At the Dallas airport on Jan. 1, 2010, Amy ordered a hamburger while awaiting our flight to London’s Heathrow airport.

“How would you like that done?”

“160F please”

“Does that mean medium-well?”

Sigh.

We booked an airport hotel for one night to recover from the trip – and to learn to drive on the wrong side of the road, with a stickshift on the wrong side of the steering wheel, and negotiate the many, many roundabouts.

We ate dinner in the hotel bar where the only thing on the tele seemed to be … darts.

Next it was off to Oxford where we spent a quite lovely day and night with a colleague of Amy’s and her husband (above, right). Dinner was baked wild haddock with parsnips, carrots and other roasted veggies.

Today, we travelled to Newport, Wales, where many of the Powell’s hail from, including my father, grandfather, and others. We visited with a spry 80-year-old Keith Powell (below, left), a son of my grandfather’s brother, and dined at a carvery – a pub offering British fare of turkey, ham or beef carved from an intact bird or roast and served with unlimited roast veggies and other sides. While the food safety possibilities exist with carveries, this one was well-maintained and under the watchful eye of the carverer. Sorenne must have been starving as she gobbled up turkey, and when I refused a bowl for fear Sorenne would throw it at Keith or elsewhere, he asked as I put the meat directly on the high-chair table, “Are you sure that thing’s clean?”

Must run in the family. When I returned the table-top, the first thing a server did was wipe it down with a cloth soaked in sanitary solution.

Tomorrow, Cardiff.