Travelling Austen's England - My Itinerary and Experiences, June, 1997
	This journal tracks my sixteen day journey through England. The trip was made with my friends, Rebecca Davey, Arnessa and Dee Garrett, and Amy Rider. My eternal thanks to them for their companionship, to Bernie Parkin for her asssistance in planning the trip, and to Kathleen Grant and Joan Winsor for their scanning efforts.

Part One - London and Winchester

I met my friend Amy Rider and dear Rebecca at the airport, after which we hit town to meet lovely Bernie...Bernie treated us to tea at the Ritz, which was wonderful!

The place is located right off of the Green Park Tube stop...and it's beautiful. Pastel carpets, million-dollar giltwork, pink linen tablecloths and napkins...the works. Bernie introduced us to Devonshire clotted cream - a slightly sweet, heavy cream with a consistency and color much like butter, which is eaten with scones. The tea service came complete with a multi-tiered rack of little cucumber, watercress, salmon, and tomato sandwiches, scones, tarts, and danishes. There was a huge, gelatinous cherry tart on the very top, which I liked to wiggle by shaking the entire structure.

On a more mature note, the china wasn't Wedgewood or Royal Doulton, but it was lovely...forget-me-nots! After tea, Bernie took the three of us around the West End...Picadilly Circus (people made lots of money around here in "picadilles" - I think they're ruff-collars), Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square (think Lord Nelson on his column...poor Horatio! Poor Emma!), and Westminster...

The next day, we met Arnessa and her sister Dee...together, we ravaged the parks and pubs (including a rather innocent-looking cybercafe, which we left in shambles) of London. We went to Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Parliament (BOTH houses...saw poor, intransigent Tory, John Major. And I must say, the coatroom guys is much cooler at Westminster than at Capitol Hill!), &c. Amy and I saw Les Miserables, as well.

Amy and I also visited the costumes display at the Victoria and Albert Museum (both here and at the Museum of Costume at Bath, I got some great last minute ideas for my own regency gown...heck, I even got ideas from the chitons on the Nereids at the British Museum...), and the British Museum...I went crazy on the film here! The Elgin Marbles, you know, come from my very favorite Doric temple, the Parthenon, in Athens, and hugely influenced Regency culture, fashion, and art when they arrived from Greece...took pictures of every frieze block from the panatheneic ionic frieze, every metope from the exterior Doric triglyph-metope frieze (the centaurs and the lapiths beating eachother up), and every pitifully-preserved pedimental figure.

Also saw the Rosetta Stone and numerous other Greek and Roman pieces, but first, I had to wade through the wash of wayward foreign tourists (these are the same morons who tossed US, German, and Japanese money into the glass donation barrels out front) in the Hall of the Grouchy Egyptians. Once extricated, I headed over to the British Library exhibits (alas, no longer in the same building)...saw the original (and bought a copy of) JA's History of England..."By a Partial, Prejudiced, and Ignorant Historian." It's hilarious...with text by fifteen-year-old Jane, and goofy drawings by her sister, Cassandra.

As we used London as our home base for the first week, we railed it to Winchester and Chawton - in Hampshire County - while staying in the City. It was easy...took the Southwest line from Waterloo Station...took less than an hour to get there. We attended a service at Winchester Cathedral (are you singing yet?), which had an awesome choir, and then ooh'ed, ah'ed, and took too may pictures in poor available light of Jane's grave in the floor. It's located on the far right, in the middle of the long axis of the building. And it's in the floor...so don't be so caught up by the plaque and window set into the wall that you stand blindly on top of her!

We then went to Chawton, where Jane lived for most of her adult life (the years 1809-1817), revamping Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, and writing Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.

It costs two pounds to peruse the house, garden, and stableyard. To get there, take London and Country bus number 64, which leaves every 30 minutes and costs four pounds for a round-trip, or "return", ticket (the bus station is in central Winchester)...ask to be let off at the Chawton Village roundabout...look for the signs that say "Jane Austen's House --->"! ...and follow them. Arnessa got a bit scared that the driver guy was just letting us off in the middle of nowhere, but we soon got our bearings and found the place relatively quickly. At the house, they have a cool gift shop with tons of neat prints, postcards, pop-up models of the house, and other spiffy if useless souvenirs. Highlights of the exhibits include Jane's quilt, which she and her mom made together, rare editions of her novels, the small table upon which she wrote (and the squeaky parlor door and floor which alerted her of anyone's approach, so that she might hide her manuscripts), various family heirlooms and keepsakes, and a family set of alphabets which the staff had made to spell out "Dixon" and "blunder." I laughed so hard at this that I had some of the visiting catechumens looking at me funny.

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