Saturday, March 20

We spent today in St. Albans, where the original John Cass of our family is supposedly from. It was the Roman city Verulamium, and they have a terrific museum here of Roman life in Britain. It's been raining off and on since about noon yesterday, so not an altogether beautiful day for sightseeing, but it is England after all! Today was market day, and the main street in town was filled with stalls offering everything from vegetables, meat, and baked goods to bolts of fabric, foam core, soap, and various bric a brac. Even with the intermittent drizzle the good people of St. Albans were out in force shopping. We went to the Museum of St. Albans, which is mostly about time after the Romans, to the Cathedral - where we heard a fantastic rehearsal for a concert of Handel's "Solomon," which was being performed this evening, and then back to the Verulamium Museum. Finally, we took a bus back to our hotel - the Quality Hotel on London Road. This isn't the place we had planned to stay, but it's where we ended up when our B&B host had to go out of town suddenly. And, actually, Peter doesn't like B&Bs at all, so he is much happier here. The hotel is a bit over a mile outside the city center, but it's on a bus route, so yesterday we took the bus home from the city, and today we took the bus both ways.

We're just about all packed up for our return journey tomorrow. Our flight is due to depart Heathrow about 1:15 or so; we'll have time for breakfast, drive to Heathrow, leave the car and check in for the flight. We're supposed to land at MSP about 6:15 in the evening.