17 Apr. 2026

Here's what we've been up to.

We got visitors! We spent a lot of time in the park behind our house and at the Museum of Science and Industry in their video game room. Maybe not the cultural immersion they were hoping for, but we did order from the chippy for dinner. My friend asked for a comparison between Manchester and an American city. It's hard because every city in Britain that isn't London is so small in comparison, it would be as if if we had one city that encompassed the entire Acela corridor and then, like, Milwaukee. We landed on Cleveland with some elements of Detroit and Baltimore. There, see, who wouldn't want to visit that? Taking bookings in July!

We have now visited two locations that have served as Pemberley in productions of Pride and Prejudice. In March we went to Lyme Park (1995 version). Last weekend we went to Chatsworth House (Austen's inspriation for Pemberley in the novel, and filmed in the 2005 version). Maybe we'll make it to Harewood House that was used in the upcoming Netflix version. I think I am finally over my sentimentality over stately homes that had to be given up because their owners couldn't afford the inheritance tax and because it turned out most people working as servants would rather do something else. Now we can all enjoy them and there is usually a pretty good onsite playground.

Chatsworth

Chatsworth

Chatsworth playground

Lyme Park

Lyme Park

We went to Chatsworth with my friend A, who grew up in Colorado but has lived here since college. Her kids are a little younger than mine so I asked how parenting norms differ between the UK and US. She said "I never lived in the US as a parent so it's hard to say. There's just one weird thing about birthdays."

"That you don't eat the cake at the party?" I said. That was it. At the parties the kids eat a cup of ice cream, and then the cake (usuallly a chocolate roll decorated to look like a caterpillar) is cut into slices that are wrapped in a napkin put in the treat bag. Why? How come? For what reason(s)?

On our way to A's house we stopped at the Eyam Plague Museum. Eyam chose to self-quarantine during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the 1660s, and in doing so may have limited the spread of disease at least among the neighboring towns. This story is the basis of Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonder, which I read for a work book club and made me extremely grateful to live in an era with access to modern medicine.

Eyam is lovely but the EPM was very crowded which felt both ironic and sinister, does everyone know something we don't? There was a replica plague doctor outfit, although the card admits that those were never used in England. We watched a video with reenactments including some humorous wigs. Something books don't have to worry about.

16 Apr. 2026

It's time for another episode of "Visiting a Babysitter", starring special guest Bergamo. I hadn't experienced Ryanair in a while. It is definitely the low rent part of the terminal, with people sitting on the floor for want of seats and no outlets to be found. But we got there. Manchester was about the same damp chilly temperature as it had been on the day we'd left for Finland. Now, instead of being greeted by single digit temps and a foot of snow, we stepped out of the terminal into petal-soft air without a smidgen of humidity. Growing up on Long Island having to constantly explain where Finland is, I occasionally thought life might be easier if I was just Italian like everyone else. Some Finnish last names like mine could be mistaken for Italian, and we knew families who found it more convenient not to correct people who assumed they were. Anyway, while I am still very proud of my Finnish heritage I had to make a real effort not to compare the two visits.

P picked us up and we hurried into the car in the fifteen minute window before she would had to pay for parking. Someone in front of us had missed their window. The machine at the gate couldn't actually take payment, so if you owed money you had to scurry across several lanes, pay at a booth, and then run back to your car while the cars behind you waited or tried to wriggle into an open lane. Every time a car in front of us had to complete this process, the likelihood of making it in time grew smaller. We missed it, and by the way it turned out they'd recently changed it to ten minutes! In another parallel with our trip to Helsinki, getting to the AirBnB required navigating a courtyard with several gates, punch codes, and a lockbox. At least this time there was a tiny elevator that could fit one person with a suitcase.

People keep telling us "The great thing about being in England is that you can get to the rest of Europe so easily!" I didn't get that at first. I'm so Masterpiece Theatre-pilled, there are so many places in Britain I'm not going to get to that I didn't give much thought to the rest of the continent. But it is nice to arrive in a new city and not spend the first few days completely off my face with jetlag. My older son N and I were up first, as is our wont, so we went out for a wander. It was Easter Monday so the streets were still quiet at 8. We crossed a bridge over a feeble trickle of a river past a row of apartment blocks. They'd probably been built in the seventies but they were covered in subtly textured ceramic tile that looked no more out of place than the centuries-old stucco around them. There was a church attached to a Capuchin friary and people seemed to be waiting for a service, so I made note of the time to try and go back before we left. By nine a few stores were open so I got breakfast and snacks for the next few days. We ate a lot of amazing things on this trip, but the product I miss most now is the Italian equivalent of a Lunchable: a chunk of Parmegiano, a pack of taralli, and a peach nectar juicebox. Over the course of this trip we went through about a dozen. America: why can't we have nice things!!!!!

P picked us up and led us up an enormous hill to Città Alta, the old walled core of the city. We saw the Colleoni chapel, which was lovely inside but photos are forbidden. The narrow streets were thronged and it took some doing to find a place to get lunch. V. good risotto with rabbit ragu, although these were definitely European rather than American portion sizes.

After lunch we got our first gelato of the trip, which is when the children declared their love for Italy. Their default position any time we leave home is tolerating-it-but-would-rather-be-home-playing-Lego, so their enthusiasm is not given lightly. I sometimes get a little marbled out with antiquities, but most of the items in the archeological museum were local which was neat. It was possibly the first time in my life I wished I'd taken Latin, so many plaques inaccessible to me! There was a very large rock in the plaza in front of the building. The kids said later that sliding down the rock was the best part of the day other than ice cream. The natural history museum had a decent amount of taxidermy and a bathroom that was very far away from the exhibits and where the ghosts of recent cigarettes lingered. Another ice cream stop at Gelateria Gemma, which P said is their family's preferred spot and had the best selection of flavors we saw on the whole trip. Supermarket run, where I finally grasped why our sitters all found American superrmarkets so overwhelming. Dinner, collapse!

On Tuesday we took the hourlong train to Milan. We bought second class tickets, which from what I understand just meant our car wasn't air conditioned. I've never seen such a beautiful train station.

The Duomo is about a 35 minute walk from the train station. There's a subway that takes 15 minutes, but once we got out of the boring office buildings near the station it was a nice walk. For instance, we got to see this mint green Fiat with a dog bed in the passenger seat.

Pit stop at Marchesi 1824, a bakery in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. When we got inside I saw the velvet pastel upholstery and chic black bateau neck waitress uniforms signalling Instabait and almost said forget it. But while the hand decorated Easter cakes and chocolate eggs were priced to ogle rather than to eat, coffee and pastries weren't a bad deal if you were willing to stand.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II gave me that most American of reactions: "Oh, this is what the Bellagio is aiming for".

Duomo after that. I haven't been to confession in years and might have ducked in if any of the booths had been open, but there was very little worship happening. Lunch after that at Fresco and Cimmino around the corner, full of bankerboys on their lunch hour. Best pizza of the trip, zucchini flower and anchovy.

We waited a very long time within tantalizing view of the Lego store for a streetcar, which looked about sixty years old with wooden interiors and glass lighting fixtures and decidedly midcentury ventilation. T led us to a gelato place where he was hoping to find the Grand Marnier flavor he came across on a college trip that has been haunting his dreams ever since. No luck, but he got a chocolate and orange that he said was pretty good. I got cassata and an extremely intense chocolate with cherry and coffee. Every now and then, there's some combination of caffeine, acid, and dehydration that knocks me off kilter. It usually takes a few hours to get revved up and sometimes I can head it off, but within minutes of eating the chocolate gelato it was clear that my body was revolting. We had started making our way back to the train station. As we descended into the subway I bargained with myself that I was going to steer clear of coffee for the rest of the day and stay super hydrated. The subway came and we boarded.

SKIP IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT VOMIT

I began to wonder if a worst-case-scenario plan might be warranted, so I rooted around in my backpack for a plastic grocery bag. Almost immediately, the worst case scenario was upon me. I went into a corner and held the bag tightly to my face while my stomach turned itself inside out. I forgot about my bewildered children. I forgot my husband, who had his back to me while he took a work call and hadn't yet noticed the commotion. For a few minutes, the only other people on the planet were the woman standing next to me who gently rubbed my back, and the owners of several disembodied hands that held out packs of tissues. I hope all of these people are shown grace in their hour of need. We got off the train and I disposed of the bag. I felt a little better. Another train came and we got to the main train station.

I was starting to flag again. The station, which I'd found so charming when we arrived, was now hostile pandemonium. The smell of cigarette smoke, which normally wants me to go up to the nearest smoker and try to siphon the smoke directly out of their lungs, was an assault. I paid €1.20 to go through a turnstile to the bathroom, where the smell of smoke was replaced by very strong cleaning chemicals. I bought a bottle of water, mostly for the sake of obtaining another plastic bag. The only place to sit was in a coffee shop where I tried to ignore the display of sandwiches directly across from me and occasionally worked up the will to sip from a cup of hot water. It was time to get to our train back to Bergamo. I had just made it out of the cafe when I started vomiting again, first into the bag and then a trash can. My stomach was completely empty at this point so I felt OK enough to get on our train. I slowly returned to myself. Gradually it seemed possible that someday, maybe in a year or two, I would eat again. P picked us up at the train station and brought me back to the AirBnB and took everyone else went out for sandwiches. I was fine after that but I have not eaten chocolate since.

OK THAT'S OVER

In the morning I was born anew. I went back to the friary at 8:30 for Mass but nothing was happening. There was another man in the church and with the help of Google Translate I learned from him that it started at 9. It was only a three minute walk and I was starting to wonder what my semi-supervised children were up to, so I went back to the AirBnB to wait. When I got inside, they were watching Alta Infedeltà, a reality show where people in an adulterous love triangle talk about their situation interspersed with reenactments. "That is his girlfriend but then there's another lady! They took off their clothes and they were kissing and saying 'Oooooooh'!" said N. To my shame, my curiousity was piqued and I did not change the channel as quickly as I should have. Eventually I came to my senses and encouraged my husband to come downstairs to keep an eye on things.

Back to church, much to reflect on. The service was in Italian but I'd rather have a short Mass in a foreign language than one in English with a ton of singing, which probably says a lot about my relationship to spirituality. After visiting the Capuchins it seemed only appropriate to have a cappucino at the coffee bar across the street. The proprietor was having a chat with a customer who seemed to be having some kind of breakfast wine? They really know how to live.

To get back to the old city we took the funicular that chugs up the steepest part of the hill. Città Alta was much less crowded now than it had been on Monday. We meandered around and looked in a few churches before lunch. I got lardo pizza which was great, although a little part of me is sad that we never made it to the takeout place that served polenta through a walkup window.

After lunch we got gelato where tragedy struck- both children managed to knock most of theirs off the cone onto the ground. We assumed it was just the first of many rounds of gelato that day so they took it in stride. As it turned out, it was also our last of the trip so if we ever go back to Italy I'm sure they will inform us that they are owed a gelato debt.

In the afternoon we went to the inauspiciously named Palazzon Moroni. As I've mentioned, there is no museum video so dry that my children will not want to watch it, and language is not a barrier. While they were listening to Italian narration about the history of the house, I took a brief nap. The house was lovely, although I think they will have fonder memories about rolling down the hill in the garden.

We sat for a while having spritzes (us) and orange juice (children) which came with little dishes of chips, olives, peanuts, and bruschetta. Funicular back down the hill, then walk across town to the Starbucks where P was picking us up to bring us to the airport. We still had time to kill and hadn't finished our Italian Lunchables so we found benches in front of a hotel where the kids could play on the grass. When B had to go to the bathroom T started to look up coffee shops, lacking my hardwon knowledge that if you stride purposefully into a hotel lobby and make your way toward the elevators the bathroom will present itself to you, and the marginal chance that the doorman will try to hinder you evaporates if you are holding a small child's hand.

Are they moving a lot of Jewish and Tibetan nativity scenes?

Intense but brief goodbye at the airport so P did not have to repeat the payment gate debacle! Inside we learned that, two days after we got home from Finland, a new policy had come into effect requiring all foreigners entering Britain to fill out a £20 registration form. I am usually very snobby about people who do not prepare themselves for this sort of thing until they get to the airport, and now I was one of them. All feelings of shame dissipated when we confronted what Britain has cost itself with its Euroskepticism. We passed through the shiny part of the terminal with the Eataly and the playground before we got to the immigration line, which could have taken over an hour if we hadn't hit the double golden ticket of having EU passports and young children. The non-Schengen part of the terminal had only two places to eat, neither had gelato as we'd assured the children they would so our ice cream debts continue to mount, and the place with seating was next to the smoking section, so T dragged them away from the tables (which had TVs in them, very impressive) and we ate sandwiches at the gate. We'd arrived at the airport two hours early, and if our flight hadn't been delayed we might have missed it- the number of times that all passengers for the flight to Cairo were implored to proceed to the gate for final boarding suggested that some did. But we made it home, more grateful than not to Ryanair.

Apr. 13 2026

I had already booked my monthly trip to the London office for March before my company informed me that they would not be requiring my presence in person or virtually for that matter. Bonus Day In Town!

I wanted to see Highgate Cemetary, described by Ian Nairn as the "creepiest place in London." It is in the middle of a very attractive neighborhood but, true to its name, the walk from the Archway Tube station was quite a climb. The cemetary wasn't open yet so I killed an hour in a coffee shop where the proprietary listened patiently to a series of older ladies who seemed to be regulars. They talked at length about their holidays, the jobs they had, the jobs they used to have. On the few occasions where he had an opportunity to offer a fact about himself, these served merely as pivot points for the customers to shift topic in their autobiographical monologue. I had done zero logistical research so learned about the £10 entrance fee when I got to the Highgate entrance. It seems like it would be well worth it if you were going to spend a few hours there, but I hadn't planned on spending that long so I decided to pass. One day, although preferably as a visitor rather than as a resident. In the meantime, I contented myself by peering through the wall. Creeps galore!

Museum of the Home in Shoreditch. Free! It was once an almshouse founded by a man who made his fortune trading slaves. I liked the balance of focus on objects themselves and on how people used them. The room below was set up as it might have been in an Irish immigrant couple's apartment in the seventies, and there were little notes about what their lives there might have been like. Good gift shop but no cafe which seems like a missed opportunity given the museum subject, nice 75 minutes.

I can no longer forestall addressing the Samuel Pepys Issue. Beat his wife, felt up every comely servant girl who had the misfortune to be within arm's reach, slavery enthusiast, overall not the most charming company. But his diary, which I get in my RSS reader, is as vivid a look at the seventeenth century as is possible to get, with his descriptions of hangovers, boring sermons, and agonizing kidney stones. On this trip I wanted to see a few of the locations from Walking Pepys's London by Jackie Harvey Colliss, several also mentioned in Nairn's London which I'd just finished. This is St. Bride's Church in Fleet Street where he was baptized. I was taken aback by the stained glass window.

Come on

The City streets were bustling with bankerboys and bankergirls striding vigorously back from lunch. These sacred buildings are still cherished, but out there was where all the life is lived. This is St. Dunstan-In-The-West. Other than someone who came in just as I was leaving, I seemed to be completely alone. It smelled like incense. Notices about upcoming events like concerts, but not a whole lot of pastoral activity it seemed. How often were these churches a place where people made eyes at each other across the aisle (hopefully not copping a feel like SP), or smiled sweetly at each other while inwardly seething about what happened with the casting of the Nativity play?

Around the corner, the home of Samual Johnson. The Rest is History had just wrapped up a good series about him. Their newsletter had a coupon for a pound off the £10 entrance fee so I thought what the hell. It was fine but you would have to have greater interest in Samuel Johnson than I do for optimal value there. I probably should have spent the money on Highgate instead. Absolutely murderous spiral staircase down to the basement for the ladies' room, so points for authenticity there.

I had a restorative cup of tea and then peeked into The Black Friar pub which had gotten a mention from Ian Nairn for its advanced age and the Edwardian bronze panels on the walls. Pubs are a part of English life that I wish I could better appreciate. After all this time here, I know I'm supposed to order at the bar and then find a place to sit/stand, but somehow I always need to confirm that in my most tenative clueless American visitor voice. There often isn't a printed menu so I get slightly flustered when being asked what I want. Finally, it is very hard for me not to bolt down any cold beverage in front of me, alcoholic or otherwise, especially if I'm by myself. Is any of this really an "England" issue rather than a "Me" issue? Who can say. Anyway, TBF was nice but the tables were full and I wasn't in the mood to stand, which is another reason pubs haven't become a habit. Onward.

Visit to the Fortnum and Mason at the Royal Exchange. Not nearly as much to see as the Picadilly location but I was on a mission: a tea assortment for our babysitter who we were going to visit in Bergamo, and some Earl Grey for T. I passed a few other buildings on the Nairn/Pepys/Johnson circuit. By 4, the pubs were overflowing and crowds of men (mostly) were clustered like sheaves of navy and charcoal wheat on the sidewalk. St. Giles Cripplegate, like several of the churches I'd seen, is far older as a parish on this site than the current structure but previous iterations had been damaged by London's two great calamities: the Great London Fire in 1666, and the Blitz. Closed for an event. I thought that after all these centuries-old buildings the Barbican Estate next door would feel like a very sorry let down, but I found it very inviting. The vines hanging down from all the window boxes were the most greenery I'd seen that day, and with people moving around on all the multilevel walkways it felt social and inviting.

Time to head south of the river. I crossed Thrale Street, named for a patron of Johnson who owned a brewery there. The gate was locked at the Crossbones Graveyard and Garden of Remembrance, a former cemetary for sex workers, paupers, and others who couldn't be buried in churchyards, but I got a look through the fence at the garden and art maintained by volunteers. For dinner I met a former colleague at Camille near Borough Market. She was brave enough for the calves' brains, I was not, but everything else was delicious. Pack of Cadbury mini eggs at the train station and home.