Basingstoke, Winchester and Surrounds - weekend with Emma and James After many months of emails, I finally organized to catch up with Emma. She'd moved in with James a few weeks before at Basingstoke, about 45 minutes from London by train. The weekend before, they moved into their own house so we decided I should go visit for the weekend. We decided during the week to meet in London and go see a theatre show first. I met Emma and James at the theatre at 2:30pm so we could see a 3pm matinee of the show "Oleanna" which was very good. It was a very thought provoking piece and controversial. The two actors in it were Julia Stiles (from Mona Lisa Smile and Save the last dance) and Aaron Eckhardt (from Erin Brochovich) and they were brilliant. With that finished by 5pm we headed back to Waterloo to catch a train to Basingstoke. We went out to a local pub for a drink and chat before going back to their place where James made us dinner. Their house is small but very nice. They're in the process of painting it as it had that very bad english wallpaper look. After dinner we sat around watching TV and talking over it. It was so nice to see Emma again and great to get to know James so there was lots to talk about. We had much to catch up on and they were giving me great advice and making me even more excited about my American trip as they had met on a very similar trip the year before. Sunday we got up and went down to the local shopping centre for a look around and then got in the car and headed out for a drive, stopping at a lovely little pub for lunch. The countryside is just beautiful in that area and we passed through some lovely little villages and got to see where James went to school, a boarding school exactly like I'd imagined one to look. We then headed down to Winchester for the afternoon, stopping to see Jane Austen's house on the way. Winchester was a lovely town with a gorgeous cathedral (although we couldn't go in due to services) that is just huge. Way too big for a town that size. Apparently it costs thousands of £'s to keep it open each week. We wandered down by the water and looked at castle that was just ruins. After one final drink in the pub we jumped back in the car headed back to Basingstoke and I jumped on a train and was back home around 6:30pm. I had a lovely weekend and had such a good time getting away from London. It was wonderful seeing Emma again and seeing her and James very happy in their little house and hearing all their travel plans.