Lt. Ducksworth's Angry Souls Travel Blag, Part 1

Since I promised irregular updates, here's the first part of an ongoing series of attempts to document my travels in Europe. Since it is obvious to all that this one is written well after the fact, here are some of my recollections of the first month or so. I'll eventually get up a list of trips, tricks, pointers, and whatnot after I'm back in the US.

First, I went to Chicago.The night I stayed there, I went up the Sears Willis Tower and got some pictures of the street below by night. At Jimmy John's they had some bread so French it must be liberated. The next day, before my flight, I walked down the street from my hotel taking pictures, including the one of my hotel at right. My father and I later visited the aquarium to fill the remaining time before I was to meet some of my classmates at the airport. I didn't get to meet my friends there, but I'm planning on doing so when I have to leave the UK.

The events at the airport made me realize why so many others say they hate flying. It wasn't playing strip poker with the TSA that was problematic; it was the d~~n employees of working the checked luggage stand. "Put in your card and take a nominal fee" seems to be their solution to everything. They don't even explore smaller nominal fees such as adding a second bag, which is cheaper than having an overweight bag for no reason. I hope never to have to deal with those people again. The flight itself was OK, but leg room was not in large supply in the cheap seats and I couldn't get to sleep. Luckily, the flight attendants were nice.

Going to the manor was fun. I'd elaborate, but I'm tired now. I think I'll describe it in a later post.

After the London trip, also to be described separately, the honours students got the opportunity to visit the town of Irnham, original home of the Lutterell Psalter. This book was commissioned back in the medieval days (remember those?) by Geoffrey Lutterell for his church. This book contains fantastic illuminations in the margins with all kinds on wonderful and bizarre grotesques among much more normal scenes of the daily life of the peasants, an extreme rarity for those days when illuminations were only about the rich landowners who commissioned them.

That's it for this update. I'll post the London stuff later and will probably end up blogging about this long after I'm back in the US.

Lt. Ducksworth's Angry Souls Travel Blag, Part 3

As an ongoing effort to document my misadventures in Europe, here's a rant about debit cards while it is still fresh in my mind.

Why can't my card just work? Seriously, this is ridiculous. When I speak to the fraud detection department of a bank and they tell me that everything is just fine, I expect to be able to buy my train and TSO tickets with absolute no difference from the times when my card worked. I don't know if it is a problem with Visa or my bank, but someone's not doing their job here. If there are lingering problems in a different department of the bank, don't tease me by letting ATM transactions through but not an online payment. This is really like none other.