4-20-09 Paris and Nottingham

After a relatively long stay in Paris, it was time to move on to Britain. We had been putting off mailing our postcards until today, and the few hours between breakfast and the bus to our airport were the only time we would have to mail them inside France. The post office happened not to be open yet, so we had to wait about 30 minutes outside. While there, an Egyptian man hailed us and tried to practice his English with us for awhile. He was pretty aggressive and liked to put his face really close to yours (which I hear is typical of Arabs? not sure) which was uncomfortable, but still, it was a neat experience.

The flight to Nottingham was only 45 minutes long, probably the smallest amount of time I've ever spent on an airplane. The flight was really cheap too - Europe has several small airlines (such as Ryanair) that fly to and from small, rural airports for prices in the 10€ to 20€ range. I wish they had this in the US.

On the bus from the East Midlands airport to the town of Nottingham, we passed a nuclear power plant - the first I've ever seen in my life.

We decided to take it easy today. After checking into our hotel, we wandered around for just a few hours. Downtown we found another Muji store. Nottingham is a relatively small town, so we were surprised to see one here. We went to the tourism office to get bus directions for our destinations the next day. We got back to our hotel and relaxed for a few hours, then left again to try and find food and some toiletries that we were running low on.

Lo and behold, this entire town shuts down at 5:30pm. Except for a few pubs, every place of business in the area was closed between 5:30 and 6. Unable to find anything open except for fast food places, we returned to our hotel.

Back at our hotel, we noticed that the building had a lounge with a television in it. We happened to catch the British version of Nigella Lawson's cooking show, which is kilometers beyond its American counterpart in sophistication. At this point, we were very tired and not very hungry, so we decided to save a couple pounds by going to bed early without dinner.