Notes from a Hired Pen: Highlights from England and France

Readers!

 

I am back from my adventures, and I kept a running tally of everything worthwhile I saw from there. I’ll get back to freelancing rants and raves (but let’s be honest, probably rants) next week.

A few travel notes:

• Most flights to Europe from the east coast of the U.S. are overnight. But United flies two morning flights to Heathrow out of Newark International Airport. I took one of those, landed around 8:30 p.m. time in England, slept a full eight hours, and then went on my way. I highly recommend this if it’s an option. Also: don’t use the HotelHopper Bus. You can take a regular ol’ London bus to those Heathrow-adjacent hotels for a fraction of the cost. Then I took it back the next morning to catch National Express bus to Bath from the Heathrow bus depot. It had me thinking of when I did a semester abroad at Oxford University and did the whole flight to bus to Oxford by myself at 20 years old with no smartphone. I didn’t even have a dumb cell phone (though many British students did because they said it was easier to get a mobile than drill more phone lines into centuries old buildings). Times change.
• When I was in England, I used the Railboard app to book trains outside of London. There’s no good, standard National Rail app, but this did a pretty good job. In France, I used Ile-de-France Mobilites, which is their transit app. For the Underground in London, I just used Apple Pay to tap and go.
• LaundryHeap. I’m a strict backpack traveler (and more people should be if they can physically carry a backpack!!! but that’s a topic for another time) and will do laundry in the hotel sink but if I can send out laundry, I will. I used this in London — they picked up my laundry one morning and dropped it off clean the next. It was so nice starting fresh (clothes wise) half way into my trip.
• I learned French in high school and kept up with it until I switched to Italian four years ago. I could read French, and understand French, but when I opened my mouth, Italian came out. Brains are weird.
• You won’t see a lot of restaurants below because most of my meals were eaten either on the go as picked up from bakeries or built from what I bought at grocery stores. Such is the life of someone with a food allergy. Europe is very good at disclosure of ingredients (and in Disneyland Paris restaurants, they give you a binder if you say you have a food allergy), but after getting dosed with egg in New York City, which lead me to puking in Central Park, I’m just ultra careful.
• I see people joking that they’re going to pretend they’re Canadian when they travel to Europe. Don’t bother. I dress like my personal fashion icon Rick Steves, and am mostly ignored, but have often been mistaken for a local (I’ve been asked for directions more times than I can count). But once you open your mouth, they will clock you as American. The overwhelming reaction, if they get into it with you, is both pity and “how can your country be so stupid” without meaning you specifically. Most MAGA Americans think Europe is a communist/socialist hell hole and won’t go, not when they’re too terrified of your average American city. If you’re kind and considerate and genuinely curious about the place you’re visiting, you’ll be fine. I met one MAGA American couple on this trip who I guess thought I was too. I was embarrassed for them, and told them they probably shouldn’t go around telling strangers they’re fans of Italy’s far right prime minster Giorgia Meloni. If you are MAGA, just keep your mouth shut about your abhorrent views. Also what are you still doing here? You’re not welcome in my newsletter space. As always, Denzel will see you out.

 

 

On to the trip! I wrote this as I went, so they’re in the order I did them.

Bath

• Botanical Gardens and Royal Victoria Park. My solution to getting over jetlag is to go on a long walk, so once I got off the bus in Bath and dropped off my luggage, to the Botanical Gardens and through the Royal Victoria Park I went. It was pleasant! And free.
• Royal Crescent. This is the architectural showpiece of Bath, and one that’s been in a billion period pieces, including Bridgerton. I walked around it and admired it from the very busy lawn in front of the building, but I didn’t go into the museum. I was tired on my first full day there, what can I say.
• The Scallop Shell. A lovely seafood spot that gets busy quick. I walked in at 5 p.m. on a Monday (jet lag meant my stomach didn’t know what time it was), and the restaurant was full by the time I left.
• Prior Park Landscape Garden / Bath Skyline Walk. This was a rambling walk through the Bath countryside. The landscape garden had a fee, but I didn’t mind (and it connected to the Bath Skyline walk). Wonderful views.
• The Boater. When I was done hiking I was tired and cold and wanted a pint. Ta da! The Boater was right there. Lovely atmosphere and, of course, good pints.

 

Stratford-Upon-Avon

• Holy Trinity Church I went to Stratford-Upon-Avon on a day trip when I was studying at Oxford, and stopped at this church where Shakespeare is buried. I’m glad I came back — the docents were very helpful and informative. When I went to look at a stained glass window that America gave the church, I heard an old British man say “I’m surprised Trump hasn’t put himself in it yet.” Deep sigh.
• The Dirty Duck. I wanted a pint after a long day of travel, and this was perfect. I sat in the Actors’ Pub portion because I saw two dogs there, and then was roped into a two hour conversation about America and American politics (all good — I would have left if not). I had the nachos, which was a hilarious thing to do in England. They were not great, but fine enough.
• Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. This is Royal Shakespeare Company’s slight re-imagining of the 1941 Bertolt Brecht play about Hitler’s rise to power as told through the parable of gangsters in Chicago, with Mark Gatiss in the lead role. I say re-imagining because this production has new music written for it by the band Placeo. I’ve never seen anything quite like it because the content of the play is the same, and it horrifically relevant today. While it’s a period piece, they did have a modern day scene with ICE agents taking away an old man in a bathrobe. I made a noise loud enough that the woman next to me looked. Mark Gatiss, who plays Ui, told The Guardian that they worked to get this production up and running within a year because it’s so timely again. He’s right.

 

London

• Hercules. I don’t think this is going to transfer to Broadway, so I wanted to see this Disney musical while in London. The best parts were the Muses, of course, and the puppets, especially of Hades in Act II and the hydra. Turns out they were created by James Ortiz, who also did Rocky in Project Hail Mary.
• Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the V&A. This was…a dud. Disappointing, I know! Part that might be because a good portion of the dresses are on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I get why they included modern designs, but they were real needle scratches. The best fashion exhibitions tie the items into the space around them and this was just dark. And it’s not like all of these items *need* low light (I know because I’ve seen them at the PMA) and there are ways to do this without it just being “hey it’s dark and therefore moody!” I’d never been to the V&A before (the Cast Courts are WILD), so it’s not like it wasn’t worth the trip, but I’ve been to enough of these textile exhibits know to feel like I have an informed view on what works and what doesn’t. I wouldn’t come to London specifically to see this only. I’m glad I read Little Book of Schiaparelli: The Story of the Iconic Fashion Designer by Emma Baxter-Wright before I came. It gave me a deeper understanding than just the exhibition descriptions did.
• The Producers. I was about two songs in when I realized that as many times as I’ve seen the movie, I’ve never seen the musical, and I can tell why this won the Olivier Award for best revival. It’s fantastic Bonus: (American) national treasure Richard Kind is doing a seven-week run as Max Bialystock, 22 years after he first played the role. He was incredible, and I hope I’m in that good of shape when I’m 69 years old. I knew he was a good actor, but it’s different being close enough where they can spit on you. It’s funny and crass and full of Mel Brooks’ recommended way to deal with fascists: make fun of them.
• Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life and Style at Buckingham Palace. Remember everything I said about Schiaparelli at the V&Aabove? This is the complete opposite. It is an experience, with a story told by how you were moved from room to room. The main attraction are the gowns, specifically those for her wedding and coronation, but one of the last spaces is her “working” dresses displayed on two levels by color, and it’s stunning — and that’s also how I most saw her when she was alive, in bright colored dresses so she would stand out (and I also learned she had a clear umbrella so people could still see her). It reminded me of the wall of Diors I saw at Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams at the Brooklyn Museum. And as much as I was meh on Fashioning the Crown: A Story of Power, Conflict, and Couture by Justine Picardie, I’m glad I read it before I came because I knew a much deeper background on a lot of these items. Also: the guard told me this is sold out through July so if you want to go, plan accordingly.
• Imperial War Museum London. I focused my time on the World War II and Holocaust exhibitions and decided that was enough. It’s important to pace yourself on these tours and realize when you need a break from learning, especially about war and genocide.
• Moet & Chandon Champagne Bar at Harrod’s. Which is why I then went to Harrods and ended up at the champagne bar. I had thought about buying a Harrods’ tote but passed, which makes me feel not so bad about how much that cost. I think the money was better spend on a nice, luxury experience.
• John Proctor is the Villain. Hat tip to my friend and theater journalist Jessica Dershowitz, who told me this is the one play I had to see. It’s an allegory of The Crucible as told by a high school class in 2018 rural Georgia. I was rapt for the whole show. John Proctor IS the villain, I agree.
• Mail Rail at the Postal Museum. London used to have a train that transported mail underground in 2003. Now you can ride it! Yes, you can ride the Mail Rail! It’s a 15 minute experience that’s more Epcot than some Epcot rides. The museum is nice too! Pretty small but the Mail Rail is the real star.
• Passyunk Avenue. I went to one of the locations of this Philadelphia themed bar because, well, it was near my hotel. I didn’t order any food (just stopped in for a pint after a long touristing day) but it was enough of a lark to be worth it. I’m mostly a vegetarian these days but the wings smelled amazing even if I didn’t have any.

Normandy

• I did a one day bus trip with Viator from Paris to the D-Day Normandy beaches: Utah, Pointe du Hoch, Omaha Beach and then the Normandy American Cemetery. It was a long and heavy day, especially since we got the American Cemetery just as they were doing taps. I’m glad I did all that homework before I came too so I had a better sense of the sacrifices made and the ground I was walking on. AND STILL: some MAGA people were there saying they were experts in WW II, and I wanted to ask what lessons they learned because it’s clearly the wrong ones. But for the sake of my tour guide’s sanity, and not picking a fight in a foreign country, I bit my tongue. WW II still feels like an open wound in some spots in Europe, and I can’t tell if it’s because of my studies, that I’m at the places where key events happened, the correlations with modern day, or a mix of all three. An accumulation of all this stuff (the plays, the war museum, etc.) hit me a bit hard by the end of this tour. I had trouble sleeping that night, but I’m still glad I did it all. Also: this idea to see Normandy all started because I saw The Last Rilfeman, based on the true story of a D-Day vet from Northern Ireland (Pierce Brosnan) who busts out of his retirement home get to Normandy for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing. I recommend it.

Paris

• Notre-Dame de Paris. Notre-Dame was closed last time I was here due to the 2019 fire, and I’m glad I came back even though there were a LOT of people. Not as bad as the Duomo in Milan but still pretty crowded. It’s nice! And now I checked it off my list. I had a guide for this too.
• La Galerie Dior. Skip it. It’s small, crowded, and the best dresses are touring. I saw them in Brooklyn; they’re now at SCAD in Atlanta. The crowding was made worse by influencers who held up traffic trying to get the perfect angle. One stopped on a tight spiral staircase to have someone do an iPhone photo shoot, and I told the guy in front of me to just go. Was she mad? Sure. But maybe don’t treat an exhibit like your own personal “content creation” studio.
• Primo Piano, a sit down restaurant at Le Bon Marche department store. Yes of course I wandered into an Italian restaurant for lunch in France, don’t be silly. This is a nice, quite place to have a meal and read a book before heading back out into the madness. Primo Piano means first floor in Italian, if you’re curious. Also when the waiter asked if I preferred to speak in English, I said English or Italian, and off to the (Italian) races we went.
• Musee D’Orsay. This was fine but extremely crowded at the end of a long trip that has been stuffed with crowds (yes I know I’m part of the problem). I saw some things, and it was fine, but if all your women’s bathrooms have a 15 to 30 minute wait, then it’s not a welcoming experience. I left sooner than I anticipated and had a waffle and coffee at a pop up restaurant along the Seine, which also had me contemplating what it would be like if Philadelphia had the courage to pedestrianize either MLK Blvd. or Kelly Drive. Yes, I had the same thoughts when I was in Turin (and in general in cities that prioritize walkers and cyclists). A gal can dream.
• Montmartre. This is a section of Paris that requires 222 steps to get to the top. Which…not to brag, but I have experience with feats of endurance so it was not that bad at all (there is a funicular up too). The view was great, and it was nice to connect it to a book I read (Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff).
• Disneyland Paris/Disney Adventure World. Like last time I went to Paris, I headed to the Happiest Place in Europe (allegedly) on my last day. Some things have changed, mostly the new World of Frozen in the recently renamed Disney Adventure Land. It’s nice! I did it as soon as I got into the park and only waited 20 minutes in the single rider line, but I don’t think I’d wait an hour for it. The funniest part is that it moves backwards because the original Frozen ride in Epcot used the tracks of the Norway Viking ride, which went backwards. So now they transported it here! It’s nice to see they’re finally investing in this park, and in the Disney Village, which is like Disney Springs. But Disneyland Paris itself still feels like Discount Disney. It needs…something. My suggestion would be to start by completely revamping Phantom Mansion, which is their version of the Haunted Mansion. It’s just bad. I can however recommend the Agrabah Cafe Buffet. I had a nice lunch for my last night sit down meal in Paris.

 

Recent Bylines

“How to deal with a problem neighbor,” New York Times

“Should you try tapping for anxiety?” AARP

“NET patient — and research advocate,” Medicine Iowa

“Why AI readiness training fails,” HR Dive

 

What I’m Reading

• Someone to Remember by Mary Balough. This is a novella about Matlida Westcott, a 56-year-old spinster had been a side character in other books of the Westcott series. It was OK — I took it because it’s small — but it made me think of my Great Aunt Marie. When her mother died in childbirth, the baby was taken away and given to a family member who couldn’t have a baby. She was forced to drop out of school and told she couldn’t marry her beau. Then, without a high school diploma or husband, she worked in a factory that gave her blood cancer. People used to say she was mean, but was she? She was always kind of me. She bought her own house with the settlement money from the factory, and lived to 90. We exchanged letters until she died. Even if she was mean, I think she was in her right to have feelings the path she was forced to walk.
• The Bitch by Joan Collins. I had heard about the wild excesses in Joan Collins books but never read one. I picked this up in Italy but never read it, so decided to bring it back home on this trip, and it is WILD: everyone is divorced or banging or buying jewels or flying first class and all trying to have main character energy. Collins said in a preface that she updated some things about the book, but it appears to be only some celebrity names, because all the fashion and style screams 1979 and no one has a cell phone. It’s silly. I hope whoever picked up the copy I left in the hotel little free library enjoys it.
• Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd. I walked by a display of this book, which in the UK edition features a very large illustration of a seagull, and thought nah I don’t need that. Turns out I did, and I walked alllll the way back to that bookstore in Bath to get it. Glad I did! This is the first book about Nora Breen, who recently gave up being a nun, to track down her missing friend. It’s set in a gloomy, off-season seaside English town  in 1954, where the scars left by WW II are still seen and felt. From Detective Rideout: He says the war… “has blown us apart in so many ways; the old rituals, the old believes no longer hold. We want death, like life, to have a reason. Every action pegged, every motive understood, every coincidence unpicked. Otherwise, what is there by chaos?” I expected to take a break from the WW II stuff with a British murder mystery but joke’s on me I guess! I liked it. I’ll read the second book in the series, which is already out in the UK and will be out here in June, eventually.

What I’m Watching

• Scrubs. I was a die hard fan of this show the first time it came around and have it all on DVD, and jokes from it are part of my regular lexicon. And given the last sort of season they had was bad, I was very worried about this continuation, but it’s good! The season is short, but it still packed the same kind of funny/serious punch. All the characters are now where it feels like they should be, EVEN some characters I didn’t know were coming back. I hope they keep going.
• Nuremberg. This 2025 movie is about Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) a psychiatrist who was tasked with evaluating 22 Nazi leaders being held for trial at Nuremberg, in part to keep them from dying by suicide so they could be tried. That includes Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command. There are some great performances in this, including by Crowe, but the movie never gelled for me. This seemed like it was poised as Oscar bait, but it never went anywhere award wise, so apparently I’m not the only one.
• The Choral. And for a change, taking it back to WW I in this movie, which was co-written by Alan Bennett, about a small English town trying to put on a choral performance despite almost all of the town’s young men fighting the war, lead by a somewhat disgraced or at least distrusted choral master (Ralph Fiennes). The big takeaway I had from this is that Roger Allam and Alun Armstrong originated the London roles of Javert and Thenardier in Les Mis. I didn’t even know Allam could sing! Though he does in this movie too! Thank you IMDB trivia! But back to the movie: I found it very touching, especially their choral production and the final scenes. War is war and Hell is Hell, and of the two war is a lot worse, as they say on M.A.S.H.

 

Nail Polish of the Week

Best Day Ever by OPI. This is a very pale sparkly pink from their Barbie line. It’s probably best as a top coat but I wanted something I wouldn’t worry would chip. Mission accomplished.

Holo Glitz by Sephora. A trip to Europe means a trip to Sephora, which sells their own branded nail polish that is not available in the U.S. (which was startling to the workers I told there). This is an EXTREMELY SPARKLY GLITTER polish, all caps used for a reason. I wore this to Disneyland Paris because of course I did. It’s fun!

 

Until next time,

Jen A. Miller (she/her)

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