Current Location: London, England

Two days left. Less, really, since my flight to Amsterdam is in about 36 hours. I’m coming into the home stretch.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been traveling for four weeks. I look back and there’s a lot that I’ve done: wandering Dublin, looking for the hostel; climbing rocks on the Aran Islands; listening to music in Westport; climbing Croagh Patrick in Ireland; exploring Edinburgh Castle; hunting for the Loch Ness Monster; watching "Hamlet" performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company; and more. I’ve written nearly 150 pages in my leatherbound journal, close to twenty entries in my on-line journal, and I’ve met many, many people. Just today I met a blacksmith in Stratford-Upon-Avon who showed me how to make a decorative piece for a fence post. He wouldn’t let me operate the forge, but he explained the anvil and everything else to me. It was fascinating.

Around about 1:00 or so, though, I realized that I needed to stop talking to the locals and meeting interesting people like actors and blacksmiths and former members of the Royal Guard, and get on the train to London.

The train from Stratford-Upon-Avon to Paddington Station was an odd one for England. First of all, I was able to find a seat without having to hope that the seat I was taking wasn’t already reserved. And the seat I found so quickly was in a non-smoking coach. And there was room for my luggage.

The train was a minute or two late arriving into Stratford-Upon-Avon, but that’s normal. In fact, while waiting for the much delayed train to arrive in York to take me to Stratford-Upon-Avon, I turned to the woman sitting next to me and asked, "Are the trains always like this?"

"Like what?" she asked.

"Late," I said. "All the trains in England that I’ve taken have been at least twenty minutes late."

"Oh," she said, and looked thoughtful for a moment. "I suppose we just don’t notice it anymore."

That is exactly what she said; I’m not lying to you.

For me, I discovered that the best way to arrive in a station in time for your connecting train is to leave the previous station on a train scheduled for at least an hour earlier. For example, if you’re traveling from York to Birmingham and you need to catch a 3:35 connection in Birmingham and your train from York is scheduled to arrive into Birmingham at 3:03, then the best thing to do is to take the train from York which is scheduled to arrive in Birmingham at 1:15. That way, you’ll wind up in Birmingham with minutes to spare to catch your 3:35 connection (which will be delayed until at least 4:15 anyway).

On the whole, though, my experience in England has been overwhelmingly positive, and even the trains have their good side. The train is always my preferred method of travel (and I wish I could just take the train from London to San Francisco, but that might prove impractical); on the train, I can relax, read a book, write, meet other people, or just gaze out the window at the scenery at ground level. Airplanes are not meant for scenery gazing, nor are they particularly geared for a meeting other people. So it was from the train windows that I got to experience the best of the Eglish country side, and it is staggering in places. Of course, other parts of England are truly ugly; but England is just another country, when you get down to it, and subject to the same sort of growth and industrialization that other countries are subject to.

In fact, many of the people I’ve spoken to in England are puzzled by American tourists. "What do you want to come to York for?" one woman asked me. When I explained I was interested in the history and the look of the place and the people there, she was honestly puzzled. "I don’t get it," she said. But when she explained that she really wanted to visit San Francisco one day, I ended up asking her why. I suppose when you live in the middle of something, or even near it, you forget that it can be special.

And in just two days I fly back home. That’s hard to believe. Where did the time go?