Advertisement
Published: August 17th 2006
Seth with Luggage at Tube Station
This was me nearing the end of our 4 hour journey down the Tube from Gatwick to our hotel. Since some of you have asked, the pink luggage is Gretchen's; mine is blue. Smart-aleks!Right now Gretchen and I are traveling (travelling, here) on a train from London to Glasgow, Scotland. I just heard about Dell’s massive laptop battery recall, so I am hoping that my computer doesn’t spontaneously combust. It is Wednesday (I think…) afternoon. This was supposed to be a morning train for us, but after I explain our day yesterday—the trip to London (smooth) and the trip from Gatwick Airport to our hotel (not-so-smooth), you’ll understand why we are traveling in the afternoon. It’s cool to look out the window and see the rolling hills, flocks of sheep, and small neighborhood soccer fields. I would have liked to update this blog yesterday when we arrived at the hotel, but an internet connection there in the room costs ₤ 15 per day (to get the US $ amount, basically just double that number; ie, $30/day). While we care about all of you and want to keep you posted regarding our adventures, I opted for the alternative—pay 10 pence (~20 cents) per minute to send a quick email to our parents letting them know we arrived safely and wait to update our blog later. With this prelim paragraph out of the way, I’ll try to give a chronological account of what we’ve done in the last 36 hours or so. I’ll upload this to our blog when I can find an internet connection that won’t be so expensive that we wouldn’t be able to eat for two weeks.
We left Nashville Monday evening without a hitch…except that the luggage limits were 50 pounds per checked item. My “light” suitcase weighed in right at 50 pounds. My “heavy” suitcase went over the limit. So $25 later, Gretchen and I made it through Security with no liquids or gels and boarded a plane. Getting through Security wasn’t as much of a hassle as I had feared…the only real difference (besides the liquid ban) was that every carry on bag had to be opened and checked on the skywalk before boarding the plane. (Thankfully my Beanie Baby collection was in my checked baggage…that would have been humiliating.).
The flights were good. I got up early on Monday morning and checked us in electronically and requested exit row seats. The extra leg room was wonderful on the flight from Detroit to London! Gretchen tried to sleep (it was a night flight), but I don’t think she managed more than 10 minutes total. I fared slightly better, with about three hours of sleep, but I guess we were both just too excited to sleep. (It didn’t help that we were starving and had to wait until about 11:30 ET to get our dinner.) To pass the time I watched the plane’s edited version of “Thank You for Smoking.” The movie was hilarious. Other than that, I read a bit in my biography of Winston Churchill and watched the little plane on the little GPS screen in front of me and wondered if we would ever get past Greenland as the sleepless minutes dragged on. When we arrived at the airport in London, we were pleased to see that our luggage had all arrived in great condition (which was a bit of a relief, considering that the news is reporting about 10,000 - 20,000 pieces of luggage have been misdirected in the last 6 days since the foiled terror plot and the added security measures).
When we got to Gatwick, our plan was to get our luggage to the hotel (which, conveniently, was right next to
Heathrow Airport!) and then to go exploring a bit in the afternoon. That plan had long since been vetoed by exhaustion by the time we made it to the hotel. Let me preface this by saying that my experience with public transportation comes principally from MARTA in Atlanta. Even though MARTA isn’t the world’s greatest transportation system, MARTA has neat technological features called “elevators” and “escalators.” Getting from Gatwick to Heathrow on the Tube (trying to avoid the ₤90 taxi ride which may not have been able to fit all our luggage) required us to take about 6 different trains (which seemed more like about 16, but I’m not sure if there’s a legitimate British-to-US conversion mechanism for this). With the exception of, I believe, 1 Underground Station, there were no lifts (elevators) or escalators. So we (ie, “I”) had to lug 2 50-pound pink suitcases, 1 50-pound blue suitcase, 1 65 pound blue suitcase, a stuffed-to-the-limit laptop bag, 1 pink carry-on suiter, 1 blue carry-on suiter, and a pink travel bag up and down about 6 zillion stairs beneath the bustling streets of London. (And all this time there are tons of Brits walking past and snickering.) The picture that I am including in this blog is one that Gretchen took of me at our last transfer point on our way to Heathrow—a picture is worth 1,000 words! (I mentioned earlier that we were grateful that our luggage arrived in London with us, but after nearly four hours of lugging it around on the Underground, we may have been better off if our luggage had been misdirected to Bangkok or somewhere…)
Normally it would not have taken so many Tube transfers, but one train went out of service while we were riding and had to make an unplanned stop and unload all of us. In addition, one kind gentleman tried to reroute us so that we could transfer at a station that had an escalator, but apparently he was mistaken about which line we were boarding because after we left, everyone on that train told us that we needed to get off at the next stop and take a different train to Hammersmith Station, which ended up being two different trains (and a couple of flights of stairs) to Hammersmith. (I suppose that a more cynical theory would be that the kind gentleman was playing a cruel joke on us, but I’m going to go with the “mistake” theory for now.) Most people were extremely nice, and just about everybody was unabashedly vocal. I guess this is what Londoners are known for. Gretchen and I kept laughing off jeering comments such as “Packing light, eh?” and “Did you bring the whole country with you?” and “How many cosmetics did you have to bring with you, man?!?” Surprisingly, most of the snotty comments came from teenage girls, and everyone else either looked at us with pity or with a “bet you won’t do that again” look. One of the sounds that you frequently hear on the Tube is a recorded voice that repeatedly says “Mind the gap,” referring to the gap between the train and the platform when boarding and disembarking the trains. In my mind I thought it kept saying to us, “Mind the gap, idiots” as we herded our luggage on and off of several trains en route to our hotel. (When I got to the hotel I turned on BBC news to see if the two pathetic American travelers had made the “news of the unfortunate” category.)
So our first advice for anyone who comes to visit us: either pack light or pay the extra cash for a cab. Carrying half a year’s luggage with us precluded the former option for us, and my tight-fisted monetary policy prevented the latter. (We are just now passing through Preston on the train, which has a beautiful train station and several beautiful old churches to be seen. Wow it’s green up here!) After about 4 hours, we finally made it to our hotel, which will be home until our rental flat is ready, later this month. When we walked in to our room, we immediately saw that it was perfect—it had a shower and a bed. After bathing and eating dinner in our room, we sent a quick email to parents and then went to bed (at about 5:30 PM London time). I slept for about three hours, woke up, played Civilization for a while on my computer, read a bit in my Winston Churchill book, and then went back to sleep for another couple of hours. Then Gretchen and I both woke up hungry at about 3:15 AM. We ate a few little snacks from our luggage and watched a DVD on the laptop (a BBC series, in fact, called “Monarch of the Glen,” which is set near Inverness, Scotland, where we will be tomorrow). Then we set the alarm for 8:07 AM, and woke up at 10:30 AM. We got ready quickly, headed to the Underground station, and now we are on our way to Glasgow. Thankfully, we were able to check our luggage with the concierge at the hotel, so we are traveling much lighter today. (We are now passing what appears to be a castle, near Lancaster).
This is really beautiful up here in the northern part of the UK. There are amazing green rolling hills, heather (I think) along the hills, babbling brooks, mile after mile of long stone walls, and occasionally cars driving on the left side of the roadways. Speaking of which, that’s our next adventure. Tomorrow we are renting a car, and I get to drive us around on the left side of the road, in a car that has the steering wheel on the right side of the car. We will be driving a circuit around Scotland the next few days—from Glasgow to Inverness (and to see Loch Ness, home of our “Underwater Ally” for you Napoleon fans), and then on to Aberdeen.
I guess I should say that in spite of yesterday’s drama (more like satire, really), we are very excited to be here and are looking forward to this next little chapter in our life. Gretchen was quite a trooper yesterday (for lack of a better term at the moment). With the exception of going up and down stairs, she hauled her matching four-piece pink luggage set all over. Perhaps more valiantly, she refrained from killing me for not hiring a cab from Gatwick…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.125s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0626s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
brian campa
non-member comment
sounds like you guys are having a blast. keep us updated.