POSTCARDS FROM ENGLAND 2026

I'm writing this from the comfort of my living room in Walnut Creek.  Our 28 day adventure in England has come to an end, we are back to sleeping in our own bed, our laundry is all done, and the suitcases have been put away.  But I had a few things I hadn't written about.  (Well, I actually did  write about them on the plane, but somehow the post was not saved so it all disappeared...so I'm writing it all again!) Knowing we had 10 days in England, I had a huge list of things I wanted to do and see.  However, once in London, we ran out of steam and didn't get to many the things on my list.  I think this was due to a combination of things: we were so totally relaxed and in such a mellow zone after our idyllic time in the Cotswolds + the fact that we had walked between 13,000 and 18,000 steps every day finally caught up to us + we arrived in England right in time for a heatwave (the hottest Bank Holiday Weekend in history with temps up to 91 degrees) + we are ...

We booked tickets to 3 different theater productions in London.  We looked for plays we had not seen already (yes, Lion King and The Mousetrap that we saw in 2000 are still playing here!). And we wanted 3 different types of theater experiences.  Our first play was Operation Mincemeat which was a fun and campy musical.  Based a true story of an event during WW2 where the British planned a deception operation to disguise the Allied invasion of Sicily .  2 British Intelligence officers obtained the body of a homeless man who had died, dressed him up as an officer in the Marines and placed (fake) "official" documents on him suggesting that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia .  With a submarine, they released his body off the coast of Spain (knowing the Spaniards would leak the info to the Nazis).  A far fetched plan, but it worked; the Nazis removed troops from Sicily and moved them to Sardinia. And Allies moved into Sicily as planned.   I re...