england trip #1

Why, yes, it HAS been a week since my last entry, in which I promised loads and loads of England pictures were on their way. A week in which I have done very little outside of dragging myself to work each morning, then dragging myself home each evening to lie on the couch and read Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood Vampire Books and watch our latest TV love, Torchwood (especially interesting because it’s a SciFi show set in Cardiff, Wales in which the main characters are dealing with a time/space rift that is apparently located in the area between Cardiff and the cliffs on the British side of the bay…. which is WHERE I WAS STAYING FOR TWO NIGHTS!!! When we were in the totally amazing old hotel in Clevedon!!! Where we could look over and see Cardiff right there!!! YIKES!!!)

ANYHOW, I am finally starting to feel just the slightest return of energy again. So maybe now I can actually start making some trip entries. And catching up on reading everyone, which I’ve done a very poor job of as well. I’m not sure why I was so completely wiped out. Jet lag, certainly, but that’s an awful long time to suffer jet lag. Probably long-awaited-trip-is-over blues, and not liking the whole being back in the real world thing. Along with NO exercise, after two weeks of constant exercise (too busy lying on the couch reading about vampires and telepaths and werewolves and eating lots of sugar) and just WAAAHHH.

But oh, well, late is better than never. And it will take a lot of entries, so I may as well stop whining and get started.

We set out bright and early Saturday morning, October 16th. Not as bright and early as we’d planned, of course. Kim was running late. We weren’t flying out till 2:30, but had really wanted to leave Asheville by 8:30, since it’s a two-hour drive to Charlotte. Still, no disaster. Even when she didn’t arrive till 9:15 and I was starting to gnaw my fingernails. But still, things were okay! Until she opened her trunk to reveal the biggest suitcase I’ve ever seen in my life.

It was half my height and wider than me and weighed SIXTY FOUR POUNDS. I know how much it weighed because she said, “I’m afraid it’s too heavy!!! I can barely move it!!!!” And I had a luggage scale in my bag. So we weighed it. Baker B could barely drag it out of her trunk. Sixty four pounds. She had borrowed it from a friend (I am tempted to put friend in quotation marks here — this friend should have KNOWN better and although she had a variety of much more suitable suitcases, she convinced Kim to take Garganto Suitcase from HELL, because apparently she hates Kim. And me.) and then she wasn’t able to pack until the night before, and THEN she waited till THAT MORNING to try picking it up. She had at least thrown a backpack into the car too, knowing she didn’t have time to start taking things out since she was already late.

Poor Kim. It was just the start of a very hard lesson in packing. Or, rather, in how NOT to pack. For an overseas trip. In which you will be hauling your own luggage around, and hauling it in all sorts of public transportation. But, too late to do anything about it except drag it back into the trunk (like the very oversized and very unwieldy dead body it came to remind us of before the trip was over) and head to the airport!

We got to the airport in good time, parked in the long term lot, and got to have the first of many, many experiences in which Kim tried to maneuver the Suitcase From Hell out of the car and into the shuttle and out of the shuttle and into the airport, and through the airport and into the baggage check line. In which there was a VERY helpful US Air employee who gave Kim advice on what to shift from the suitcase into the backpack so that she could get the weight down to 50 pounds and not have to pay a big baggage fee. And it was not just the Huge Enormous Suitcase From Hell that was a problem– her “friend” had also loaned her a very weird carry-on bag. It was a strange shape, and rolled but was too wide to actually roll through doors. It also would not just sit atop Suitcase From Hell like carry-ons are supposed to do – Suitcase From Hell naturally had a bizarrely situated extendable handle, which instead of extending from the back of the suitcase, extended from the middle of the suitcase so nothing would sit on top. So Kim had this gargantuan suitcase, a very awkward rolling carry-on that didn’t roll right and wouldn’t sit on the suitcase, AND a hugely overstuffed backpack that she’d had to cram 15 or so pounds of stuff from the suitcase into, plus the purse/backback that she’d brought intending to carry onto the plane. That had to be stuffed into the backpack since she couldn’t take three things aboard.

By the time we got through the check-in and waved an all-too-temporary goodbye to Suitcase From Hell (I was already really REALLY hoping the airline would misroute our checked luggage and have to deliver that damned thing to our lodgings for us), found our gate and took a Starbucks break, we were both frazzled and nervous and feeling like we were going to lose IMPORTANT THINGS because we had IMPORTANT THINGS ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! And we were constantly having to dig around in bags for IMPORTANT THINGS and we were already feeling like stuff was just everywhere.  And you know what didn’t help at all?? When I headed off for a bathroom break, leaving Kim at Starbucks guarding all our carry-ons, and as I walked by the directory board I saw a lone carry-on just standing there in front of the directory board, all by itself. And I thought, “Oh, somebody left their carry-on, how awful, poor things, that sure looks a lot like Kim’s carry… OH SHIT!!!!” And I grabbed Kim’s already-almost-lost carry-on and hurried back to Starbucks with it. OMG. I still can’t believe Security didn’t nab it- it must have been standing there fifteen minutes, all alone.

SO. We managed to board our Charlotte to DC leg without further incident. Although poor Kim was already a nervous wreck, which made me a semi-nervous wreck in sympathy. She was so unglued by the Suitcase From Hell and trying to keep up with all this STUFF she was lugging around (and by nearly losing her carry-on before we even got started) and then she THOUGHT she’d lost her iPod after we got to DC and were waiting to board our London flight… she DID find it again, it’s a teeny Nano and just got stuck in one of her zillion zipper-pockets on the backpack, but still, it was unnerving.

Our DC to London leg was overnight. I TOTALLY lucked out, seatwise. I’d asked for a window seat when I booked the flights, got a horrible middle seat, never could get that one changed myself online — but when we checked in there was a window seat available so I got it. Not only was it a window seat, it was one of the ones at the very beginning of the row that they save for handicapped people, so it actually had …leg room. Tons of leg room. Poor Kim had an aisle seat but was crammed in like a sardine. It was a nearly eight hour flight, and we got in at a little before 7 AM, London Time. Neither of us slept on the plane, but it was so exciting being in London – well, in Heathrow — that I really wasn’t tired. Even after standing in the Customs line for an hour. It was around 9:30 by the time we finally got out of the airport and onto the tube.

And then Suitcase Hell really began.

Thank god the tube was not crowded. Kim had to drag Nightmare Suitcase and shove Nightmare Suitcase and wrestle with Nightmare Suitcase… and we got our first taste of how nice people are in London, which came as quite a surprise. I can’t tell you how many people stopped to help her with the Suitcase From Hell, including a woman who was almost knocked over by it as Kim lost her grip and it tumbled back down the stairs. We had to take a much longer route than we would normally have, since there was work being done on a number of the lines. And I won’t go into how horrific it was trying to get that damned suitcase up and down stairs and escalators as we switched trains and at one point ended up on a line that just terminated, and then missed our stop… it really got pretty awful, and Kim had more than one teary meltdown.

But, we made it! And despite all this Luggage Trauma, all I could think was, OMGOMGOMGOMG I’M IN LONDON!!!!!!!

Our  landlady and her friend picked us up, and even came to collect us at the NEXT station after we missed the correct stop. And once we finally got to the house and got settled in and had a cup of (INSTANT!!) coffee, we both felt much better. It was maybe 1:00 by then. We were tired but certainly not tired enough to, oh, REST. So we set out on foot to explore the neighborhood. We were staying in Stratford, which is way on the east end of London. It’s a great little neighborhood, very middle-class, very ethnic. We were within walking distance of the Stratford station.

And I’ll end here, since this is already WAY too long… and it’s just the first day! But here’s a pictorial display of our London home:

The view out my window:

The dining area and kitchen, complete with cat! Yeah, I know — Rosie really should not have been on the counter. But hey, it was just like being at home!

There were two very sweet and friendly cats, but I never did get a picture of Poppy — she stayed outside a lot. I think Kim did, though. Rosie was the one who hung out with us most of the time.

The bathroom was huge — this is just a teeny bit. My only complaint (well, other than that the coffee was instant) was the very strange shower. Which was rigged up with just a teeny place to stand, and not made for tall people. But hey, it worked, and although I felt like I was getting water all over the place, I don’t think it was as bad as it seemed.

We were the house on the left. Flat? They referred to it as a house, and it is the kind of design we call row houses here. Our landlady said they’re called terrace houses there. It is over 100 years old – I really loved it. She actually grew up in it. And before I forget, she was WONDERFUL. She and her partner, they were both SO nice and friendly and thoughtful and we felt from the minute we got there like we were staying with old friends. I’d stay with them again in a heartbeat.

These doors were right down the street:

As were these:

OH, and just an illustration of the Suitcase From Hell…

I made Kim pose with it as we were turning the car in on our Last Day, just as we were ready to jump on the shuttle from Hertz to the terminal. Thinking we were AGAIN saying goodbye to it.. hahahhahaha!!! This picture, sadly, is a little misleading. Kim is kind of standing back and away from it a little, so you don’t get a really accurate picture of how HUGE it is. I should have made her stand right beside it. And the Carry-On From Hell is kind of perched up there like it’s trying to make me out a liar, saying it wouldn’t sit on top of the Suitcase From Hell like a proper carry-on would! Trust me, it’s about to fall off. She couldn’t transport it like that. Those are my bags just lying there in front. I have no idea why they are lying on the ground like that — my bags were MUCH more cooperative. Although I will admit that my suitcase didn’t like standing up by itself. Other than that, it is a fantastic suitcase. And my carry-on sat right on top, just like a carry-on should. Those two and my messenger bag all together were not as big as the Suitcase From Hell alone. Too bad you can’t really see that here.