Viv made us a wonderful breakfast, and we chatted a lot. One thing I am always pleasantly amazed at is how it seem that though we live thousands of miles away, in different countries and cultures, and have only seen each other a handful of times, each time it is like being home. I have a lot of cousins, but the London branch of my family is just plain special.
We have a lot in common. One thing I had forgotten is Brian is a train afficianado. I love riding trains, but Brian knows trains. He even has Microsoft's train simulator program (think Flight Simulator, but for railway engineers). He has a whole room devoted to books and souvenirs of trains, which he proudly gave me a tour of.
The day was spent visiting some historical sites. Very photogenic stuff, and I really enjoyed seeing historic districts which were older than the US colonies. In California, a historic site might be 100 years old, but in England that's pretty new. Our first stop was Wycombe, which was a coach way station on the route to Oxford
Next stop was a chair museum, set on very pretty park grounds.
The highlight of the day's touring was Benjamin Disraeli's mansion, called Hughenden Manor. Unfortunately, they did not allow photography indoors, but the grounds were impressive, and we had good lighting for that.
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Then we went to a truly ancient village street, with a stop at a special sweets shop.
Back to Bourne End for a bit, hearing news of a major plot to blow up some airplanes the next day, which is when I was due to fly home. At least one of the suspects was from the neighborhood we were in. It looked phony to me, the news bits never showed anything which even approached looking like bomb-making material, and they weren't saying anything that made any sense. But Brian & Viv told me I could stay with them as long as needed, if I wasn't able to get a flight out.
For dinner we drove to a nice place one or two towns over, a former inn or manor home, I think.
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