Snooze you lose slow travel

 Today we leave London and go to Wales.

The hardest part of this trip will be the traveling. Today we left the air bnb 3 hours early with idea of stopping at McDonalds (I know yuck) to get at least coffee. 

From there we just went to Paddington station. So we got there at maybe 10:45am. Our train is at 12:17. We had no idea how this was going to work so went way early. 

Our train wasn’t even on the board when we got there. Sat outside station for a while. Went back in and it was on the board, no platform. So how does this work?

M went up to info desk. They told him 15 minutes before leaving time, platform number will appear. Then you have 15 minutes get yourself on train and in a seat. 

So next it says the train is delayed. Uh oh. Oh did I say everybody waiting  or sitting in front the big electronic sign. Most people have to stand. It’s very bizarre that you have to stand there waiting the platform letter to appear.

So within 5 minutes the letter appears. All these people start moving toward where the platform is. It’s like a rush to get to the train.

When I ordered the tickets, you could choose a seat so I did. I think that was baloney. Everyone sat where they wanted. Did they rush to get window seats? Or a four seat table place? We’re they afraid they wouldn’t make the train?

I think it’s that people have been trained you better get your butt in the seat, no dawdling. This train has a schedule to keep. Snooze you lose.

The oldest house and street in London

 OK I survived the 90 degree heat. Trying to sleep isn’t easy when you’re sweatin’. The windows here are not the pull up type. They are the open outward type. They don’t open very much. There are no screens  So I hung my head out window in the 6 inch opening all night. Har. This all reminds me of childhood when nobody had air conditioning. We maybe had one fan. it

Yesterday I had one goal: Visit Cloth Fair street. The oldest street in London. On it is the oldest house in London. 

It is named Cloth Fair because once a year merchants would awa was have a fair in the church yard across the way and sell, you guessed it, cloth.

The house was built in 1600. I’m sure the street had been in use way before that. The church across the street was built in 1123, St Bartholomew the Great. 

It just blows me away to stand on one of the original streets in London that dates back so far. To think what it must have been like in 1123. What were the peoples lives like?

 Their houses would have dirt floors. There would be animal pens, barns all around you. Surrounding the village would be farm fields. You were ruled by a king.  You would live til maybe 40. Women wore long dresses covered by tunics. 

The house and church survived the great fire of 1666 in which 50% of London was destroyed. Imagine half your city lays in ruin.

This is what I love about London, the history. It’s so interesting and it’s  around every corner.

London heat wave

 We take the central line tube every day. It’s hot as hell, always crowded. (Complaint department officially open)

So today it gets up to 91. Apparently there is one heat wave a summer and this is it.That should be fun. People stuffed in like clowns in a tube car, sweat pools forming on the floor. Slippery conditions. Yuck.

Fights may break out today in the race to get that one remaining seat. Those Instagram worthy makeup jobs will melt into a ghoul face. 

 A couple of edgy young men will still have their puffer jackets. I may have to slap one of them. I am unpredictable in hot weather. 

So off we went. M and I were going to different places. It was late morning so not as many people. Stuffy, but not as bad as expected. As usual, very few shorts, some sweaters sweatpants. I give up. It’s a cultural quirk. 

So we decided to meet up at the Westfield mall to cool off before going home. No one has air conditioning here. Had something to eat. I had Mexican. M had Nandos, a very popular ?Potugese fast food place.

How was the Mexican? They had the basics down but not nearly spicy enough.

This is a giant mall like the Mall of America. It was part of a redevelopment along with a huge park next to it,  for the 2012 Olympics. Apparently it was a run down area beforehand.. The park was where track and field, soccer events took place. There is a huge aquatics center where swimming events were held. The stadium that was built is now home of West ham soccer club. (SOCCER,SOCCER,SOCCER)

The area is now home to multiple high rise condos. Very expensive looking.

The mall is like something out of the U.S. 1980’s. It’s obvious young people come here to be seen. They all look like Instagram models. Everything from women in hijabs to midriff baring tops to athletic wear. If people are wearing it , it's on display here. Hair is sharp. Clothes are sharp. Looking good at the mall.

We head out.Standing on the tube platform and there’s a young man in jeans, shirtless. It’s obvious he works out. He is strutting back and forth like a peacock. “Hey ladies look at this!” I guess you can be shirtless in malls and on tube trains.

Only one stop to our stop Yeah.

London is old, very very old

This blog will sometimes jump back and forth in time

We took the tube from Heathrow to Leytonstone. The first thing that struck me is how old everything looked. Everything is made of brick. The majority of houses are row houses. Lots of brick with white trim.

They were made in rows so more people could fit in an area. Most have the same design: 1st floor has living room and kitchen, 2nd floor two beds and bathroom.

In Leytonstone* there is a back garden. In front is an area for your car to be parked in front of the house. I don’t know if this is true in other neighborhoods. 

The street signs are weird here. It’s weird, they appear at random places on walls. At least in my neighborhood.

The row houses are old. Most around here were built 1870 to 1910. The condo building building I stay in is old. One of the locks requires a skeleton key. The other is one I remember from my childhood.

There is also a lot of very modern housing here. Tall apartment and condo buildings in different places. There seems to be a housing boom here with this kind of housing.I’m sure they are very expensive. It reminds me of all the expensive apts they keep building in downtown mpls. only these are way fancier and taller.

*This picture looks exactly like the houses in my neighborhood.

Stranger in a strange land.

 Let’s get serious folks. (Dramatic pause) 

Adjusting to all this tomfoolery(!) I’ve got myself into hasn’t been easy. Just getting here was, shall we say, challenging..

Then living in someone else’s place with someone’s else’s stuff is just weird. Especially for a whole month. It’s not my place, not my stuff and that kind throws you off. It’s not like being in a hotel. 

So the refrigerator has stuff (food) in it. One of the cupboards has stuff in it. Are you supposed to use that? Who knows? I’m not using it because there’s nothing I want to use.  Plus it feels weird to use it. (Lots of weirdness going on on my part)

We are living in a five condo building. We hear and see the other peoples lives. There is a little baby in one unit we hear crying. There are kids in a couple places. They play outside.

We have turned our lives upside down in every way you can. Left our home. Left our stuff. Left our neighborhood and city(and country).  Left our family and friends. 

We fit what would be a years worth of our lives into a carryon suitcase and a backpack. What did I pack? Mostly clothes of course. Short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, shorts, jeans, sweatpants, undies. It will be in the forties some places we go. I brought a Jean jacket. Figure I can layer. Three pairs of shoes. Meds, small amount of toiletries, tablet, phone, chargers. That’s about it.

Passports, vaccination cards, credit cards (2). In my research I found out that schwab checking/debit card (I’m sure there are others) is the best one for me. No foreign transaction fees of any kind.  

Bought international health care insurance. None of my Medicare/VA/supplement works here. I will have to refill meds here. Haven’t had to figure that out yet. I did bring letter from doctor. 

Getting back to the mental, emotional part. I thought this would be similar to U.S., English speaking, similar culture, etc. It’s not. People here are different. They are stoic, polite, neat, they don’t do much laughing and cavorting in public. Nobody is showy. People don’t wear bright colors. 

We have found if you say hello to a stranger walking down the street, they won’t say hello back. However, it is easy to strike up a conversation with people.

Perhaps it is my naive observation but people here don’t seem to fear each other like the U.S. They definitely have a problem with stabbings here. It pales in comparison to the U.S. violence, shootings. There is no mass violence. 

There are so many different cultures here. It feels like more people here speak another language than English. It’s weird to hear all these different languages. It’s fun though. 

We’ve had to figure out an elaborate public transport system with underground, overground, trains, buses. We bought a monthly card. Really expensive. We’ve managed it pretty well because it’s pretty easy to understand. 

Changing tube lines can be easy or elaborate. Sometimes the next tube you want is close. Sometimes in the bigger stations with more lines you are going up and down steep escalators, walking  up and down several flights of stairs. 

London is an enormous city with many neighborhoods. You couldn’t possibly visit them all. The biggest lesson so far is you really have to pace yourself. Sit down a lot, Take days off. Relax. 

To think it will be a new place, culture, people every month is kind of overwhelming but so exciting!

. 

We ain’t in Kansas anymore

 So it’s day 3 after we got here and even though we’re still exhausted, we can’t hold back any longer. We have to go into central London! 

We decide to get the”just kill me now” ridiculously expensive monthly travel card. That HURT but it makes travel easy. The line we live on goes across London and stops throughout central London. 

So we are official tube riders. Down the corridor, scan the card, upstairs to the platform and voila(!), we’re on the train..

Turns out this is one of the busiest lines so it’s often crowded. When the train door opens, there’s a scramble for empty seats. It’s a dog eat dog, snooze you lose, situation. 

On the train are ordinary people of all shapes and sizes dressed in their understated black, beige, brown English clothes. Little color. It’s in the upper 60’s but there are no shorts. Some people have on winter coats. OK…

Nobody is yelling. Nobody is talking to themselves. Nobody looks too threatening. Just minding their own business. This isn’t what I’m used to in Mpls. where if someone isn’t a complete wack job every time you get on, there is something wrong. 

So off we go to dazzling downtown. We come up from the oxford circus station and are blown away. Magnificent beautiful old buildings surround us. 

It immediately strikes me that we are in a city that is thousands of years old and it’s right in front of me. 

To quote a clique, we ain’t in Kansas anymore.

Almost homeless in London

 On the 3rd night things take a dramatic turn. 

I always ordered my groceries for delivery at home. So I thought I’d try it here. So I order it just like usual, pick a time slot for delivery. Everything’s cool.

Get a message saying they are behind. Okay, that’s alright. Time goes by.  I had ordered a evening delivery and it’s getting late. I had told them ring the buzzer and I’ll come down and get it. So I thought maybe they had just left it at the door. So we thought we’d go to check.

So we went out to the hall to go downstairs. The door shuts behind us. We go downstairs. It’s not there. Come upstairs and discover THE DOOR IS LOCKED! Do we have the key? Ah no…we were just going 50 feet down to the door. The lock is from the 1920s or something and automatically locks.

So we are staying in a five unit condo building. We are on the second floor. WHAT THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?! Remember I told you the owner is in France? Neither one of us had our phones with us to call anybody.

I am picturing us spending the night on the street, homeless in London. I’m picturing the police breaking down the door.

So we think- hey maybe there’s a sort of caretaker in the building who has e very one’s keys or something…So we knock next door. No answer. Okay go downstairs.

Door #2: Guy offered to help us force the door open. Ah no…Door #3 The guy knew the owner and had her number! He said he’d call her. I fell at his feet to worship him. Har.

So he calls and comes out to tell us her parents will be there ion 10 minutes to let us in. Hallejulah!

She comes. We apologize profusely. We go in. I superglue the key to my hand. (!) All is well. Another crisis averted

Murphys law

 We got to the airbnb and I was done. I was distraught. I started to think I had made the biggest mistake of my life. I was questioning everything. It was really something. I was mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. 

An hour later I crashed.  Five PM. I slept until 10 pm. Got up for a short time and went back to bed and slept til 9 am the next day. Fifteen hours. I felt better but was still exhausted. That was May 26.

That day we discovered we hadthe wrong electric converter for the wall sockets. I had bought a European one and the UK has a different configuration (of course they do). So we walked down to the business street in Leytonstone and bought the right one. It didn’t work. We couldnt get any of the sockets to work. M went down to the electronics store to get an iPhone charger that went directly into the socket. Nope. WTF??!!

So we ended up calling the airbnb owner. She was in France it turns out. After talking it through, she had us look at the fuse box and some dumb idiot had turned off the sockets. We turned them back on and life was copacetic.

Walked to the grocery store to get a few things and spent the rest of the time in the apartment that day.

Oh, I forget to tell you what happened during the first night. Something woke us up outside and it definitely wasn’t human.

I melt down

After going through customs at Heathrow, we decided to just take

the train to Leytonstone where we were gonna be. 

Customs is easy for Americans. Basically you get in a line that winds around for half a mile. Then at the end you put your passport straight down on a scanner and a picture is taken of you. Then voila! You are let loose in England.  

We get a SIM card for the phone at the airport(probably a mistake).

So by now it’s 8 am. We find the tube and start the trip to Leytonstone. My back pack is so heavy, almost unmanageable for me. We take the Piccadilly line to Holton street and change to the central line. We go down stairs, up escalators, through halls all while dragging the bags. 

We arrive in Leytonstone and leave the tube station and we are in a small business district. We immediately sit on a bench. We made it! We are here! We’re in England!

Now we have to figure out how to stay awake for the next 8 hours til the airbnb is ready. We sit there and realize that most people around us speak different languages. This is a very diverse area. It’s great! 

So we go to Subway of all places, our first meal in England is at an American fast food place.

 Now what? What are we gonna do for the next 7 hours? This business area is only two streets. We go to a coffee shop, a library, sit on various benches, end up at McDonald’s. Sit there a couple hours til 3:30.

We are in a state of desperation at this point. It is Wednesday afternoon. We killed ourselves moving the apartment Monday. Slept very little Monday night. Spent 8 hours in JFK.on Tuesday. We were already exhausted. Got no sleep Tuesday night. Now we had to stay awake for 8 hours Monday. 

By the time we arrived at the Airbnb we (shall I say I) were on the edge of losing it completely. 

After we got the keys, that’s exactly what happened: I had a complete meltdown.

On the plane to London

Jet Blue did an absolutely fantastic job on the NYC to London flight. I’ve never been on an overnight commercial flight so had no idea what it would be like. Left at 6pm.

We get to our seats and there is a blanket, sleep mask, socks, earphones, ear plugs, champagne, caviar (OK just kidding on those last two). Soon after takeoff, drinks and snacks. Should have downed a couple of vodka shots to sleep, but alas, did not.Not too long after that, a meal was served that was pretty good.

So it’s about 8 pm now and everybody settles in to sleep. Except me and Mike. We can’t sleep. Two hours later. Lights come up a little bit. Water is given out. About an hour later drinks. Land at 6 am. We actually only spent six hours on the flight but we are six hours ahead so it’s 6 am. It’s midnight back home. 

Our second night with little to no sleep. We will have to stay awake until 4 pm when we can go to our air bnb.

The layover from hell

So we were so tired from lack of sleep and moving. The flight to New York was fine . Arrived at JFK at about 8 am.

We started our 10 hour layover. Our flight to London left at 6 pm. That’s what you get for a cheap flight. 

M originally had wanted to go into the city while we were there but I really didn’t  want to drag a suitcase and backpack around Manhattan. The way we felt, we never would have gone anyway. 

So try passing 10 hours in an airport when you are exhausted and sore. I started to realize just how heavy my backpack was during this time. My 66 year old body was protesting. So somehow we got through 10 hours in the jet blue terminal which has little to offer. Mike slept maybe 20 minutes on the ground of the terminal. 

So finally got on the plane to London. I was in the window seat. He was in the middle and there was someone beside him. Another 6 hours of misery was ahead of us.

Off we go

 So we left the keys to the apartment and off we went to the new adventure. Light rail to hotel near airport. Exhausted to the bone. Dumb idea #2: move the day before we were leaving. 

We would have to get up at 3 am for a 4 am shuttle to the airport. I slept off and on for 5 hours maybe. M really didn’t sleep at all. 

So off to the airport we go. (hippity hop) Hadn’t flown in a long time so nervous about security. Liquids. Electronics. Shoes. Etc. what goes in the tray. Actually it was pvery easy.

EXCEPT….I was picked out for special screening because  they thought “we saw metal near your rear”. Most have been my buns of steel. Har.

So I could off to another area for the pat down or stay there to do it. I just told them to it.

They pat down EVERYWHERE. It is bizarre. 

So that’s over. We find our gate and settle in to wait.

The moving nightmare

So M and I rode the bus to get the truck. Never drove a truck before. Wasn’t that hard. Only thing different was mirrors on the sides instead of a rearview. 

We went back to the apartment. Managed to park in the little entry road.We we’re about to find out how stupid our moving plan was. It was just M and me moving. Yeah 66 year old me and 29 year old M. Neither one of us thought it would be that bad. We had this appliance mover thing. No problem to get the couch moved with that! Not. Didn’t really work. 

So the smaller part of the sectional couch fit in the elevator. We got it to the truck by carrying it. The truck wasn’t right in front of the door. So it was hard, but got it done.

Then the bigger part of the couch would not fit in the elevator. No matter how much we tried. We had to take it down a back staircase that was 3 flights and spiraled and had low ceiling corners. In other words it was a complete nightmare. Somehow we got it through withought me falling and breaking my neck.

There were tables and beds and stands and tvs. Really I had a lot less than most. It was still a lot and left us completely exhausted. 

I was shocked I was able to do it at all at my age. I am in pretty good shape, have developed strength with yoga. I walk 4 1/2 miles a day. Seems it all paid off. I was still still sore and bruised though. 

We went back to the apartment. This would be our last time there.

How it all started

I think I started talking to M

in summer of 2021 about doing this trip. He encouraged me, probably thinking it was a good thing to think about after T died. Did he take me seriously? I don’t know. 

So I started taking it seriously, looking into it in the fall. Watched a lot of videos about people who were nomads or living in other countries. Gained practical information. 

Next step was to get passports. Got pictures. Filled out the forms. Went to post office with form, pictures and birth certificates. 

Received passports. Never had one before! I had been to other countries but with the military and at the time I didn’t exactly need a passport.

Determined UK would be first destination. Booked cheap Jet Blue tickets to London. Next was accommodations. Decided on air bnb. So frickin’ expensive in London! Finally bit the bullet and booked one. In Leytonstone London.

Next gets suitcases and backpacks. We would be doing carryons.