The next day we got up nice and early after packing and cleaning the night before and walked to the train station where we took a train to the airport and flew to London. Once we arrived at Luton airport outside of London, after picking up a quick lunch from the airport, we said goodbye to Uncle Tim who headed into London and Aunt Jill and I rented a car to drive to the East Midlands.
What are the East Midlands? Why are we going there? These are but a few of the questions I found myself asking. The East Midlands is an area generally north and east-ish of London that covers several counties. The reason for our visit was a bit complicated. On the one hand it was an excuse to take me to see a new area of England, on the other it was a job for Aunt Jill that involved her touring around the various attractions in the area. Aunt Jill would be filming little snippets in various locations for the airline that was in charge of the trip.
So with that in mind, we picked up our rental car, and after figuring out the GPS (or sat nav as they are called in the UK) we set off. During the drive I began my brief career as a personal assistant to Aunt Jill who was relying heavily on social media and email for the job. Over the course of the hour and a half drive I helped to respond to her emails and tweets while navigating as she drove. The time passed quickly and we soon arrived at the Raddison Blue (spelling?) hotel near the East Midlands airport. The hotel was a brand new, three-day-old business luxury hotel that Aunt Jill was checking out for her future website on eco-luxury hotels. I got my own room and it was quite nice. I did however have a rather unfortunate surprise when I turned on the television. As soon as I clicked the power button, sound came blasting from somewhere off to my right. I was very surprised and quickly muted the television but found that the loud sounds continued to emanate from a vaguely rightish area. I scampered around the room checking in cabinets and behind the dresser trying to locate the source before eventually locating a dial under my bathroom sink. The knob was all the way up since it had never been used and gave me quite the little comical surprise, and I still wonder why you’d want the TV sounds in your bathroom.
After checking in, we jumped back in the car to start another hour+ journey to an area of Derbyshire where we met a fellow named Andrew Wright to film a little piece for a company he has that films guided walks through Britain. To do this we walked through a little hilly trail in Britain’s Peak District while occasionally stopping to film us walking. We also did one piece for the airline while we were there.
The walk was actually really nice. We had good weather even though the sun had begun to set by the time we finished. We begun with a really pretty river-side path through a valley and then turn up hill and crossed several hillside pastures. We saw many cows and sheep some of which we tried to befriend. Eventually we finished up and headed back to the hotel for the evening. That night we had a really nice dinner in the hotel restaurant before going off to bed.
The next day we had begun with a trip to Nottingham Castle. Yes, the Nottingham Castle as in Robin Hood. Exciting right?...Nope. It wasn’t. We went there to film another segment, but we were very disappointed by the castle. The outer walls were original from the 12th century, but inside the old castle had been covered by a 17th century mansion that had a lame museum and that was pretty much it. There was also a field and some gardens, but otherwise nothing. It was a bit of a disappointment. After that we had lunch at the Nottingham Contemporary art museum then we headed to Attenborough National Park, which is a wildlife reserve. There was a lot of waterfowl and some very nice lakes and wetlands. It was a nice walk, but not terribly exciting. I did however have a rather intimidating encounter with a very large swan.
That evening Aunt Jill and I got food at a theatre in Nottingham and afterward we saw a show by Beck called The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui. I should say we kinda saw the show because we left after act 1. It wasn’t excruciating, but we were just not very into it. It was an allegory of Hitler’s rise to power shown through a 1920s story of Chicago gangsters. Could have been cool, but it wasn’t so we headed back to the hotel.
The next day we headed to Leicester to see a National Space Museum. We were skeptical about a British space museum, but it was actually very cool and I enjoyed myself. They had cool informational exhibits about the planets and the space race in addition to some rockets and cool simulator games. After that we had an awesome lunch at an Indian Restaurant (apparently Leicester has a surprisingly substantial Asian population). And then we finished up the rest of the filming and begun the three or so hour drive into London.
We arrived at the flat shortly after Al who had come to spend a weekend in London, and after a nice tapas dinner prepared by Uncle Tim, we finished the evening relaxing in the flat and preparing for the next day.
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