Leicester

Okay, the next stop was Leicester (pronounced Lester) to meet with another professor. From Durham we drove down a few hours to our hotel. We asked the front desk how to get to the university, and the attendant pulled out a map and a highlighter and told us about a "good and safe" walk there. That raised a red flag. Anyway, Leicester reminds me of... Detroit. Just nothing to write home about. It's very industrial and doesn't have those funny English people tut-tutting about riding a bicycle on the pavement. The best part of this city was definitely the professor we met there. He was brilliant, personable, family-oriented (He told us about his teacher wife and three kids) and an openly evangelical Christian. He was much younger than I was expecting him to be (40), especially after listening to Nathan tell me about all of his books and accomplishments. After we left, Nathan and I did some math, and it turns out that the guy published his PhD at Cambridge at 22. Holy smarts!

I forget what this thing is called, but it's basically a moving elevator with no doors. You just kind of have to jump on and off when it gets to your floor. Coming from such a litigious society, I couldn't help but think of all the lawsuits waiting to happen with one of those in an American building.

Leaving the university we chanced upon some trees and a park. Here's Nathan's best Asian tourist pose.

This is a war memorial. We noticed that the English don't believe in power washing anything.

Nathan said to take this picture of "the house we're going to flip." In his dreams.