Adventures Overseas 2/16

These sixteen updates will be the condensed and often more erratic version of my adventures overseas, comprised of the updates that I sent home to my family at the time.

Author's Disclaimer: The following were written when I traveled overseas with my sister. They were the short and sweet version of what was going on in my daily journal. Often, I watered things down so that our parents wouldn't know how scared we really were or how bad a hostel really was. We didn't want to scare them. Also, I wrote these updates on my iPod, and in the interest of authenticity, I haven't edited or changed the formatting much. This may be less to do with authenticity and more to do with all those darn buttons I'd have to press if I edited it all. Anyway, there are plenty of little typos to go around I'm sure. I'm sorry. They bug me, too.

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Update 2: September 10, 2018 – MONDAY

Today, (or was it yesterday?), we landed in Gatwick in the early morning (or was it the dead of night??). I was able to observe the sky becoming lighter through the plane window (and via my sleep-deprived eyes), and as we circled in for a landing, I was able to really see how different the land was from the Prairies. It was novel to see the ramshackle, erratic lines of fields and pastures, most of the small parcels bordered with great, old trees. Quite the contrast from the arrow-straight lines of grid visible for miles, and youthful Poplar bushes.

I landed first, at around 8:30 am, London time. Sister’s flight was not scheduled to come in until 10:30. I was prepared for this reality, and hoped to distract myself from destructive behaviours by watching Netflix. Unfortunately, the place where I waited had no charging stations, and only 90 minutes of free wifi.

Not thinking clearly (a common theme as the day went on and sleep became ever more a thing of the past), I signed up for the wifi, then frantically started messaging Sister my plans and contingency plans, then alterations to those. I don’t know if she ever did read them all...?

As I was on the tail end of my internets, I was asked to leave the secured area and wait for my sister on the other side. Not the other side of the veil, just over at arrivals. It’s a good thing I did. Turns out, Gatwick has two terminals. North and South. You better believe I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off after I found out her plane had arrived at the other terminal. By some stroke of fortune (which would more accurately be described as divine providence), I was granted another 90 minutes of internet, during which I explained the situation and all that she had to do.

I am quite proud of myself, actually. In order to get to the other terminal, I had to take a great leap of faith in the signage I was seeing, and hop onto a shuttle.

I tell you, though: as I shuttled down the short distance towards the terminal, jauntily holding onto the bar, I felt pretty street smart. It was nice.

My visions of heroically showing up to arrivals just as Sister was looking around worriedly were dashed, though. She was lined up behind an estimated 7 billion people (her estimate) as they all got their passports stamped. That’s a lot of stamping, I guess. An hours worth, it would seem.

Anyway, It was getting to be past noon and we were both getting hungry. I had picked out a place months ago. We both agreed it would make our London stay that much better if we only got to eat there.

The Cheese Bar.

We ordered the weekly cheese platter special (three types of cheeses, served with some crackers, jam, honey, and grapes. Those sounds really normal, but the crackers were hard and black, the jam served in small cubes, the honey had chunks of something in it for flavour, and the grapes were pickled. But it was delicious. After that, the unstoppable Cheese-Monster Sister ordered a fondue pot for two. That was quite a lot of melted cheese, served with chunks of sourdough and a small skillet of fried baby potatoes.

It was also delicious, and we don’t regret it... yet.

It took a little head-scratching to figure out the metro system. It always seemed so easy to navigate when all we had to do was follow the heads in front of us. Today, it was hard, but also very rewarding to know that if we just take a breath and think about it, we can figure things out (#metaphorforlife). A few trips in, and we were pretty fluent!

The Cheese Bar is up in Camden Market, which is a maze that reminds me of some sort of mafia underground tunnels. Especially when we entered the places that both sounded and smelled like Bob Marley. Booths and shops every which way. Sister and I got lost in it for a while, then we decided that was enough. Our last few days were taking their toll.

We made our way to our hostel, stopping for a coffee and a rest, and moving along at our leisure.

After checking in to the hostel, Sister and I sat down with our devices and hammered out a few more details for the next few days.

We shall see what we shall see!