The trip to London was a bonus to Joe’s switching job. 48 hours after we came back from the cross Grand Canyon hike, we boarded a red-eye flight to Boston in the evening of Sep. 7 and connected to another 9AM flight to London on Sep. 8. But the funniest thing was that we waited at the wrong gate and fell into sleep while waiting for 3 hours at the airport. Luckily, Joe just woke up at 9:02 AM and by then the gate was already closed when we ran over there. Luckily enough, they let us in and the plane started to move right after we sat down. We thought we were season travelers. It shocked me that we almost missed a flight.

When we arrived at London in the evening, it was drizzling and the airline had lost one of our bags. We spent almost an hour waiting and filling paper work for the lost bag. I was tired and in low spirit when we finally got to the hotel almost midnight.

On Sep. 13, we planned to rent a car and toured around England. But we ran into the middle of Petroleum crisis. The rental car company could only give us half tank of gas. "Take it or leave it" was what we have been told by the British service. We knew it was impossible to get a refill of the gas on the road. Half tank of gas would bring us we nowhere. At least, we didn't want to take the chance. Could you image being stuck in a foreign country roadside with an empty gas tank? The risk left us no chance but to walk away and consider the public transit. We took the rental car shuttle back to the airport. Looking at our piled luggage which was not prepared for carrying from place to place, worrying about the bus and train connection, we were sure that second half of our trip would be ruined. And our vacation like that wasn't come easy. "Lets go back to the rental office." Joe said. He didn't want to give up our holiday just like that and decided to fight for our rights. Due to his extraordinary negotiating skills, the rental company finally gave up and gave us full tank of gas. We drove away with a Mercedes-Benz. It was a big victory for us. We salvaged our vacation. But we still needed to carefully calculate our itinerary. Under the circumstance, we were not allowed to make any mistakes on taking the wrong turns. The whole trip was roughly 350 miles. A full tank of gas just enough to cover the whole trip.

Our plan was to drive from London to Oxford � Stratford-Upon-Avon � Warwich Castle � Bath � Stonehenge � Windsor Castle and then return the car to airport and go home. The whole trip was roughly 350 miles. The full tank of gas should be able to cover the whole trip.

Since in England, we were driving on different side of the road, plus, we were not familiar with the road signs and the round-abouts, we had to be extremely careful. When Joe was driving, I had to be awake and kept reminding him and watched the sign for him. We managed to go around safely except that once on a small street where the cars parked in all kinds of direction, we got confused and drove on the wrong side, but Joe quickly realized it when he saw a car coming directly to us. It was scary.

At the luxury of driving, we got to leisurely enjoy our 4-day trip around England. We stopped by the oldest college town Oxford, watched the play “Romeo and Julie” in Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratfort-Upon-Avon, visited the medieval Warwick Castle, strolled around the beautiful hill town Bath, admired the spiritual and mythical Stonehenge and visited the loyal Windsor Castle. England was beautiful. Everywhere was still green in fall. We also got to enjoy staying in Bed and Breakfast and the full English breakfast.

Although we were not quite impressed with English food, we have had a marvelous time in England. On Sep. 16, we caught up the early flight and came home.