By Barbara Rice (of Shasta County)
A page from her travels, upon request by A News Cafe
• Why are there Fendi stores in airports? Have you ever gone to the airport and said, “I am so sick and tired of hauling all this money around. I know! I’ll buy a Fendi bag!” and drop a few thousand bucks for a new purse? Me either, yet they must be selling to someone. I went into Hermes and fingered a few scarves. They ran about $340 and were indistinguishable from scarves in JC Penney. Who is buying this stuff?
• London is known to be expensive but if you look closely you can find a bargain. The London Times is 90 pence (about a $1.35) but has four times as much text as certain American papers. And it’s literate. The Cornish pasties at Covent Garden are £1.50 (about $3) and two of them will fill you up. The Tube can get you from one side of London to the other for less than $5.
• When you leave the U.S., you develop a new appreciation for ADA regulations. In the past three days we have climbed more stairs than we did during all of 2008. I studied the wheelchair access points on one branch of the London Underground: there are 50 stations on the Central Line and five – five – of them have “step-free access.” What do those people do? How do they get around?
• We are apparently the only people left in the Western Hemisphere who do not have cell phones, and I don’t even really know what texting is – but every third person has a phone stuck to their ear, is walking along while intensely hypnotized by texting or has earbuds tucked into their ears. I don’t know quite what to make of this: Are people now unable to enjoy their own company?
• Why doesn’t America devote more space to open parkland? London is as densely populated as any city in the states, yet huge amounts of lovely greens are free to anyone who wishes to walk, picnic, jog, or play in them. What’s wrong with this picture?
• And while we’re wishing, why doesn’t America have decent public transport?
• Guinness in America bears as much resemblance to Guinness in the UK as Velveeta does to Brie.
Off to Amsterdam next.
Barbara Rice is a native Igonian. Upon discovering the Beatles at age 9, she picked up an atlas and figured out how far England was and how long it would take to get there (5371 miles, 12 hours). Though gainfully employed, she regards work as a necessary evil to finance vacations. In her spare time she looks up cheap airfares and daydreams about her next trip. She never did meet Sir Paul but she knows where his office is.
