The document is a first-person account of the author's month-long trip to England to visit a friend she had known online for 12 years. Some key details: - The author describes the long flight from Florida to London and the culture shock of small differences like calling restrooms "toilets." - She stays in the small town of Rainworth, located about 40 minutes from Nottingham. The town has few amenities and little excitement beyond neighbors and birds. - On a day trip to the nearby larger town of Mansfield, the author notes some similarities but also differences to American stores and brands. - The summary concludes by saying the author will share more about trips to Nottingham and

1. Page 26 Volume 12, Issue 9Bloomingdale/ FishHawk Edition
Traveling abroad was always
an item on my bucket list. Growing
up I developed a bad case of wan-
derlust after a few trips north, usu-
ally to North Carolina, Ohio and
everywhere in between. After I
graduated college in 2007 I decid-
ed to plan my first solo excursion
outside of Florida and from that
point I knew I was in love. When I
was approached about traveling
across the pond to England for a
month, I nearly jumped out my
chair to accept.
Now, to put it in to context, I
had ulterior motives for wanting to
take the longest flight of my life across the
great big blue. To give a bit of backstory, it
was a tale of boy meets girl; boy lived in
the UK and girl lived in the Sunshine
State. I’d known him for absolutely ages,
twelve years now to be exact, and while
we had gone through all the various
stages of friendship and more, we had
never met in person. At long last, he flew
here to visit me several months ago and
we hit it off extremely well. So, just this
past July, I decided to reciprocate and go
and see him. It was absolutely the time of
my life.
The flight over was extremely long
and boring, and it was very disorienting
taking a night flight and traveling across
five time zones. I watched the sun set
and rise again within only a couple of
hours. I arrived with no trouble at
Gatwick airport in London and went
through the tedious process of going
through passport check and customs. It
was extremely surreal thinking of myself
in another country, so very like our own
and yet still so different. For example,
instead of restrooms they’re very plainly
called ‘toilets’ and the doors to the stalls
extend practically to the ground for maxi-
mum privacy. I found that to be the case
in every single ‘loo’ I went to.
Driving in England deserves a chap-
ter all on its own. When we reached the
car park (parking lot) I noticed just how
small the spaces were between the cars
and ascertained that even on my best
driving day I would have had real trouble
navigating that lot. Now, you would think
that driving on the opposite side of the
road would have been unsettling for me,
but really it wasn’t that bad. However,
watching all the drivers navigating from
the ‘passenger’ side, well that flew me for
a loop every time. The countryside itself
was very much like ours except for the
distinct lack of palm trees. One thing that I
always enjoyed was the wind turbines. I
was always impressed with how large
they were and just how many I saw.
The town I stayed in for the duration
of my trip was a teeny tiny little speck in
the middle of nowhere, called Rainworth.
It is approximately a half-hour south of
Sherwood Forest and a good solid 40
minute bus ride from Nottingham. In this
tiny little town is four grocers, one of them
a pub turned Tesco, a couple of Chinese
restaurants, a terrible ‘American-style’
place called the Fresh n’ Tasty and a
hardware store that we really wanted to
go to, but that was never open except
when we were riding past it on the bus.
During my first week in Rainworth I’d
like to think I learned a lot about how life
really is like in the country that brought us
Doctor Who, Harry Potter and Monty
Python’s Flying Circus. It’s really not near-
ly as exciting as all that. Apart from the
exceptionally loud neighbors, nothing
very interesting happened. The sun was
up at four in the morning and didn’t go
back down again until well past ten at
night. I only heard a police siren once
and the loudest thing besides the neigh-
borhood kids was the budgies (para-
keets) the back neighbors kept in the
garden. Clearly, if you wanted excitement
in that town, you had to make it yourself.
The very first trip outside of
Rainworth, or ‘Renneth’ as the locals call
it, was to the neighboring town of
Mansfield, about a twenty minute bus
ride straight down the main road. It’s a
smallish town but it had a lot of character
and, although it didn’t have a huge variety
of stores, it was still very charming and
had all the basics that you needed,
including a Boots (their version of a
Walgreens), a TK Maxx (the same as TJ
Maxx here) and a delightful bowling alley
I wouldn’t discover until later called the
Superbowl. Instead of Wal-Mart they
have ASDA (owned by Wal-Mart). Instead
of Super Target they have Sainsbury’s
and instead of Aldi they have-no wait.
They have Aldi! So there you go.
Now, I’ve run out of room and I’ve still
got an entire month to traverse so please
join me again next edition where I’ll cover
my trip to Nottingham, my first encounter
with a British pub and more entertaining
adventures in the East Midlands. Until
then, happy travels! If you would like to
learn a little more about Mansfield, please
visit
http://www.mansfieldtowncentre.co.uk/.
Left, one of our many trips in to Mansfield.
Above, this quaint little house was just down the
road from where I stayed.
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