Day 11 • Sept. 9

We arose at dawn—what with the sun shining right smack in our eyes, we didn’t have much choice in the matter.  The parking lot had restrooms, but with no hot water, there wasn’t much I intended to accomplish there; Sharon, however, washed her hair in the icy water.  Afterward, we set off on foot in search of hot coffee and breakfast.  Most of the stores and restaurants, however, were still closed at this early hour, so it was some time before we found a place.  We finally found a ritzy hotel that was open.  They charged too much for breakfast for my taste, so we settled for coffee—two pots of it served in an elegant lounge room, quite upper-class.

After coffee, we traipsed up and down the streets of Stow, stopping in a number of shops that were just beginning to open.  For breakfast we bought a couple of chunks of shortbread, a staple in our diet during our holiday.  Finally, the purse strings came loose and the shopping begin, on this our final day abroad, to amass a stash of souvenirs.  Sharon purchased a black marble cat, a little bear figurine, and a glass cat in a bed.  I bought a map and a small box filled with candy.

We left Stow, drove to the town of Burton, and resumed our shopping spree, buying two cat mugs and other sundry keepsakes.  Our stay in Burton was brief; we soon were back on the road heading for Broadway.  Along the way we stopped off again at Broadway Tower (or Beacon) for a little walk in the fields on a hill in Cotswold.

Broadway has many delightful shops.  On this day it was a mob scene.  The town may be as quaint as they come, but it certainly wasn’t undiscovered.  We did some browsing and moved on.  Our next stop was a little tow-bit flea market, where I bought a rather unusual item, which I guess could be called a copper engraving of a nut and bolt, for 1£.  By this time we were quite hungry, so predictably enough we stopped for grub at a pub, where I ate a ploughman’s lunch featuring a bold Cotswold cheese.  The pub carried the famed Carlsberg Export on tap.  Sharon had a half-pint of it, and I had another flat-tasting bitter.

After lunch, we drove on to Warwick Castle on this warm and sunny day.  Our purpose in revisiting the castle was, of course, to shop, which is precisely what we did.  Once we were sufficiently stocked with Warwick Castle memorabilia, we motored slowly toward our final stop before Heathrow—that being Oxford.

We rolled into Oxford about 4:30 p.m.  I wanted to find the same centrally located parking lot I had parked in during my previous two visits to the town.  We found the place with ease and parked.  The money was holding out pretty good, so it was time to spend more of it on souvenirs.  There was only one problem—all the stores were closed on this Sunday afternoon.  So we stopped into some rather ordinary but high-priced restaurant for some coffee.  We would have had a beer too, but it was Sunday afternoon, and beer isn’t served on Sundays in England between the hours of 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.  That left us with two hours to sight see before we could wet our whistles.  When it come to seeing sights, Oxford has the sights to see: hundreds of years of old green quadrangles, courtyards, cathedrals in all four directions, fancy expensive shops, busy streets and quiet ones.  We saw what we could while the daylight lasted and then checked into a café for a couple of double cappuccinos and an almond pastry of some type (of the delicious type).

We returned to the car to drop off our cameras and research the Lets Go guide for recommended dining establishments.  Off went in search of those places.  We found an open liquor store, where we bought four bottles of beer, but we weren’t so fortunate in locating those restaurants.  We eventually tired of searching and dropped into a pub.  It turned out to be a dive, so we only stayed for one beer and then moved on to the indoor-outdoor-upstairs-downstairs pub/bar/restaurant across the street.

This hangout was trendy and exceptionally crowded.  And it was here we spent our last couple of hours in Oxford (what were truly our last remaining hours on holiday).  We ordered sandwiches and ate them outside at a picnic table.  Then we moved inside and upstairs for another round of beers.  The holiday was winding to a close, but before it was over, I had to procure a local poster.  That I did—right off a beam, I detached a poster advertising a local production of Othello.

About 10:30 p.m. the bar closed.  We returned to our car with bottles of beer in hand.  The drive to Heathrow got off on the wrong track due to the difficulty we had in finding signs posting the way out of Oxford to London.  We asked a great many folks for directions and somehow, despite their advice, we trued our course.  Sharon fell asleep.  Without a hitch, I found the Alamo rent-a-car office and parked for the night on a nearby side lane.  Tomorrow we would fly home.