Page 26 Volume 12, Issue 9Bloomingdale/ FishHawk Edition

Traveling abroad was always

an item on my bucket list. Growing

up I developed a bad case of wan-

derlust after a few trips north, usu-

ally to North Carolina, Ohio and

everywhere in between. After I

graduated college in 2007 I decid-

ed to plan my first solo excursion

outside of Florida and from that

point I knew I was in love. When I

was approached about traveling

across the pond to England for a

month, I nearly jumped out my

chair to accept.

Now, to put it in to context, I

had ulterior motives for wanting to

take the longest flight of my life across the

great big blue. To give a bit of backstory, it

was a tale of boy meets girl; boy lived in

the UK and girl lived in the Sunshine

State. I’d known him for absolutely ages,

twelve years now to be exact, and while

we had gone through all the various

stages of friendship and more, we had

never met in person. At long last, he flew

here to visit me several months ago and

we hit it off extremely well. So, just this

past July, I decided to reciprocate and go

and see him. It was absolutely the time of

my life.

The flight over was extremely long

and boring, and it was very disorienting

taking a night flight and traveling across

five time zones. I watched the sun set

and rise again within only a couple of

hours. I arrived with no trouble at

Gatwick airport in London and went

through the tedious process of going

through passport check and customs. It

was extremely surreal thinking of myself

in another country, so very like our own

and yet still so different. For example,

instead of restrooms they’re very plainly

called ‘toilets’ and the doors to the stalls

extend practically to the ground for maxi-

mum privacy. I found that to be the case

in every single ‘loo’ I went to.

Driving in England deserves a chap-

ter all on its own. When we reached the

car park (parking lot) I noticed just how

small the spaces were between the cars

and ascertained that even on my best

driving day I would have had real trouble

navigating that lot. Now, you would think

that driving on the opposite side of the

road would have been unsettling for me,

but really it wasn’t that bad. However,

watching all the drivers navigating from

the ‘passenger’ side, well that flew me for

a loop every time. The countryside itself

was very much like ours except for the

distinct lack of palm trees. One thing that I

always enjoyed was the wind turbines. I

was always impressed with how large

they were and just how many I saw.

The town I stayed in for the duration

of my trip was a teeny tiny little speck in

the middle of nowhere, called Rainworth.

It is approximately a half-hour south of

Sherwood Forest and a good solid 40

minute bus ride from Nottingham. In this

tiny little town is four grocers, one of them

a pub turned Tesco, a couple of Chinese

restaurants, a terrible ‘American-style’

place called the Fresh n’ Tasty and a

hardware store that we really wanted to

go to, but that was never open except

when we were riding past it on the bus.

During my first week in Rainworth I’d

like to think I learned a lot about how life

really is like in the country that brought us

Doctor Who, Harry Potter and MontyPython’s Flying Circus. It’s really not near-

ly as exciting as all that. Apart from the

exceptionally loud neighbors, nothing

very interesting happened. The sun was

up at four in the morning and didn’t go

back down again until well past ten at

night. I only heard a police siren once

and the loudest thing besides the neigh-

borhood kids was the budgies (para-

keets) the back neighbors kept in the

garden. Clearly, if you wanted excitement

in that town, you had to make it yourself.

The very first trip outside of

Rainworth, or ‘Renneth’ as the locals call

it, was to the neighboring town of

Mansfield, about a twenty minute bus

ride straight down the main road. It’s a

smallish town but it had a lot of character

and, although it didn’t have a huge variety

of stores, it was still very charming and

had all the basics that you needed,

including a Boots (their version of a

Walgreens), a TK Maxx (the same as TJ

Maxx here) and a delightful bowling alley

I wouldn’t discover until later called the

Superbowl. Instead of Wal-Mart they

have ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart). Instead

of Super Target they have Sainsbury’s

and instead of Aldi they have-no wait.

They have Aldi! So there you go.

Now, I’ve run out of room and I’ve still

got an entire month to traverse so please

join me again next edition where I’ll cover

my trip to Nottingham, my first encounter

with a British pub and more entertaining

adventures in the East Midlands. Until

then, happy travels! If you would like to

learn a little more about Mansfield, please

visit

http://www.mansfieldtowncentre.co.uk/.

Left, one of our many trips in to Mansfield.Above, this quaint little house was just down the

road from where I stayed.

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