Note:  The Minkey needs an editor, and more sleep.  In the end, she gave up and published this anyway.  

The flight to London was delayed 3.5 hours.  It was an inauspicious beginning.  It was also the Minkey’s birthday.  Argh. This meant our dinner plans went awry and once we arrived and made our way to the hotel (Double Tree at Tower Hill, nice!) we had to make new arrangements, which is challenging when you have just stepped off a transatlantic flight. It was a quiet birthday celebration, with a glass of champagne and then crashing back at the hotel.

Sunday we were up and at ’em bright and early taking several trains over to Windsor Castle. It was a blustery day – with occasional rain, so it really felt like England to us. The Minkey had forgotten to wear her glasses and consequently spent most of Sunday unable to clearly see many things …. like artwork in the castle, like edges on things, and really, text of any kind. Yes, the Minkey is another year older, but not another year wiser, sigh. Luckily, she had assistance, as her friend Laura was able to interpret signs and small print for her.

Windsor Castle is impressive – and after a small snafu with our tickets (they were purchased for the wrong date, but I’m not going to embarrass Laura about that, oh wait, maybe I am!), we were able to meander through the grounds. We spent a fair amount of time in the castle – mostly looking for a way to get into the private apartments, and I admit, in search of Prince Harry. As it turns out, the Queen was in residence, but Prince Harry was in South Africa. Darn. We saw countless portraits of Men of Quality, like the Duke of Wellington, George IV (who REALLY went all out in his attire for his portrait sitting), Field Marshal Von Blucher, Charles II, and so on. There were several items that came from Waterloo and other battles with Napoleon, including his cape (to be accurate, a burnous), which was bright red and of an interesting style (heck if I remember, Moorish? something like that). The text claims that Napoleon was really not that short …. but probably in reality was 5’6. I on the other hand believe that he wore high-heeled boots – ’cause anybody with a silk embroidered cape like this one, would wear heels.  I’m just sayin’…. And, what else was kind of overwhelming at Windsor was the amount of China that was on display – going back a couple of hundred years – fabulous designs. The banquet room was also impressive, seats 160 (just for small get togethers) and everything is laid out using rulers…. We ended our day in Windsor at a pub, battling jetlag with bangers and mash and pints. Not sure that helped.

Monday was a banner day though – when the Minkey managed to melt her eye glasses. Yes, I know gentle reader, you may be asking yourself ‘how?’ As indeed was I. Interestingly, the Brits don’t let you plug anything electrical into a bathroom outlet, for fear of sudden death (apparently), but they have no qualms about the extremely high temperatures that a hair dryer can reach, like say surface of the sun temperatures. I was using said hot hair dryer (wondering why I was literally burning my fingers) and when I set it down, the overheated air was blasting the left lens on my glasses. I discovered, much to my chagrin, that there is a very low melting point for the coating of anti-glare and scratch resistant crap that they put on your glasses. My left lens looks like a kaleidoscope now, with a weird fragmented coating across the lens. They are completely unusable. This was discovered moments before I needed to run out the door for my all day customer advisory board that I facilitate. Panic! I had to put in contacts – which are not the same prescription. Thus began the start of the Minkey’s pseudo-blindness – which continues to this day. (I can’t see #*$&#*!). The contacts are not working – in fact I can’t even see out of the left one, so I gave up on those several days ago. I am creating new wrinkles every day as I squint at EVERYTHING. ANd it’s not only the squinting, I have astigmatism, so everything is slightly blurry too. Insert primal scream here. You should see me writing this, I have to get my eyes about 5 inches away to make sure I’m spelling words correctly. The next unfortunate incident occurred later that evening, when after a successful customer meeting, Minkey nearly went down on the uneven London pavement, twisting an ankle in the process. Ouch. Minor damage done there – but I believe I’ll live. All of this was compounded by being so busy at the conference that I could not get any food …. if you miss the window, you only have nibbles available, maybe. So the Minkey went through an entire week at HPE Discover – blind, hobbled, and starving. Not to mention all the evenings out with colleagues – one extremely late night (really ended in the morning) on Canary Wharf somewhere … And now we are approaching voice loss. Yes, it’s true, I often use my outdoor voice too frequently – and that may be part of the problem – but talking non-stop for a week does not help either! So now, the Minkey has said goodbye to London and is headed to Paris – Bon Voyage!