In the whole of our 3 months on the road there was just one night, June 23 for which we hadn’t booked a room. We spent the day driving down from Carcassonne – first quickly on the peage, the tolled motorway – then leisurely down the coast into Spain. We found a beautiful little sandy bay at Callela and there was a recommended hotel in our guide book so we thought we were on to a winner. Unfortunately it was booked out so we went to the tourist office only to discover they were closed for lunch until 5pm.
We decided that was leaving it a bit too late to start the search for a bed for the night and so had a swim in the beautifully clear Med and drove on towards the airport at Girona. 
We’d noticed a couple of hotels around there when we had picked up the car 2 weeks before but hadn’t taken much notice. The first one we tried was one of those self service hotels – I don’t think they exist in Australia – I stayed in one some years ago and thought it was very shady – a lot of people seemed to be coming and going on an hourly basis. You don’t see a soul. You swipe your card and up comes a pin number for a room and then you swipe your card as you leave. Food and drinks are all from vending machines. There must be people somewhere to make up the room but they aren’t visible.We decided we would sooner sleep in the car than try that. We went to the other airport hotel which looked very ordinary from the road and asked to see a room. Initial impressions weren’t great – the decor was all black and white including the floor tiles except for the chairs which were upholstered in red leather.
The room overlooked a lovely back garden and swimming pool – it was quite a surprise and we had a restful night and lazy swim the next morning before flying to London.I don’t think last minute bookings work for us – we are better when we know where are going to sleep.
London
I lived in London from 1982 until 1996 and it still feels like coming home. It isn’t as elegant as Paris, as ancient as Rome or Athens, as vibrant as New York or Barcelona or as beautiful as Sydney but it is still my favourite city.
We stay at the old County Hall at Westminster right by the London Eye – the enormous ferris wheel on the Thames. County Hall housed the Greater London Council until Maggie Thatcher broke it up in the 80s into 16 smaller London boroughs – she wanted to divide and conquer the powerful Council. County Hall was always a rabbit warren of offices – I remember going there several times for education meetings and wandering in confusion trying to find the meeting room. It has been turned into 2 hotels – on the waterfrontage it is a 5 star Marriot and on the other side a 3 star Travel Inn which we stay in – it is 142 pounds a night which isn’t exactly a bargain. When I first stayed there 10 years ago it was 45 pounds but I guess everything costs a lot more these days. It’s a great location though and combined with an Oyster card – the stored value travel card – you can get to most places you want to visit very quickly and easily.
On Wednesday we went to the National Gallery and picked up the list of about 30 of the highlights of their collection. We spent the next 3 hours wandering through the collection (with lunch in the middle) looking at the highlights – it was just delightful. It is a fabulous collection of art and still has free entry which is wonderful and rare these days. One of the interesting aspects was watching the many groups of school students from infants to tertiary who were sitting on the floor in various galleries listening to talks about paintings given by gallery educators. They are very good at drawing out engaging features for the different groups.
We decided to go to the theatre that night and went to Leicester Square to see what we could get tickets for. Marguerite is a fairly new musical starring Ruthie Henshall. One of my colleagues in Bromely, Sue Mordecai, in the eighties told me that Ruthie had been one of her students at Bullerswood School – a local comprehensive secondary school. Ruthie told Sue one day that she had decided to leave school at about age 16 because she had been offered a part in a West End musical. Sue tried to persuade her to complete her A levels – she would regret it if she didn’t etc etc. Ruthie ignored Sue’s advice and hasn’t looked back – she starred in Chicago a few years ago and Sue is gracious enough to admit that Ruthie made the right choice. Marguerite was very good – set in Paris in WW2 during the german occupation – fabulous sets and an interesting plot.
Thursday we had a booking for a matinee at Shakespeare’s Globe to see Midsummer Nights Dream. I desperately needed a haircut and booked one during the morning – I had put it off on the Continent because of my lack of facility in the languages – I had a bad experience once in Paris that has made me a bit wary. I asked for about 1 cm to be cut off but ended up with one cm left on my head – VERY easy care for the next 3 months but not quite what I had intended!!!! So I was a bit surprised when my cutter turned out to be a young Polish man who had only been in UK for 3 weeks and had only a little more English than I have Polish. I did understand that his mother is coming to visit next week – her first time out of Poland and in a plane. She is sending food by bus before she arrives – I couldn’t work out if that was because of the high food prices in UK or because she thought she wouldn’t be able to find anything edible. He was very keen to practice his English but after about 15 mins I realized he couldn’t cut hair at the same time as speaking so I buried my head in a magazine to speed things up. Ask me anything you want to know about Victoria and David Beckham’s life in LA and I’ll have the answer like a shot. And I had one of the best haircuts I’ve ever had.
The Globe was a great experience – not one of my favourite plays – really very silly but it was still not to be missed. The Globe is a recreation of the original I think on the same site as the one in which Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. It is round with an open roof and a couple of hundred people stand for the whole performance in the centre. We had booked seats and hired cushions to ease the hard wooden benches. It was very well acted – no sets but great costumes.
Oxford – June 28
We are staying with one of Phil’s old Oxford buddies from the 40s, Bob Horan in the Cotwolds and going in to Oxford this afternoon for the benefactors’ garden party at Wadham College. I had brought a light summer dress for the occasion but the weather is not quite what I had anticipated so I went to a charity shop yesterday to buy a jacket – since March 1 I have been on a six month stint of not buying any clothes except underwear and second hand. I did buy one thing on the cruise but that couldn’t be avoided – not too many second hand shops on the high seas.
