My UK/Ireland Vacation, Part I

April 2012

Day one of my fabulous UK/Ireland vacation with my sister Cindy, and the universe is making it perfectly clear that this should be a journey with as few electronic communications/comforts/entertainments as is feasible in this day and age. I think I know why.  I think that I, as a human in the 20th century, am so happily tethered to my devices that I am no longer obligated to be in the moment, to enjoy the here, the now. 

And, that is why when I plopped myself into my little nest of a seat in the Virgin Atlantic upper class cabin, and found that the many personal, on-demand video options that were going to provide me with instant information on wherever the flight was in the world, and to catch me up on movies by offering up ‘The Artist’ prior to my falling off to sleep, that is why the blasted system went haywire.   After several attempts by the frustrated British flight attendant to re-boot the system, I gave up, had my little bed made up, threw back a glass of wine and a sleeping aid and tried to sleep.  But never really did.  Don't get me wrong, that upper class flat bed was very comfortable indeed, especially with the lovely, white duvet tucked around me.  But, the universe, as I said, wanted me to fully appreciate the journey and I soon came to realize that drink, which as you all well know, I haven't sipped in the year 2012, has a tendency to make me irritable. 

The universe was seeing to it that I was indeed 'in the moment' as some ridiculous young professional monopolized the flight attendant, loudly describing for her his current and past projects, with me, his captive audience, even as I nudged the little orange foam earplugs more firmly, more completely into my ear canals.

Or perhaps this was my penance for my impatience as I was stalled earlier in the day during my endeavor to board the flight.  The entire line had snaked behind me as I was held at bay, for what seemed like forever, as some buffoon and his father and another passenger took their sweet time about settling their belongings in the overhead bin, blocking the aisle the whole while as we waited, and watched and waited and watched and waited until I could take it no more and said to the one just ahead of me 'excuse me, may I get by you, the line of people behind me is now jammed up completely, back this aisle, down the stairs and through the jet-way.'  The guy looked at me with either complete incomprehension or aghast disbelief, and I was able to use that moment of his confusion to push past the numbskull and get to my seat.

So yes.  The universe wants me to pay attention to everything.  And, that is why I soon learned upon arriving in London that my mobile phone, the one I had so properly set up to work in Europe to guide me with GPS maps, to alert me to what's going on back home, to locate me and offer me up advice on what to do and where to go and when I'd planned to do and go, well, it decided that it was not going to do those things at all.  It was going to take a vacation too, because it had left its precious SIM card in the desk drawer back in Los Angeles because, although it was necessary for international roaming, it had never been necessary in the U.S.

So, by golly, I'm rolling with it, and being in the moment and not missing any of these glorious sights, which, as you remember, I had every intention of sharing with you along the way, but, naturally,  it now turns out that the itty bitty camera with the Wifi device that could magically send my fresh vacation photos over to the iPad i'm currently composing on and beam them out to you using some sort of magical photo sharing software, well....no such luck with that linkage either.

3:26 a.m. London time.

Yesterday we saw the tower of London and the crowns and the jewels.  I told one of the guards that I was saving up frequent flyer miles to purchase the biggest of the crowns, but he offered me a better opportunity -- it just so happened that he was selling raffle tickets to win that crown encrusted with diamonds, emeralds and sapphires!  I'm sure its legit, because he had such an honest face, and a badge.

We road the tube, a double-decker bus, and a funny little taxi cab.  We had a nice vegan dinner in the basement of one chi chi restaurant -- its walls tiled with little white sound-enhancing tiles. The bathroom walls lined with a jagged arrangement of mirrors.  Delicious green lentils with radishes.   Cindy opted for a nice white wine, I enjoyed a warm cup of chamomile tea.

Our room is in a tiny, quaint hotel and I love, love, love the old fashioned skeleton key that is inserted into the little hole in the door that is itself covered by its own little door.   The key is attached to a very heavy brass thing with the hotel name engraved on it, and each time you leave the hotel, you just hand it to the friendly person at the front desk who gives it back to you when you return.  Sweet. 

The light switches are little brass levers and when you wish to turn on the lights, you flip them down, not up.  The light switch for the bathroom is outside the bathroom, so you must trust your traveling companion not to switch it off while you're doing whatever you wish to privately do inside the loo. The bathroom is small but perfect, and I enjoyed a nice soak before bedtime.  This is an old building, and the taps take a moment to consider, when you turn them on, before offering up the water.  The pipes groan and squeak a bit as well, but that's okay.  Penhaligan toiletries were thoughtfully left on the counter and it was a sweet way to get ready for a good nights rest.

I've decided that London is a city of people who prefer patterned garments more than we Los Angelenos are accustomed to.  Big loud patterned coats, boldly floral blouses, and some wild shoes for men...I saw some proper men's dress shoes actually encrusted with a pattern of rhinestones!!

We've been blessed with wonderful weather so far, with just a little bit of rain and no real need to button our coats up to our chins.

Tomorrow we drop back into Paddington Station and start our journey North.  We stay tomorrow night in the historic town of York, and I hope to find myself a pub for some rib sticking British food like steak and kidney pie or fish and chips.

More to come, in spite of my reduced access to electronics as I LIVE ... on vacation.

Take Two 

Do you remember how I started this trip with a lot of difficulty with my electronics?  Well, I just wrote this whole travel journal about yesterday, and poof it disappeared., so I have to draft the darn thing AGAIN!!!!

Oy!

Do you know how I'm always saying that I love to ride on trains?  Well, yesterday may have pushed that joy to the limit.  

Cindy and I started our day with a very long walk through Hyde Park over to Kensington road and Knightsbridge.  After two nights of not really getting a night's sleep, it was wonderful to be strolling out in the brisk air amidst such beauty -- green grass and trees, flowers, cobblestone walks.

--[oooohh...Ocean views from train right now...sheep...lots of sheep]--

where was I?  

Yes, so we enjoyed our walk, saw three little girls in the Park riding horseback, and there were just a lot of people out walking as well.  It was Sunday after all. We walked and walked, checked out the windows at Harrods, then got back to the hotel and walked over to Paddington Station. Everyone so far has been just so very friendly.  And polite. Holding doors for each other, pleases and thank you's .  

I inquired of an attendant at Paddington Station Information which train we should take to get to our main train to York, and encountered our first jerk.  This guy first gave me the wrong information about which train, and when I politely asked him which side of the platform we should be on, he shoved a tube map at me and said: ' As I was told as a child in Australia, READ!’

 RUDE.  

Cindy and I did make it to our train at the London King's Cross station on time, but the mishaps had only begun.  We sat on the train, in that station for 2+ hours because there was a stalled train on the track blocking all other trains.  There was a mass exodus from the train after hour two, and Cindy was especially joyous because those leaving the train included a father and a crying child who was driving her mad.  

We were soon joined by a second set of traveling companions, a sweet couple who live up in Newcastle, they say its God's country.  Lovely, they were. Even despite the fact that the gentleman had the longest white hairs sprouting from the top of his nose.  Curious that.  A decade or two older than us, they regaled us with information and stories and endured with us the raucous group of people in adjacent seats who dealt with the stalled train by getting more and more drunk.  Our Newcastle friend continually rolled her eyes, arms crossed over her chest, at the absurd things one of the women getting drunk was saying -- like proclaiming that the odor of the brakes of the train was 'coming from the tires'.

Hello!  It's a train!  Has the 50+ woman never looked at the wheels of a train?!  

Several trains that were to depart after us were cancelled, so we had a mass influx of travelers and the train was so jam-packed that people were standing in the aisles and sitting on the train floor. The train started up, got two stations north, and then waited again forever at that station. Our companions actually apologized for the odd delay and assured us that train travel here is usually much more civilized.  We have a new way of saying that something is good: it's 'a bit of a rainbow, that...'

Our original train was to leave the station before 2p.m, and arrive by 4p, but instead, we sat on the train until after 10 p.m.  We then stood in a long queue to get a cab, which was quite silly when we found how incredibly close our hotel was to the train station. The cab driver, Cindy and I had quite the laugh over that.  Oh, yes, and we stood in that silly taxi queue just behind the raucous woman who weaved and stumbled and I was afraid would soon vomit on my shoes.  She actually offered to share her cab with us.... uh, yeah...no...

By the time we got to the hotel, the restaurant was just closed, so we threw down our bags, went to the bar, ordered bar food and killed a bottle of chardonnay in a lovely big old room of our very old hotel.  We then had a completely lovely full night's sleep.

What day is it?  It's the 24th.  How many days have I been on vacation?  What city are we in? 

I have two days to write about before I sleep, and tomorrow morning is the first time that we actually need to get up early.  Dang.  Timing.  Dang.

So, here's what happened in York.

When last I chattered on about our journey, we were getting mildly plastered at a hotel lounge in York.

Next day we awoke feeling none the worse for wear and were again delighted to find that the weather was being very, very kind to us.  Although all weather reports had shown cloudy skies and rain, we seemed to miss most of the raindrops.

After having self-made French press coffee in our room, we walked out into York with no real destination in mind, except to see the famous walls of the city and take in the sites.  We had a most dreadful lunch at some lame-ass vegan restaurant and then wandered about enjoying the shops and green landscapes and wonderful people.  There were many delightful shops with pastries and musical instruments on sales...not just the usual guitars, but also a variety of autoharps and accordions.  From the looks of the shops, I would think that music is a bigger part of UK lives than it is for us jaded Americans.  And, I'm a music lover!  We enjoyed a visit to the local Marks and Spencer where I once again was intrigued by how very many different kinds of cream you can find in British dairy cases.  We found the city wall and scaled it and walked along the wall and took goofy photos of one another with our hair all frizzing out from the moisture in the air.  I nearly dropped my iPhone from the wall down into an inaccessible garden, but the fates were with me. 

There's a lot of acceptance of the end of lives that have passed through these parts.  Old stone crypts are displayed open next to fields of colorful tulips.  The wet earth is so rich here, and I shot some interesting photos of headstones covered with mold beside glorious flower beds.  So amazing. 

Now, here's a little something out of left field.  Many of you know that I am deathly allergic to bee stings and I am to carry an Epipen with me at all times which will deliver a dose of epinephrine if I’m stung to keep me from dying.  Prior to leaving Los Angeles, I had a bit of a scare with a swarm by my kitchen door, at which time I came to realize that my Epipen had expired last August.  So, my dear doctor wrote me a prescription for a new Epipen, and when I phoned the pharmacy to fill the prescription, I learned that my insurance would not cover aforementioned Epipen, and that filling it will cost me $240.  For one Epipen. And, I'm really supposed to have two on hand...one for the car, and one for my purse. 

Well, here in York, I ambled into a Boots pharmacy and inquired as to the price they would charge me for an Epipen.  Do you know what they told me?  7 pounds....that's, what?  $10????  The pharmacy could not sell me an Epipen without a prescription, and mine was sitting in a pharmacy back in Valley Village, U.S.A., so I tucked this little bit of information into the front of my wee brain.   But, think of this, 7 pounds versus $240 in America?  I'll spare you my latest rant on the state of health care in America.

But, thinking back to the days before I left on this trip, Something not so out of left field is the chagrin I felt when I laid out everything that I knew I would absolutely need for my 12 days away, and saw that it would not fit into the tiny onboard suitcase, nor the medium -- 'sometimes they let me take it on board' bag, but was requiring the actual large size suitcase that would indeed need to be checked at the airport.  I knew my sister would give me such grief about such indulgence, but, I do so like to be prepared. 

This little suitcase has brought me more attention on this trip than anyone anticipated.  Attention not only from onlookers who watched me drag it up and down a staircase at the York train station, but also attention from my shoulders, back and calves which are screaming at me to be less of a girl.

Cindy and I checked out of the York hotel and dragged our suitcases back to the train station.  We met some nice people there, but I was determined that I wouldn't be dragging that suitcase up any more staircases.  Before I'd even arrived in Europe and started to purchase little souvenirs, the suitcase weighed 22.3 pounds, as noted by the scale at LAX.  Now, that's not really too much, but it is unwieldy.  So, we got to the train station and went to find our platform...it was on the other side of the tracks.  And, you know how you can be very brain dead from jet lag.  Well, Cindy and I went to find an elevator to carry us up and over the track to the proper platform, and both of us were completely dumbfounded when we saw that there was nothing but air above the doors of the elevator.  It was one of those simple, yet inconceivable moments, when it took us probably a full 60 seconds to figure out that the elevator would not actually rise above the first floor into the air and drop us through an invisible tube to the other side, like something out of a Harry Potter novel, but would instead go down into the earth,  and allow us to take a tunnel to the other side.  When Cindy and I saw the error of our thinking we collapsed into a full five minutes of hysterical laughter.  It was something else.

Once back on the train, we must have been so used to a long wait, that we weren't prepared when the train stopped, at it's final destination, Edinburgh.  We weren't ready at all, and me and my giganto suitcase were having such a time of it, that everyone else was off the train and Cindy was watching me from the exit as I tried to extract it from behind my seat and nearly fell over it with my carry on bag -- a scene right out of a slapstick comedy.   Cindy was already laughing at me, when I was approached from behind by the station master who grabbed my suitcase out of my hands and pulled me and what was mine out of the train so that they could board the passengers for the ride back.  We laughed so hard when we were out of the train that we got lost and had to double back to find a taxi to take us to our hotel.  Thankfully, our cab driver was quite the gentleman, and when he swung my suitcase out of the cab in the rain, he inquired: ‘do you have a spare man in here?’

The sun stays up longer here, so although we were exhausted, Cindy and I threw our baggage into our hotel room then headed out again to check out the Royal Mile.  We ended the day at a nice little pub called....hell, I don't know what it was called, and i'm not about to get up and check the receipt, so, just let it be known that I had a chardonnay, Cindy had pinot noir, then we trudged back to the hotel and turned in for the night.

Today was spent at the Edinburgh Castle, on the Royal Mile, at a Doctor's office and then at another vegetarian restaurant.