Warwick 2001

23 February 2001 – WARWICK – I left after class on Friday to visit my coworker at Ford from last summer, Jennifer C, for the weekend. After long, late and overcrowded trains, I finally arrived. Jennifer picked me up at the station, and we went grocery shopping. She and her husband Jeff were having two other American coworkers over for a Mexican Fiesta dinner. I helped prepare dinner and met John and Stan. Dinner was excellent (oh, how I’ve missed Mexican food!). They talked about work and things. We had ice cream after dinner and watched a show on TV about the Loch Ness Monster. Got to bed around midnight, but I was so tired.

24 Feb – Jennifer dropped me off at the Warwick Castle around when it opened at 10. Good thing, because there weren’t too many people around. The Warwick Castle is really nice, because it was never destroyed, and was used until the 70s. They had some interesting displays, especially the very realistic wax figures. I spent about 2½ hours there, then I called Jennifer to pick me up. We took a drive to Leamington Spa and ate a picnic lunch in the park. It was pretty cold – a little above freezing, I think. We walked around the stores in Leamington before driving up to Coventry. We saw the bombed-out cathedral there before coming back. Later, we all went out to eat with Stan and John in Solihull, a suburb of Birmingham. We couldn’t get in to eat until 8:30 at the California Pizza Factory, so we went across the street to a swank bar to kill time. Jennifer and I got hot chocolates with Bailey’s. At the pizza place, I got a nummy vegetarian pizza. We went back to the bar after dinner, only to find that it was snowing out! We got home about 11 and I was so tired.

  

View from Warwick Castle

 

Coventry Cathedral

25 Feb – Today we took a drive through the pretty Cotswolds. Some of the views at the tops of the hills were fantastic. It was barely over freezing today. We stopped in Bourton-on-the-Water for a look around. It was very pretty. We continued on to Stratford-upon-Avon. As expected, it was crowded with tourists. We walked down to Shakespeare’s birthplace, then over to the church he’s buried in, but we couldn’t go in. I bought my obligatory postcard. From Stratford, we drove straight back to Warwick. I helped make dinner, and we had a quiet evening.

Cara by Shakespeare's birthplace

26 Feb – This morning, Jennifer took me with her in to work at Jaguar. I got to see the miles of cubicles there. A lot like what I saw at Ford, only a lot more compact area. I met a few of the people she works with, then she sent me on my way at the Coventry train station. Had a nice, reasonably quiet ride back.

{transcribed 2/10/2020}