England 2017

Stories from the Road
Sofitel Hotel, England
May 3, 2017



The plane was bouncing like a basketball at 30,000 + feet yesterday, but I didn’t mind. We had two seats across, and I was watching a Bourne movie. For a minute I wondered if a bouncing plane was part of the movie, but it no, it was just Atlantic turbulence.

A transfer plane from Heathrow to Paris would have gotten us into our hotel room
 too late, so we had booked a room at the Hotel Sofitel at the airport. This is an upscale hotel with an international clientele. As in the US, many of the help are from other countries, and I wondered how England would fare, when it left the EU.

I watched a video the other day of Ueli Steck, the “Swiss Machine” climber, who recently died in the Himalayas. He was climbing the North Face of the Eiger in record time without ropes. Using two ice axes he was nearly running up vertical slopes of rock and ice. It is definitely worth seeing.

The food on international flights seems to be deteriorating. In 1986 our travel agent facilitated an upgrade us to first class. Women in white gloves wheeled carts of roast beef down the isles, slicing off pieces for hungry passengers. We drank the finest of wines and a premium glass of cognac topped off the meal. I didn’t want to disembark! Other years we sat in economy class, and the food was very good. This year in economy class we had an “English Breakfast” of eggs and meats. As my friend Dennis would say, “It was marginal.” The flight attendants brought by snacks shortly before we were to land. Mine was a small bag of pretzels.

Our hotel was about a ten-minute walk from customs, and after checking in, we went to the dining room. We split a Caesar’s salad and a pizza, which were very good. I had a pint of Cornish Pilsner. Our waiter, Marek, was from Poland, and we enjoyed talking with him. Years ago we had gone hiking in the High Tatras on the border of Slovakia and Poland, so we had some common ground from which to share experiences.  One day we had traveled to Krakow , one of the most beautiful cities I had ever seen. He agreed.