On Friday, we left London to go to Karen's hometown, Sunderland. The city is located on the eastern coast of England, very near the border with Scotland. It took us about four hours to drive there from London, with one hour of that time spent just getting out of London itself. It's funny to me that I drive five and half hours to get from Gainesville to my mom's house just north of Atlanta, but it takes less time than that to drive the whole length of England from north to south. I think the difference in country size gives Europeans a different conception of space - everything here is smaller, from the cars to the flats, and most people tend to think that's good thing because it conserves space and such. It's nice to see very few SUV's, for a change. Besides who would want to fill up one of those gas-guzzlers, when our very efficient compact car took £20 to fill up halfway.

Even though we only traveled for a relatively short amount of time, the landscape changed dramatically throughout our trip. We went from the southern downs to the more rocky, industrial Midlands, and finally to very hilly and beautiful Northern England. It was so nice to watch the green hills with their hedgerows go by as we drove through the country. Nicki and I are, of course, eternally grateful to Karen for driving us because there's no way we could have made it on our own. Both of us kept having moments where we though Karen was going the wrong way through one of about a billion roundabouts in England, and she was actually going the right way.

Sunderland itself is right on the sea, and used to be a big ship building and mining town before Margaret Thatcher's big push to privatize these industries and effectively close many yards and mines. If you've read Jane Austen's Persuasion, the sea town that plays such big part in the novel is south of Sunderland. Like the town in the novel, the seaside here features a promenade where one can just imagine Jane Austen's characters walking around with their bonnets and shawls. In fact, our hotel, the Seaburn, overlooks the sea, and we had a lovely view of the ocean in our room.

When we arrived in Sunderland, we were, as Karen would say, "feeling a bit peckish." So, we had tea at the hotel. Our server was the only one working in a rather crowded lunch and seemed to be very flustered about the whole things. After she had taken our orders, I said that she reminded me of Natalie from the movie Love Actually (the woman Hugh Grant falls for) and Karen and Nicki immediately said they had been thinking the same thing. What makes this even better is that her name was actually was Natalie, and she was very nice, really.

Our first stop was Karen's father's house, where Alison and Rachel were staying. Although Karen had warned us about how curmudgeony her father could be, he was perfectly charming to us, and her stepmother, whom Karen really likes, was very friendly and welcoming. Karen's stepmother makes the best chocolate cake in all of England, something which only further endeared her to my heart after I had the pleasure of having a slice. The whole family seemed to be there, and everyone was very fun to hang out with. I, for one, felt like I was getting the chance to see a bit of "real" English country life - very different from life in "town." Nicki, who somehow makes everyone talk to her, entertained Karen's dad by letting him show her around his spectacular garden and greenhouse (in a yard half as big as my backyard in Gainesville).

After being at Karen's dad's house for a while, we went to surprise Alison's best friend, who didn't know that she was even in England. First, everyone but Alison went over and then Alison came in when Elaine wasn't looking. There was much screaming and happiness. After all that, we, of course, had to go round to the pub for the evening. Nicki had lager for the first time, and I was very happy to enjoy English cider (it's so nice that every pub has some sort of cider, for those of us who don't like beer). It was interesting to hear all the different accents of the northeast, which change as you go from village to village though those villages may only be a few miles apart. It was fun to hear all about Karen's wild days as nurse from her friend *. She told us this great story about how she and Karen, while living in the nurses' dormitory, had a party where the police had to be called and was subsequently reported in the newspaper. The administration of the dorms politely asked them to find other lodgings;-)

When Nicki and I went to the bathroom and were both in the stalls, someone burped and Nicki asked if I was okay, assuming it had been me who had burped. But, it was one of the two girls who had come in after us, and we all laughed when I said it wasn't me. The two girls asked us if we were Americans, and we told that we were. They asked us where we had been to England, and when we told them that we had been to London. They told us about how much better it was in Sunderland because it was quieter and there weren't any pickpockets. At this point, I could tell that they were going to start telling Nicki their life stories as many strangers often do, so I quickly steered Nicki out of the bathroom before they really got going. After the pub, we went by the house of an old friend of Karen's who had been at the pub with us for a bit and then went gratefully back to our peaceful hotel by the sea and to bed.