Travel with Jane
Would you like to take a Jane Austen-related tour of England? A&E Travel (apparently an offshoot of the television network) is offering “The Legacy of Jane Austen Tour:”
Steventon, England, where Jane Austen spent the first 25 years of her life and wrote “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Northanger Abbey,” is the first chapter of “The Legacy of Jane Austen Tour” Sept. 16-21. The plot thickens with an excursion to the Jane Austen House Museum in Chawton and a visit to Winchester Cathedral to see Jane Austen’s grave. Relevant sites in Southampton, Bath and London keep the pages turning. The $1,400 fee covers accommodations, some meals, activities and transfers. Round-trip trans-Atlantic transportation to London is additional. Offered by A&E Travel of New York, the tour will be repeated March 14-19, 2005. (877-AETours; www.aetvtravel.com)
A funny and slightly snarky article about Chatsworth uses an example from Jane’s work to explain that tours of grand houses is not a recently-developed activity:
There has been a grand house on the grounds at Chatsworth since Elizabethan times. Centuries before the concept existed of the stately home as museum, strangers could knock on the door and have a housekeeper show them the family’s paintings and sculpture (as Elizabeth Bennett and her aunt and uncle did at Pemberley in ”Pride and Prejudice”).
August 11th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Considering the lowly state of the US dollar right now, $1500 is a pretty good price for a week’s vacation. It’s hard to get a hotel room in the UK for much less than $150 per night now, and apparently this $1500 includes some meals etc.
August 11th, 2004 at 10:39 pm
At least plane fare is cheap now!
You might want to look into Rick Steves’ books. He’s pretty good at finding the inexpensive places to stay. Take the recommendations under advisement, however. The perception of “clean” and “comfortable” can vary greatly from one person to another.