Advertisement
Published: October 7th 2007
Scarlet Fever
I knew that I started a severe case of the fever so many years ago...I am finally back in good old Torit... and the countdown is on.
10 days in England and France were just what I needed. I returned to Torit and the end is in sight, and I will be so thankful to get home to my family and friends. Speaking of thankful, Thanksgiving is coming up in a few days, and I was fortunate enough to find a dedicated Thanksgiing package from Laura in my room when I got back. This package was decorated on the outside with hearts and jokes and even a cartoon turkey. Laura routinely decorates her packages, and they have become a bit a ritual at the Canadian HQ in Khartoum, as all the staff stop in to have a read and laugh at her humour before they send the packages to me. Too funny...
So, while all of you are sitting back at the dinner table, loosening your belts, so will I! Laura sent along everything I needed to make a turkey dinner, including canned turkey and ham, stove top stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, corn, pumpkin pie filling, a pie shell, and a ridiculous center-piece with a handmade construction paper turkey. Thanks! Unfortunately the
Trafalgar Square
The huge column in the back is a monument to Lord Nelson, all-star admiral of the British navy, and generally a stand up bloke. ha. pie shell didn't make it through the soccer match that the package was in and resembled the dust you find at the bottom of a bag of Cheerios.
Our vacation was wonderful and London was an incredible city, and I was constantly rubber necking just to try an take in all of the incredible historic architecture. Laura was very impressed with how old everything was, and said "I bet that's old!" about a million times... Laura loves antiques and junk sales, so she was in absolute heaven.
The first thing I did upon arriving at Heathrow was change some money and buy a fancy coffe at Starbucks. Aaaah, the glorious taste of corporate coffee... Laura and I then met at our hotel near Hyde Park and spent the next day wandering aimlessly about downtown. I couldn't help but think that in this city lives 1/3 of Canada's population. Wow. Later that day we met up with Michael and Meredith who were house-sitting in London, and were gracious enough to let us stay with them. This saved us a bunch of money, as our hotel as 109 GBP per night, which is about $225 USD. Ouch. All the prices
Big Ben
Unfortunately Bens bells were not ringing on this day. are numerically about the same as Canada, but the currency change is the killer... 2.1 times the price you see! touche. Anyhow, a vacation is exactly that, and the numbers didn't matter.
We spent the next three days in London, walking all over the place, clogging up the Underground paths as we stood and stared at the maps, trying to figure out where we were going. Michael was a fanatastic tour guide, and showed us all over down town, we saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, The Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar square, the Thames Embankment, the Tate Modern museum, the British museum.... On Sunday we spent a few hours wandering a posh food market near Liverpool station, it was like a farmers market but with really high quality foods. This was where we got to visit the Cheese shop... absolute heaven, but smelled like a mix of chlorine pool and dirty underwear... odd.
Laura and I also got to go a performance of Wicked, a stage musical based upon the book of he same title. It is essentially a prequel to the Wizard of Oz, showing us the early life of the Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.
It was a great production with amazing lighting and costumes, and incredible singing. (Yes, I know it's a MUSICAL!).
After we had enough of London, we travelled by train to Bexhill, on the South coast of England, on the English Chanel. This is where Micheal and Meredith are living, and is a beautiful, if sleepy little seaside community with a large percentage of retirees. We had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant where Mer is working, which as luck would have it, stocked 49 of the finest Belgian beers around...and then got up early the next morning to France. Oww my head.
We all drove to Dover to catch the ferry across to Dunkirk, France. Dover is about 1.5 hours from Bexhill, and Michael is a bit of speed demon.. and the roads are VERY narrow by Canadian standards, and stupidly twisty.... and soon enough, we were slowly driving along behind Laura as she walked along, trying not to puke on the side of the road. Ooops. I forgot that she gets car sick. I'm sure most of the motorists that were smiling and laughing at her assumed she had enjoyed "a night on the piss" the previous
Look of disgust.
This look of disgust is brought to you by the guy who was younger than me, driving the BENTLEY in the center of the picture close to my shoulder. Priceless. evening.
We made it to France through some choppy seas which caused the boat to roll and pitch, which did my already motion-sick girlfriend no favours at all.... so she went to sleep and I patted her head and looked out the window. I had to laugh though.. the same great roadways, but crappy road signs in France caused a few U-turns before we found our town.... this was all too reminiscient of the trip my Dad and I took a few years ago in which u-turns were an almost hourly occurrence.
Michael had found us a beautiful B&B in a chateau near St Quentin, called Le Domaine de Vadancourt. It's a Napoleonic era chateau that the Germans completely levelled in WW1, and it was rebuilt again in 1927 using reclaimed stones and built according to the original plans.
The grounds are fully fenced, and encompass 50-60 acres. This includes a pond, stone-arch bridges, a grotto, and gorgeous feilds and pastures. Oh, and of cours TanTan the guard donkey. He would bray and run to the fence as soon as he saw anyone new in the yard.. very cute. It was an incredible two days, with great food,
My favourite book...
This is no photoshop picture. I found it at a book sale! GREAT wine, and tons of laughs with Michael and Meredith. Caroline and Gaetan, the owners of the Chateau, shared our meal with us on our last night, and the wine and laughter flowed late into the night. The history is apparent throughout the house, with ancient wardrobes and antique furiniture, but modern beds and beautiful bathrooms with huge showers and jacuzzis.
I cannot reccommend this accommodation enough, as you can live in a castle for $125/night which includes breakfast delivered to your room. If you are in northern France, do it. The entire experience was so relaxing, the feeling of calm it gives is hard to describe. Besides I got to practice my french, which was mostly rough, but I was surprised with how much I remembered!
Check it out! http://vadancourt.squarespace.com/
As we were returning to England, Laura and I didn't really have a plan, and both Michael and Mer were going back to work. So as were were throwng around some ideas, we drove through the small town of Rye. Rye is perched on a hillside and is full of llittle alleyways, shops, pubs, and inns. So we just stopped the car, and Laura and I
London by night
St Paul's Cathedral dominates the skyline, center left of the picture. got out and decided to stay. We parted ways with our M&M and began walking around tring to find an inn with vacancy. Laura discovered the Ship's Inn. which we both instantly liked. The ground floor was a pub/restaurant with low ceilings and dark corners. You checked into your room with the bar keep, and then went up several winding staircases to find our room with a huge 4 poster bed. This was only $150/night which is a real bargain in England!
One of our most ridiculous stories happened on the way back to London... We ate dinner in Rye, and caught the 8:00pm train back to London, which would have given us lots of time to catch the Underground back to our hotel. Just outside Rye we were delayed for about 35 minutes because some kids had shot out the window of another train with a pellet gun further along the tracks.. (little bastards). Anyhow, Laura and I were enjoying ourselves and didn't really think much of it. We pulled into Victoria Station and headed to the ticket counter to get our Underground passes. Just as we approached the cashier put up his "Closed - use another
London friends.
Michael and Meredith live outside London and were good enough to give us the tour of London. We had a lot of fun with them throughout the whole trip. wicket" sign. Great. There are no more wickets jackass. So we decided to use the self serve ticket machine as we considered outselves pretty much London commuters by this point. The card reader wouldn't read Laura's mastercard or bank card, so I tried mine. It didn't work either so as we were moving to another machine we heard an announcement saying "wah wah wah 1 minute, wah wah, Mind the Gap, wah wah, Victoria Line, wah wah wah..." over the loud speaker. Neither of us paid too much attention to it as were concentrating furiously on making the machine work. First Mistake - always listen to the loud speakers. Presto! We had out tickets, and down the stairs we went. The station serves several lines, and the wrong train passed us on the platform three times before our suspicions were aroused. Laura, being the prosgressive socialist she is, left me to guard her purse while she went to speak with the Platform Guard. Yup, we missed the last train by about 1 minute. F*#k. No worries... up the stairs talk to another guy, he says "...head up and catch the #36 bus, it goes right past your station." Sweet, our
passes include busses too! So up we go, see the #36 almost straight away, jump on and give a great big sigh of relief....aaaaahhhh. Second Mistake - sighing in relief when on a foreign countries' transit system. So off we go, staring out the window at beautiul London. I was trying to keep my eyes open for landmarks near our hotel so we could get off, but hadn's seen any yet... but was very confident I would spot something from the posh Hyde Park neighbourhood we were staying in. Soon apartments gave way to liquor stores, and liquor stores to pawn shops, and pawn shops to dingy bars and cheque cashing stores adverstising "No fees for sending money to Africa..." Uh-oh. I didn't recongnize any of this. Ding! "End of the line folks! Last stop, everyone off!" Says the bus driver. Double F*#k. I approach him and ask if this is Lancaster Gate... "Why no!" he says you wanted to go North from Victoria, and you've got on the South bound bus. Awesome. He explains to just cross the road and catch the next 36 going North and ride it all the way to Lancaster gate. No problemo.. I just
Vegetable Posse.
All of us were trying to act as vegetables as the huge billboard behind us was full of them. I am broccoli, Laura is a radish, Meredith is aspargus, and Michael is a carrot??
I know... I know... have to get off the bus, with suitcases, shopping bags and carrying about $10,000 USD in cash in this really sketchy looking neighbourhood. Sweet. So we made it back to the Northbound bus without getting mugged, and commenced our second bus ride of the night. It is now about 1:15 am. Oh, and it's Saturday night in London. So we head north, but pass though the downtown core again, and now it is time for all the bars to disgorge all their drunk patrons on to the street and subsequently onto our bus. Wicked. So, about 15 minutes from our stop, this short, super drunk, middle eastern guy guy gets on, and can hardly stand up. In fact he is hanging on to a pole with his eyes closed... standing directly over me, and the only thing I could think of is where I was going to hit him if he threw up on me. And he had really crappy middle eastern music BLASTNIG from his cell phone which as luck would have it, was about 10" from my ear. A few stops later, a seat cleared and he got to sit down... right BEHIND us. HE proceeded to pass
Happiness is...
an entire frickin' wall of cheese! out again, with his head against our seat with this phone pushed against his ear. Now the wailing middle eastern music was about 4" from my head. Ding. Our stop. THANK GOD. We walked home, and checked into our hotel, only to find we had no hot water in the shower. It's now 2:30am. I quit. Zzzzzzzzzz.
Phew that was long. Anyhow, I've been back in Torit for 3 days, and was impressed to see the changes that had been made in my short time away, concrete sidewalks, plumbing in the kitchen, water line to the bathrooms! I was happy to see our camp manager finally getting his act together, and doing some work. Turns out he was on leave and his replacement did all that work. The progress stopped when the replacement left again. (sigh)
We also received two new UNMO's from Sweden, Robert and Christer. Until they showed up I was the tallest guy in the camp, but these guys are frickin huge! We had a welcome dinner with our Bangladeshi friends, and got them settled into their containers.
I was also pleased to discover that the UXO's I have talked/comlpained about so much had
Aaah ze fromage.
This store has EVERY type of cheese imaginable! I almost didn't go back to Sudan... if they had only offered my a job, and paid me in cheese... finally been destroyed in my absence. Just to be sure I went to check myself and found two lovely big craters instead of a pile of bombs. Finally something good has happeened.
Finally, we got an email from HQ talking about unconfirmed reports of an EBOLA virus outbreak in YEI and YAMBIO which are on the far Western Side of Juba from us. Good times. O hope that one turns out to be only rumour. EBOLA is not on my list of things to do in Africa.
Anyhow, thats enough. If you are still reading this, I applaud your tenacity.
Good night.
Don
00
DAYS
00
HOURS
00
MINS
00
SECS
to Canada!!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.106s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0532s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
laura
non-member comment
I love you. Thank you for the incredible trip.