Europe trip

Saturday, June 27 we (Mac and I) flew out of LAX airport and went to London Heathrow by way of Chicago O'Hare on American Airlines. We got into London at about 10:00 A.M. on Monday. We had purchased BritRail passes before heading over which gave us 8 consecutive days of unlimited rail travel on the entire island of Great Britain. We spent $285 (US) per person, which we were able to charge to the department as a travel expense, because we had to use them for transit from Heathrow to the conference and when we went to Belgium. From Heathrow we got to King's Cross station by public transport, where we got a train to Leeds and then to Bradford. The first train was from a rail line called East Coast which we were very impressed with - we had free WiFi onboard and were able to use my credit card to buy lunch since I hadn't been to an ATM yet. None of the other rail lines we rode on (Northern Rail, Cross Country, and South West) had WiFi, and when we tried to buy lunch on Cross Country, we found out they only took cash.

In any case, we made it into Bradford on Sunday night and registered for the conference. We had signed up for housing provided by the conference, which was some cheap "flats" across the street. They weren't very well ventilated and didn't have air conditioning, so they were rather stuffy but livable. My shower also only had hot water (not cold!) so I had to use a different empty room to shower. Bradford itself wasn't the nicest place in England, although it did have a beautiful cathedral and city hall area. We had fish and chips the first night there, and for breakfast we bought some stuff at the Sainsbury's next door. Lunches were provided by the conference (just sandwiches) as were two of the dinners, both at nice restaurants. One dinner was at an Indian restaurant, because Asian food is popular in Bradford. The conference itself (ICESS) had some interesting speakers. Mac presented the paper that he and I had worked on, so I didn't have to give any talks at ICESS. It was also co-hosted with two other conferences, so I went to a security session which included a talk on multivariate public-key cryptography (the area I had worked on at NKU). I also had the chance to socialize with some of the other conference attendees, who were mostly European and Asian. In addition, one of the program committee members was a former student of Sanjoy Baruah (my advisor), so I got to meet him as well. Thursday afternoon we left Bradford for Edinburgh, Scotland via a Cross Country train.

We got into Edinburgh on Thursday night and stayed at the King James Thistle hotel. Friday was our day of sightseeing in Edinburgh. We started at the tourist bureau in the city center, where we purchased tickets for a bus tour during the day and a tour of the caverns at night. After the bus tour, we had lunch at a tavern and then went to the Museum on the Mound. (The advantage of traveling with nerds is that you find out you both wanted to do something like that!) Afterwards, we went to the Edinburgh Castle. When we got there, one of the tour guides was ready to start a tour, but no one had wanted one. Thus, we ended up getting a private one! At the end, we tried to tip her, and we only got her to accept one when I offered her a souvenir American $2 bill. We next climbed the Walter Scott Monument in the city center with a nice view. We had dinner at our hotel, which had a decent restaurant that was quite affordable if you ordered from the flyer they left in the room rather than the menu. Afterwards we went on a tour of the vaults under the city. The night tour was a "Ghosts and Ghouls" tour. We actually would have preferred the historical tour during the day, were it not for the limited daylight. At the beginning of the tour, I was used as an example of an Englishman getting flogged while the crowd (the rest of the tour group) cheered. When the other guy being used as an example told me that we would actually be whipped (which we were, with a soft whip that didn't do anything), I told him that since I was an American, I would just sue them. (Joking, of course.) The tour was pretty interesting and did include quite a bit of history.

The next morning we took a trip down to Bath, England on a Cross Country train. I have relatives in Bath (the Lewises) who we visited. We missed the train we had intended to catch, so we ended up getting in about an hour later than planned. We also didn't have cell phones that work in the UK, so we weren't sure how we were going to let my relatives know. The train we did catch was incredibly crowded, so for the first few stops we sat in between cars. We did eventually get seats, and Mac found a nice girl to talk to who let us use her mobile phone to call my relatives and let them know we were going to be late. The excitement for the day wasn't over yet, however. On the second train, I recognized Bath, which I had visited before a couple of times. So I told Mac, "This is our station." I then went across the train car to get my bag and leave. As soon as I left the train, I read the station name and realized it was the wrong station. Thus, I went back on and tried to find Mac to tell him we were supposed to go to the next station. He had left out of the other door, and I realized this as the doors closed for the train to leave the station. Fortunately, he saw me through the window, but we couldn't really communicate anything and I couldn't leave the train. So I got to the next stop and called the Lewises, explaining the situation. They agreed to come pick me up and then pick up Mac. Problem solved and excitement over, right? Nope! Just before getting to the bus stop where they were supposed to pick me up, I couldn't recall whether they had told me to turn right or left, so I tried turning right and promptly found a bus stop. It was actually the wrong one, so I waited about 20 minutes and was wondering where they were. I then went the other direction and found Mac. It turned out they had showed up, looked for me unsuccessfully, and then picked up Mac without me there. From Mac's perspective, some random British guy walks up to him at the train station and asks, "Are you Mac?" So, after all that drama, we did finally end up at the Lewises and had a very nice time with them.

On Sunday morning, I went to a choral matins service at the Bath Abbey while Mac went to the Roman Bath Museum. We spent a little time in the afternoon touring the city before returning for lunch with the Lewises, followed by a train to the Salisbury station where we took a bus tour to Stonehenge and spent some time at Stonehenge. That night we went into London and stayed at a Comfort Inn near King's Cross and St. Pancras.

Monday morning Mac and I did some sightseeing in London, including riding the London Eye. Afterwards we had lunch on Baker Street and then went to Regent's Park. We got our luggage at the hotel and went to St. Pancras station, where we took the Eurostar high-speed (186 MPH top speed) train through the Chunnel to Brussels, Belgium. While we were at St. Pancras, we saw Edmund Lewis, who we had just seen in Bath a couple days prior, and met his girlfriend. Once we got to Brussels, we took a train to where our hotel, the Royal Windsor, was located. We saw at the front desk that if you just walk up and book (which we didn't, of course), rooms start at €500 a night ($646 at the time of this writing). You could also buy a standard size bottle of Coke in the mini-bar in the room for €6 ($7.75 at the time of writing). We actually only had to spend €144/night ($186/night) with the conference rate. Needless to say, it was a nice hotel with an excellent continental breakfast including, of course, Belgian waffles. Tuesday was the first day of ECRTS - just the workshop day. We had dinner at a nice Belgian restaurant and I had a chicken dish the name of which I can't remember. We then went to another restaurant with televisions to watch the World Cup game.

On Tuesday morning, I had to give my talk. I had not rehearsed it for my advisor before, but I had rehearsed it to Mac several times and tried to take into account his suggestions. I was actually pretty nervous just before the talk, since ECRTS is a decent size crowd (almost 150). Fortunately, both Jim and Sanjoy thought I did very well, which I was glad to hear. Jim had used his powers as program chair to schedule me early in the conference so I could enjoy the rest, which I was grateful for. The rest of the conference also had some interesting talks. My favorites were the one right before me by Greg Levin analyzing optimal multiprocessor schedulers in a new way (easily the best talk I've ever seen at a conference, so a hard act to follow) and the keynote given by Sanjoy on why real-time scheduling theory still matters. The conference was also a good chance to meet and network with other researchers in my field, including another of Sanjoy's former students. At this conference, there were mostly Europeans with a fair number of Americans and a few Asians.

Mac and I did have some chances to go sightseeing in Belgium. We were right by the Grand Place, which is certainly a beautiful sight in and of itself. This is also right by the Manneken Pis, a statue/fountain of a boy peeing that seems to be on all the souvenirs for sale. Of course, we had our share of Belgian waffles and chocolate, as well as other Belgian food at restaurants, while we were there. We also discovered the Delhaize grocery store, which had a logo we immediately recognized. It turns out Delhaize is the company that owns the Food Lion chain of grocery stores we have in North Carolina. I bought some chocolate and handed my MVP card to the checkout lady. She asked me, "What is this?" and, when I told her, got really excited and was showing it to the other employees and explaining in French that it was from England. (Mac later corrected her in French and told her it was actually from the US.) It actually scanned and I earned points on my Delhaize account I didn't know I had. She wanted to keep it, but originally I didn't want to let her. We went back and gave it to her, since I realized I could just get another one when I get back to Chapel Hill. Then Mac had the brilliant idea of getting a Carte Plus (the Belgian equivalent) so that I could use it at Food Lion. We filled out the form and had to write in "US" in the country section (which had some options, but all countries in Europe) and use an extra digit for the postal code, but they gave us the cards. Now I intend to bring it to Food Lion with a stack of $2 bills, just to weird out the cashier.

On Saturday we flew back from Belgium on American via Chicago. It was a pretty uneventful trip back, and the longest day of my life (33 hours).