Lunch with Author Loretta Chase

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of lunching with author Loretta Chase (above, right), who also blogs at Two Nerdy History Girls. We met up at a waterside restaurant in Ft. Myers Beach, Florida and spent three enjoyable hours eating, drinking and, of course, dishing about all manner of things, mostly historical. Victoria couldn't joint us as she's off to Washington, D.C. this week, so for her information, and yours, here are the highlights of what Loretta and I discussed:

The weather (and the masses of snow in the northeast), blogging, dolphins (which are awesome, in the truest sense of the word), Twitter, canal boats and how the canal system changed daily life in England forever, how to properly black a stove, gluten free diets, post horses and the ins and outs of coaching inns, coping with elderly parents, the Prince of Wales (past), House of Cards, how Henry Paget, later the Marquess of Angelsey, ran off with the Duke of Wellington's sister-in-law, the Mary Delaney exhibition at Yale Center for British Art (past), Apsley House, Seven Dials, Sherlock (current), Shepard's Market, The Wellington Tour, Regents Canal (in no way related to the conversation on canal boats above), bedbugs and iron bedsteads, Sir John Soane's House, page proofs, ghosts, how pelicans resemble pterodactyls, post horses (again), Agatha Raisin, threshing wheat, A Couple In England, the costume library at Colonial Williamsburg, Highclere Castle, the Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion Exhibit in Rhode Island (past), The Duchess of Devonshire (current Dowager), husbands and golf.

Thanks for allowing me to be an honorary Nerdy History Girl for the day, Loretta!