It’s 2:00 a.m. here in England. I’m leaving for the airport in just under 2 hours. I should be asleep…yeah, I’m not.
My shoulder is bothering me – that’s a whole post by itself, but the bottom line is that I need surgery to fix it and while the surgery itself isn’t completely complicated, the recuperation period is intense, complicated and a bit overwhelming at this point.
But more than my shoulder, England brings with it so many thoughts that I want to write about. I find it ironic that after not traveling much in my life, the two places I’ve arranged to visit are Rome and England – both have long histories connected with the Jewish people, both once ruled my land. In a sense, one took it away from us and the other was instrumental in the path that brought us back to it.
I need to sleep and then write. I need to post pictures – silly since they’re all on the web and even there likely more professional than I could have taken, but I want to, and so I’ll do that when I get back to Israel.
For now, I want to write about the hotels where I stayed here. I want to post pictures of the hotels as well – one in Manchester, one in London. I’ll write about the one in Manchester here because the one in London is the one that is more on my mind and I want to make it a full post.
So, for Manchester – all I can say is that I stayed in a really nice hotel – the Deansgate Hilton. It’s the tallest building in Manchester. I got a very good rate because I was attending a conference there. The people working at the hotel were wonderful, professional and kind. I didn’t get to the Manchester Jewish community area – hopefully if I ever find my way back to England, and I hope I do, I’ll try to get back to Manchester.
I did stop in the Rylands library – I hope I have that right. What an incredible building that is – magnificent. Before I left Israel, I hoped it would rain a lot while I was in England. Crazy, considering most people want sunshine for their vacation – I wanted the rain and amazingly enough…I think it rained every day I was here.
It poured on Shabbat here – literally to the point of hail falling. I walked (back to London again) for about 45 minutes – came back to the hotel completely and entirely soaked to the bone – it was glorious.
So next post – the hotel in London…
Visit A Soldier’s Mother.