Butler Family Travels

Gilly is English. Steve is American. They met while studying French during their year of Study-Abroad in France. They now live in Old Basing, just south of London. We know them through the Grunwald Guild in Plain and their son, Aidan, is friends with Levi and Rebekah from the summers he’s spent there. Their gorgeous home and generous hospitality have been such a blessing to us! Our time here came as a much needed break in our travels. We’ve been able to push the PAUSE button on our “wandering” and go-go-go schedule. They don’t seem to care that we have been sleeping in until ungodly hours and showing utter laziness ALL day. They keep feeding us delicious food and letting us walk their sweet chocolate lab, Whistler. (Oh yeah, did I mention that they speak English in this country and that the Sakakinis shop at Costco? This is as close to home as we’ll get for the next 6 weeks.) Thank you, Steve and Gilly, for your warm welcome and letting us crash at your amazing place. It has been so wonderful. You are the best and we look forward to seeing you this summer in Plain.  

Vacation from our vacation? Yes, yes it was. Tons of fun. Thank you, Sakakinis!  

Bath is beautiful.  I followed Sarah around all day. The scenery was nice also. They (Rebekah and Sarah) went to charity shops, a fashion museum and then revisited the charity shops again.  Actually, Levi and I didn’t follow to the fashion museum.  We went to a pub to read the paper and have a drink.  Oh yeah, we kicked some pigeons around.

I am a lifelong fan of the writing of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, but these three gems have shaped who I am and my day to day behavior and attitudes more than any other non-inspired writing.  Our first day driving through the English countryside awakened a resolve to reread them as soon as possible.  Thankfully our hosts here in England own a set and over the last week I did so.  This firmly set our visit to Oxford, home of both these authors, into the category of pilgrimage. “My happiest hours are spent with 3 or 4 old friends in old clothes tramping together and putting up in small pubs.”-CS Lewis. This is how we approached our day in Oxford.  A visit to Lewis house at the Kilns, lunch at the Eagle and the Child and dinner at The Turf with an appropriate amount of wandering about the streets and bookstores of Oxford made a perfect day.

Sarah the Logistics Queen had quite a load of work arranging visit dates and the transport between them for the last bit of our trip.  As time draws shorter, arrangement of the last destinations becomes more interconnected, so a flurry of research and reservations have been necessary. Visits to England, Prague, Amy in Hamburg, Therese, Tobias and kids in Ostersund, and Sofia and the girls in Stockholm, then our final departure from Paris are finalized and the kids and I are so grateful for a Queen who has cheerfully accomplished it for us!

We are learning that the attempt to see and do it all can be counterproductive to our desire to experience a place.  Making a list of the things we would like to do or see before arrival in a city or place is helpful.  Especially if we then do just barely enough of those activities to keep us occupied until our next appointment with a pub.

We caught the train early in the morning from Basingstoke to Waterloo Station – just a 40 minute ride and we were in the heart of the city where England swings like a pendulum do Bobbies on bicycles, two by two Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben The rosy red cheeks of the little children –Roger Miller The last part was particularly true! I have to say that it was so much fun taking Jeb and the kids into London, a place I have been many times. In fact, I spent part of a summer in London the year I met Jeb. It isn’t an overwhelming city as long as you figure out the metro and what you want to see. By now, we are quite museumed out so we chose just a thing or two to see like the wing in the National Gallery featuring the likes of Monet, Serat, Manet, and Van Gogh. What else does one do in London? Go to the theater of course! How could we not see Monte Python’s Spamalot in the land of King Arthur and his Knights? London was one of the places where I booked a hotel in advance since I knew it would be very late by the time we got out of the play. We did arrive late to the hotel. The power was out and they had forgotten to make the second and extra bed, which actually didn’t even exist. The nice lady who was working the counter couldn’t even find extra blankets – strange since it was a nice place. Politely, we demanded our money back the following morning (because of the bed situation, not the power outage) and they actually gave it all back. Wow! What did we do with an extra 60 pounds in our pockets? Go to the movies in Leicester Square, eat out, and shop at Harrods where we didn’t actually buy anything, but had a great time looking. Can you believe Levi didn’t even want to go in? “Do we have to shop?” It didn’t take more than an escalator ride and Harrods had him spellbound. He was the one that we had to pull away.

“Cheers, lovely, smashing!” Yep. We are in England and they really say it just like that. At least the elderly lady beside me said it as she was handed a hot coffee. We went to church with the Sakakinis on Mothering Sunday and had coffee and cake after the service. Mothering Sunday is the European version of Mother’s Day, but it is celebrated throughout Europe on the 4^th Sunday of lent and is rooted in Christianity more than greeting card marketing. It is a day when you take a break from “fasting” and enjoy a slice of delicious Simnel Cake, a traditional confection served on Mothering Sunday. It is fruity with a marzipan layer in the middle and top. Rebekah helped decorate theirs. The rounds balls on top represent the 11 apostles. And, just like in America, flowers were handed out, mothers were honored, and florists made a small fortune. As you’ll see in the photos, Old Basing is a wonderfully quaint town – very old with a long history.