The Long Way Home
Rather than fly straight back to London from Amsterdam this weekend, my buddy and I caught a cheaper flight to Birmingham. Before you call me crazy for going to Birmingham, think about all the fun and interesting things between Birmingham and London: Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, Nottingham, etc.
From Birmingham we hopped a train to Warwick and spent a beautiful afternoon strolling around the castle and feeding the peacocks. We then jumped another train to Oxford, where we made our Tolkien pilgrimage and visited the Eagle and Child for dinner.
If you’ve only got a limited time for a trip, see what airports are close enough to your home or destination to make ground transportation from the airport feasible. In this case we were looking at a couple hours on trains with an added cost of about 35 pounds per person. Then check out what’s between the airport and where you’re going. Never know what cool new thing you might find.
Photo: The afternoon sun from Warwick Castle ramparts.
[...] from Amsterdam my buddy and I took a long detour specifically to visit Warwick Castle. When I got home, my Polish flat mates made fun of me for a long while because, according to them, [...]
It may be that Europeans are closer to the reality of castles as opposed to the myth of chivalry. Castles were mostly built by “noble” thugs in order to extort resources from the neighboring “peasant” farmers, and protect themselves from other nearby thugs who wanted to muscle in on their territory. Those class distinctions still seem to haunt Europeans. Americans are different in that we like thugs.