Walking Through Soup

Because the Methodist church “gym” where I have been exercising on weekdays is not open on Sundays, I had no choice but to walk outside, so I was viewing the weather with more interest than usual. Although the forecast for today was for rain, the sun had put in a tentative appearance at daybreak. Not long thereafter, however, the skies darkened and there followed a very small shower (so slight that areas of the street under trees were still dry).

When I was ready to hit the street, it was still looking like rain, and in fact a few scattered drops were still falling—nothing to deter a determined walker with a broad-brimmed sunhat, however. Not long after I turned the corner, though, it began to rain in earnest. Still not a deterrent: in fact, the moisture was a lot pleasanter falling than when it had been hovering around like a thick soup. It even promised to drop the temperature a little.

Then, about two-thirds of the way through my walk, the rain stopped. The clouds parted, the sun came fiercely out, and the streets began to steam, creating the Turkish bath effect we here on the Gulf Coast know so well. Fortunately, a mild breeze picked up, out of the south so it was blowing full in my face, and this helped a little (at least until I turned the corner onto my street).

Earlier this week we had a slight cooling trend, with lows in the mid-60s instead of the high 70s (though daytime highs were still hitting well over 90). Now we’re back to our typical August misery. But never let it be said that our weather lacks variety!

Public Conveniences

An inevitable part of traveling is visiting public restrooms, and when we travel abroad, most of us inevitably compare the public restrooms with what we are familiar with at home, which in my case is the United States. Public restrooms here vary greatly in the degree to which functions are automated. Among the automatic features that are possible are automatic toilets (activated by an “electric eye,” these often flush more often than needed if not adjusted properly), automatic faucets (controlled by a thermal sensor that can be rather frustrating for those with cold hands), automatic soap dispensers (rather rare but quite a luxury when they work properly), automatic towel dispensers (sometimes one wears oneself out waving in front of their sensors), and automatic hand dryers (again, it can be a challenge to keep one’s hands positioned in the “sweet spot” to keep these going).

Other, less savory, variations include the absence of toilet paper, towels, or soap; toilets that won’t flush; broken hand dryers (coupled with absence of paper towels); faucets that won’t stay on long enough for one to wash both hands at once and consequently have to be held down with one hand while futilely attempting to wash the other single-handed (whoever designed these instruments of torture evidently never heard the proverb “One hand washes the other”). And of course there is great variation in the general cleanliness of the restrooms, degree of luxury, etc.

Travelers abroad, however, face additional variations, including some challenges, such as pay toilets. The current price to “spend a penny” at Victoria Station in London is 20p (though you do get a Dyson Airblade to dry your hands), and in Paris I encountered an even more insidious entrapment: if you haven’t paid to get into a stall (because someone held the door for you), you are (apparently) locked in and can’t get out! Surely this must be a violation of the fire code!

Travelers to Japan invariably comment on the sanitary arrangements there, where toilets range from essentially a hole in the floor to Toto Washlets (some with remote controls) that bathe your bottom with warm water and dry it with heated air. The other feature of Japanese restrooms that is commonly remarked on is the notable lack of privacy in men’s rooms, where maids are apt to come in and go about their business oblivious of men doing theirs, or where the urinals are often open to public view (as in the Kyoto train station).

Our most recent trip, however, was to England, where we encountered not only the typical variation in automation but also certain other quaint features not usually seen Stateside.

One of these, of course, is the persistence of toilets with elevated wall-mounted tanks, activated by a pull-chain. Although we may have seen these in more than one location, the one pictured here was in a restroom at Stonehenge.

Another phenomenon frequently encountered is a restroom carved out of a tiny space. The one shown below, in the Bridge Coffee Shop in Bath, can perhaps best be appreciated by realizing that the photo was taken from the corridor outside the room since the space inside was too small for taking a picture.

It was probably not the smallest restroom we encountered. Shown below is the sink from another tiny one, in Café Loco in Oxford.

In contrast to the restrooms we encountered at tourist sites in Japan, many of which were so loathsome that one just resolved to “hold it,” most of those we used in England were quite nice. For example, the “public convenience” located near Magdalene Bridge in Cambridge was very attractive and sparklingly clean, as can be seen below (even if the utilitarian stainless steel toilets were reminiscent of those seen on planes and trains).

At another public convenience, this one in Reigate, Surrey, I experienced, for the second time (but the first time functioning), a fixture made by Wallgate that combines a lavatory (with soap) and a hand dryer in a single wall-mounted unit, shown below.

English pride and self-respect are clearly invested in these public restrooms. At 1 Royal Crescent in Bath, a restroom had been wedged into a tiny outdoor building, with the evident intention of making the best of a bad situation. It wasn’t deluxe but certainly served the purpose, so I was amused by the apologetic notice posted above the sink (below). Note also that hot water is supplied from a small “on-demand” boiler installed just for this purpose.

At an preschool we visited in Reigate, the “adult” restrooms were for some reason closed, so we used the ones designed for the children. Not surprisingly, the size and height of the toilets and sinks were adapted for their tiny users, but I was amused by the label on the soap dispenser.

Almost as entertaining as the restrooms themselves, however, were the signs that labeled them. On landing at Gatwick the first time we visited England (in March 2008), even before we reached Passport Control or Customs, we availed ourselves of restrooms, and I remarked that women in England seemed to be stuck in the 1960s, wearing crinolines under their puffy skirts. (Like the Venus de Milo, they are also without arms.)

We never saw this particular icon anywhere else, though we did notice considerable variation in the icons used. The typical U.S. icons, which are also prevalent in Britain, are shown below:

At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, however, I commented that the women appeared to be wearing overcoats:

The public convenience in Cambridge showed a variety of different icons:

But perhaps the most charming were those on the children’s restrooms at the preschool we visited:

It would probably surprise no one that fascination with public restrooms is not uncommon, but I was amused to find that interest in restroom icons is also widespread. A Google Images search for “restroom icons” turns up many intriguing variations, including the jaunty ones at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, removable “wall art” for weddings, and a priceless version from Austin Neon that alludes to a “can’t hold it any longer” condition.

Walking Abroad

We recently returned from nearly three weeks in Europe, and for the past few days I’ve been holed up trying to wade through three weeks’ worth of newspapers and answer accumulated email and newsgroup posts. Although I dressed to go to “the gym” yesterday, my husband returned reporting that it was unusable because of broken AC and noxious, possibly even toxic, fumes, so when I hit the street for a walk this morning, it was the first real exercise I’d gotten since our return on Tuesday.

Although I didn’t attempt anything resembling my standard 2.1-mile fitness walk while we were abroad, that’s not to say I didn’t do any walking! Since our daughter doesn’t have a car or drive in England (her husband drives their car to work), anywhere we went in their town, we went on foot. We did walk into and around town several times, and once we accompanied her on a longish trek to a nearby (in motorist terms) school to have her baby weighed.

In addition, we:

• Thoroughly covered the ground at the Historic Dockyards in Portsmouth (much of it in the rain).
• Traipsed around Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath for several days.
• Saw every nook and cranny of Hampton Court Palace (much of it more than once, as we kept getting lost) and some of its gardens.
• Climbed all over Kenilworth Castle (many flights of steps).
• Explored Cambridge and Greenwich (one day each).
• Tramped around miscellaneous portions of London, becoming intimately familiar with the geography between St. Pancras and King’s Cross stations and the nearby hotel where we stayed before and after our day trip to Paris.
• Climbed down the Eiffel Tower (luckily we’d gone up in the elevator).
• Trekked through the Jardin des Tuileries from the Musée du Louvre to the Place de la Concorde and back, a distance of well over a mile (and that doesn’t even count the amount of walking we did trying to find our way out of the Louvre from our group’s meeting point in the Carrousel shopping mall). This would have been a pleasant stroll in milder weather, but as we were leaving Paris in late afternoon, we passed a bank time-temperature display showing 33° C. (91° F.), so it was a pretty sweaty walk, especially given the limited time we had available.

And of course we were mostly on our feet throughout the time we were visiting various museums (such as the Churchill Museum and Imperial War Museum in London and the Royal Naval Museum in Greenwich). The one actual walk that was planned, a tramp from the Cotswold village of Bourton-on-the-Water to the picturesque Slaughters (Upper and Lower), was rained out, and there was at least one “free day” when I didn’t budge from my daughter’s house, but we did make up for it in other ways. For example, the day we flew home, which might have been expected to be largely sedentary, met expectations between Gatwick and Atlanta, but when we arrived in Atlanta, we found that our flight to Mobile had been canceled, and the comedy of errors that ensued (rebooking, getting on standby lists) had us shuttling between two concourses several times before we settled down. By the time we finally got home, many hours later than planned, we felt like we’d had plenty of exercise!

A Beef and Ale Tour

We just returned from nearly three weeks in England, which, aside from the travel to and from, were almost unalloyed pleasure. Among the pleasurable experiences was the food.

If you are one of those who still subscribe to the myth that English food is bland and unattractive, I can only suggest that you give it a chance. We found it almost unexceptionally outstanding. Although the village where our daughter and son-in-law live is no larger than our town, the grocery options are much more varied, especially in the area of fresh produce. In comparison to most parts of the United States, the English are much more committed to local produce, organically grown, and fair-trade products. As on our first visit, we were amazed by the variety and quality of prepared sandwiches available from M&S Simply Food (the grocery subsidiary of Marks & Spencer). Using free-range chicken and eggs, organically grown produce, and other high-quality products, these sandwiches are tasty and attractive—quite unlike anything available at a comparable price in the States. Other prepared foods we sampled were equally outstanding, including some incredibly cheap (£1.50) frozen pizzas from Tesco.

We experienced a variety of restaurant and takeaway cuisine: the obligatory fish and chips a couple of times, Chinese twice, excellent restaurant pizzas twice. My son-in-law made us a great prawn curry. And at the venerable Falkland Arms pub in Great Tew, Oxfordshire, we lucked into a special event and enjoyed spit-turned (rotisserie barbecue) lamb baps (sandwiches on large, soft round rolls) with salad (quite a variety, including a delicious potato mayonnaise) for just £6. For our road trips, we made sandwiches at home, including the quintessentially English (Cheddar) cheese and (Branston) pickle.

I seemed to luck into salmon (both plain and smoked) quite a few times, but what became a theme (to the point that I made it a crusade) was beef and ale (or steak and ale) pie. I ended up sampling the versions of five different pubs, all different, all excellent, and all, as the photos below demonstrate, very attractively presented.

The first version was the Steak and Tanglefoot Pie at The Black Horse in Horley, Surrey (near Gatwick). This is “a local pub owned and run by a centuries-old independent family brewer,” Hall & Woodhouse in Dorset, “one of the few remaining regional family brewers,” which has “brewed Badger ales and offered a warm welcome since 1777.” Among their ales is Tanglefoot, which is used in the pie.

The next version came from The Waiting Room, the bar/restaurant of our hotel, the Premier Inn at 26–30 York Way, London (near King’s Cross and St. Pancras rail stations). If I recall correctly, it claimed to use Ruddles County ale (a product of Greene King Brewery). As can be seen from the photos, accompaniments varied, usually including some mixture of vegetables plus potatoes in some form. From the offered selection (chips, jacket potato, boiled potatoes, etc.), this time I chose “Dauphinoise” potatoes, which were described as being in a cheesy sauce. Sort of like au gratin potatoes, but much better! (Recipes I found online vary widely; some do not include cheese, but all include heavy cream and are very rich.)

Version number three was the British Beef and King’s Ale Pie served at the Tiltyard Café at Hampton Court Palace in East Molesey, Surrey. It marked the first and last appearance of mushy peas as a side dish.

From the audio guide at Hampton Court Palace we learned that meat pies are as much a cooking method (alongside roasting, baking, and boiling) as a way of serving meat. In medieval times, when food was eaten directly from the table, or perhaps from a wooden trencher or a slab of bread used as a plate, the pie crust served as a dish for meat cooked in a stew. The meat and vegetable mixture was prepared separately, in a large cauldron, and then ladled into the prepared crusts and baked. Diners would break the top crust and eat the contents of the pie, leaving the crust uneaten. Since it was just a flour-and-water mixture, it would not have been very tasty, anyway. In contrast, the pastry of all the pies we had was a delicious short crust, and we devoured every last crumb!

Next came the Beef and Ale Pie from the Queen & Castle (a Beefeater pub), Castle Green, Kenilworth, Warwickshire.

The final version, and perhaps the best, was the British Beef and Ale Pie offered by The Prince Regent (a Greene King pub, as most in Cambridge seemed to be) at 91 Regent Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. This was the first time we’d had a pie that was not individual and self-contained. My husband and I presumably got the two halves of a single pie, and it was quite possibly the best of the lot.

In most cases, it seemed appropriate to accompany these dishes with ale; in Cambridge, where the University is celebrating its octocentenary, we couldn’t resist the offer of Cambridge Octocentennial Ale.