we ended up at our first pub called the Gaolhouse and had our first fish & chips. It was like the Denny's of Winchester.  I thought the service was slow and terrible but realized that the protocol in the UK was actually that you order and pay at the bar and they bring the food to you.  I think that’s super efficient and also no tipping needed -- yeah.   Plus, there's the added benefit of nobody constantly trying to pour you water.

It's interesting to realize how ingrained Indian food is in the British society as I saw curry in every pub and English restaurant’s menus, even at the Goal house.

We lasted til we could -- the very late 7pm.  We got to our hotel and just zzzzzzz-ed.  We woke up and tried calling the 24 hour room service multiple times to get no answer.  I started to be a bit wary of customer service in the UK now.

Day 2

Day 2 was a rainy day in Winchester.  We toughed it out and went to a few of the many historic sites of Winchester.    We passed the Gaolhouse at around 9am and already saw a few old gents already drinking beer.  I guess the Brits do have beer for breakfast.   Michael told us later that the same gents show up at the Goalhouse to have beer every day.  And also that the Goalhouse is where people who are watching their pences go for cheap beer and food.   Oh well, I guess that’s how we ended up there too. :-)

We checked out the Winchester Museum and learned that Winchester was first inhabited in the Medieval period.  Winchester had 3 periods before the modern one - the Medieval, the Roman, and  the Saxons (the Germans came).

We also checked out the Cathedral.  It was a large one and the most memorable thing I saw were the tombstones lying on the floor including one of with a soldier in chain-male with his shields and many tombstones lying flat.  One of them supposedly belonged to Jane Austen but we didn’t find it.  Oh well, Pride and Prejudice was always one of my favorite books in school.

We had lunch at a nice pub of course - the Ivy.   It was quaint and had a lot of wood, flowers, and beer/wine.

We then again took it easy and hung around High Street until it was time to go to Mike and Rachel’s for dinner.

We had a fabulous Tex-Mex dinner in England, at Mike and Rachel’s.   We had a great time hanging out with the gang from D.C. too.   We saw how much Michael and Rachel loved each other with very eyes and we learned that “pudding” means dessert, not just pudding when a Brit says it.  So no bread pudding after dinner but very good mouse tarts.

Day 3

Day 3 was a good day in Winchester.  We started out with a great breakfast at the Ivy thanks to the D.C. gang again.  Aren’t they sick of us yet? ;-)

Then the rest of the day, we spent it by doing not much.   We looked to replace my lost laptop charger.  Apparently, it’s harder than I thought.  But at the end, we got one from a PC support shop and this charger is humungous!  I starting to carry a large brick across Europe.

We went on a tour of Winchester College.  It is the oldest boys continually running school  in England.  It has been around for more than 700 years and is a very prestigeous school today.  It was originally set up to give poor children that showed promise an opportunity to be educated and eventually become priests.  There are 70 scholars and 630 regular students.  Students pay, scholars don't. :)  In the old days if the students did not learn they were whipped.  The college itself is completely self contained.  Since the water from the nearby river Itchen was not safe to drink the boys were allowed to drink 3 ½ pints of beer a day.  During the famine the college would be attacked two or three times a year as people broke in trying to get food.  When you go into the dining hall you can see the bars that pulled across to lock the heavy wooden doors to protect themselves.  They still use the original wooden tables in the dining hall and even eat diner off the same square wooden blocks (literally a square of wood).  This is where the saying “a good square meal” came from.  Not surprisingly the school is very conservative and boys are required to go to church each morning for half an hour.  Today boys from all over the world attend the school and paying $30k a year to attend.  They still have 70 scholars from around the world that are on scholarship.

Day 4

On this day, it was about trains, actually steam engine trains to be exact.   But before we could get to see trains, we had to spend time driving on the wrong side of the road again, taking wrong exits on round-abouts, hearing the dreaded  GPS saying “recalculating route”  and ending up at the wrong towns, including Southampton, we made it to the trains.

The trains were very cool especially when you realize that they are completely run by volunteers and how close they let you see everything.  We were allowed to go to the engine room and saw how it operates.  It was also a great photo opportunity of cute train stations and beautiful, lush English countryside.

We spent the night with Michael Derby and his friends on the last night that he was a single man.  It was the first and possibly only Bachelor's party that I've been to. We went to the pub, Bishop at Anchor and had a few beers before going to a nice pizza dinner.  At the part of the bachelor's party I was part of, it as pretty low key.

Day 5

Finally it was Michael and Rachel’s wedding.   It was a rare sunny day and just right for a wedding in the English countryside.  The Tithe Barn is a cool barn and cute place to have a wedding.    People were more dressed up than your usual California wedding.  Luckily we were dressed fairly correct though I had to put a sweater on most of the time due to the cold from the wind.

Michael and Rachel are both very sweet,  personal able, and make a cute couple.  Well their wedding certainly reflects their personality.  It was simple but very unforgettable because of the sweet personal touches that Michael and Rachel added.   On each table, there was a menu-like folder that had small snippets of everyone at the table.   It was a great way for each of us to get to know each other.

Rachel was in a gorgeous champagne lace wedding gown and Michael was in a great tux with a flower shirt that is so very “Michael Derby”.

The wedding food was declicious BBQ, not Texas style, but British style!   They had 2 cakes including the surfboard cakes which of course Ken liked the most.

There was dancing afterwards and a few had lots to drink.  Everyone looked like they were having lots of fun.  Rachel and Michael and their family made beautiful, touching speeches.  Rachel and Micahel also performed a great theatrical dance number that had everyone in awe.   They must have practiced a lot but where did they find the time?  Hmmm……I got to do my “pimp in a snowboard boots” dance.  I’ll have to show you what that’s like later. ;-)

Day 6 in England and Day 1 in Rome

Day 6 is travel day, from England to Rome.   We did spend a good amount of it driving to the Hertz rental car company in Heathrow airport though seeing if they had my chargers but of course they didn’t.  They also made no comment about why a big rental car company located in one of the world’s largest airports refuses to answer customer phone calls!

I almost got killed at Hertz of course because I opened a car door as a car was zooming by right behind us.

We got to the Stanstead Airport just fine and this airport is for low cost airlines such as Ryanair.  We did get our tickets for 2 pounds, though airport fees, check-in luggage fees, and taxes made it about 60 pounds a person.  But hey… still a pretty good deal I say!

The flight itself was hilarious.  Everyone was Italian on that flight and there were lots of kids.  What made it funny was how loud that flight was.  Everyone was talking and people were standing in the hallway.   I realized that it wasn't always common with Ryanair flights but it was common whenever you get a plane full of Italians!    Well, here we come Rome!