Let's hope she's right because flying can be very painful when you have an ear infections.
If it's not better over night I will get up really early and try to get in at the free clinic since I get better care there.
I'm just a little busy today.
Besides taking care of my grandsons for 5 hours, I need to go to the bank and get cash, go to another bank and exchange cash for Euros, pick up some essentials at Wally World, finish labeling my 210 receipts for all the stuff my daughter and I have replaced since the fire, fax my 210 receipts to the insurance agent, finish designing 2 of 4 websites for a friend of mine, post all 4 websites, go through my suitcase and take out 10 pounds of clothing (I'm over the limit for tour group), print my boarding passes and about a 1000 more things.
Oh and I also need to make my body adjust from being up all night (hours I work) to being up all day.
Since I don't know how much time I will have for posting each day, I am going to load some basic information for each day on where I'm supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing from the description of the tour then I will add to those pages each day and reveal what I am actually doing, seeing, etc. along with pictures I take.
Day 1
What is supposed to happen according to the tour brochure-- BOARD YOUR OVERNIGHT TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT.
Day 1 leaving Springfield.
My oldest daughter, her husband and their two boys all live with me. My flight was scheduled for afternoon so I asked my son-in-law to drop me off at the airport BEFORE he left for work. A nurse would be looking after one of their sons and the other one was in school.
I should mention that 'S' is my favorite son-in-law ( worth mentioning just in case I ever need him to take me to the airport again, call an ambulance for me or something like that).
He and I had a discussion last night and then again this morning as to when exactly he would drop me off so that he can make it to work on time. I will arrive at the airport about an hour sooner than I have to but figure it is worth it not to pay a taxi or 3 weeks of parking at the airport for my van.
I left the house mid-morning to finish up the last of my errands and was back home an hour later. S was not home. No need to panic I told myself (I talk to myself all the time), he occassionally runs errands too. An hour later the pessimistic voice in my head wanted to argue with the one telling me he hadn't forgotten me and he would be home soon.
Thirty minutes later, the pessimistic voice convinced me to text S and ask him if he'll be home soon. He responded after 10 or 15 minutes to say that he is at work and had forgotten me but that he would come back and take me to the airport anyway.
Whoo. This is not a bad sign. A bad sign would have been him telling me he wasn't coming back and I needed to find my own way to the airport, right?
I got through airport security without a hitch. Yea! Maybe this means I’m no longer on their watch list or maybe they just look at the record from past searches. I’ve been search at this particular airport 3 times and other airports 6 times out of 12 flights. They’ve never found anything amiss of course so maybe they realized I’m just an old lady that likes to travel by herself.
I’m not opposed to traveling with someone mind you. I just don’t let being alone stop me from traveling.
It’s been a year since I was out of the country and six years (man it seems longer) since I was overseas. I’m so excited but also nervous that things will have changed so much with the escorted tours that I won’t know what I’m supposed to do, go, or meet. What if I commit some international foe paw because I don’t know the correct customs for one of the 7 countries I’m going to visit?
I’m really dreading the overnight flight portion of the trip because I couldn’t get an isle or window seat. My ‘fluffiness’ tends to over flow into the seats around me and I always feel like I am taking up too much space. Oh well at the end of that I will be in London so I will just hope I’m next to an extra small adult or child who won’t notice.
I saw a man drop his ID on the floor when he was putting his stuff away and told him about it. He didn’t seem to believe me but I pointed it out under his chair and when he finally took the time to look he thanked me for it. I know other people saw but I was the only one to tell him.
Gee, I hope someone would tell me if I dropped mine.
Why did I let this thought pass through my head without covering myself by changing it to something like, “I’m sure someone would tell me if I dropped something important in the airport.”???
But NO, I even wrote out the negative thought in my journal. Excuse me while I take a brief break to hit my head against the wall.
You would think I’d never read 12 books on the laws of attraction or taken to heart the saying,
“What you think about, you bring about.”
As the airplane took off and started climbing higher and higher the dull ache in the vicinity of my ear became an intense knife stabbing kind of pain and I was regretting that I never followed up with another doctor about it.
Day 1 Part 2 Negative Thinking Trumps Karma
OVERNIGHT TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT.
Arriving in Chicago.
Normally my carry-on bag is my laptop case with wheels. Unfortunately the escorted tour said that the one carry on we were allowed to have on the bus with us could not have wheels of any kind.
So I hatched a plan to make the most of my allowances. I had one big suitcase to hold my 17 days worth of clothes, hygiene items and the all important converter adaptor with attachments for all the different countries I would need to charge my laptop, camcorder, camera, and MP3 player. It would be in the compartment under the bus most of the time.
Second I used a college backpack for my carry-on. I put my laptop, camera, camcorder, MP3 player, 1 complete change of clothes (in case my big suitcase was lost), travel sized toothbrush, tooth paste and deodorant, and my daily medications. It seemed like a lot but when I strapped it on it didn’t seem to awfully heavy.
At the last moment at home I had added a notebook for jotting down notes and impressions when I couldn’t easily use my computer, all my power cords, chargers, USB attachments (so I could easily transfer my pictures and videos directly to my laptop) for all my electronic stuff and a sweater.
Third, I bought an extra large purse for all the little stuff I might need in transit, including my travel documents. The item taking up the most room was my neck pillow. It added bulk but not weight and the purse had an extra long strap so I could wear it diagonal across my chest and keep my hands free.
I should have tested the backpack again and moved some of the stuff to my checked bag because when I got to Chicago airport I soon discovered the pack was very heavy even strapped onto my back.
My flight from Springfield arrived at the very end of K and I had to go all the way to the end of that arm then up to G and almost to the very end of it to get to the gate for my international flight to London.
I turned, curious to see what poor weary traveler was dropping things in the crowded pedestrian traffic of the busy airport.
I saw a USB cord that looked amazingly like the one to my camera. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I shrugged out of the backpack and brought it around in front so I could see it. The large middle section was completely unzipped. As I bent to retrieve the cord someone crashed into me and another person kicked the cord and sent it slidding across the floor. I fell hard on my bad knee. I scrambled to catch the cord as several more people kicked it this way and that.
Finally I managed to get the cord but before I could take joy in my accomplishment, I saw my notebook a few more feet down the hall. Thirty minutes later, I was hoping I'd retrieved every thing that had dropped out of my pack.
No one had taken the time to tell me I was dropping things out of my pack.
I guess negative thinking trumps Karma.
I started off once again for the international terminal carrying the heavy pack in front. By the time I finally arrived I thought both my arms were going to fall off.
I collapsed into a chair at the appropriate gate and spent several minutes telling myself my overnight flight was going to be uneventful and great.
What you think about, you bring about.
Please let it be so!
Day 1 Part 3
Transatlantic Flight ... the tour handbook suggested you spend this time sleeping so you wont have jet lag and will be ready for a full day of sightseeing. (yes, and while you're at it scamper after butterflies and unicorns on the other side of the rainbow).
I love children but I don’t want to be on a 12 hour flight with them if they are under 12. If they are siblings and under age 18 for girls or 25 for boys, I don’t want to be trapped on an aircraft anywhere near them, especially if their parents insist on them sitting beside each other.
For those of you who have or had more than one child remember back to those rainy days when they were trapped in a house together and got bored. Or when the power was off and the only way they amused themselves was to fight with each other over EVERY Little THING, REAL OR IMAGINARY.
I came to this conclusion while I watched several sets of parents in the gate area. I also noted a weird factoid. The smaller the child the more carryon luggage they seemed to have.
I witnessed pinching, hair pulling and shrieking fits over arm rest disputes, shoving matches over batteries for a DS, wailing sobs over who got to sit next to mommy, thrown toys over who was looking at who and brothers in their late teens who cursed each other and nearly came to blows because of one of them thought it was funny to hide the other one’s MP3 player.
And this was all before they got on the plane.
For some crazy reason, international flights start boarding an hour before scheduled take off (and we all know that set time is a joke airlines like to play on you because once you are on the plane you are their prisoners for as long as they want to keep you). Even more insane is letting the people traveling with young children board first. By the time the last passenger finds their seat they’ve already grown bored with every toy in their bag, gotten sick of sitting, gotten thirsty and needed to go pee at least once.
When I first realized that the family of 5 in front of me (3 kids age 4-7) had decided the parents would sit next to each other with no kids between them, I was silently thanking the universe that I was at the end of the row behind the parents, not the thirsty, needing to pee, can’t find favorite blankie children like the poor souls at the other end of my row.
I thought I’d won the lottery when the person who’d booked the aisle seat didn’t show up and I was able to move over one to give myself and the teenage( who’d lost the rock-paper-scissor game against her sister and had to sit next to me) some elbow room.
As soon as the seat belt sign went off I began to get nervous when the father who was directly in front of me immediately reclined his seat so that his head was in my bountiful chest area.
I had the misfortune of being on the last row of the middle section right in front of the mid-airplane bathrooms. Not only did my seat only reclined 1 and ½ inches and therefore prevented me from escaping his invasive head but I also got the constant noise and jarring vibration of the bathroom doors creaking open then slamming shut.
Before I could slid sideways into my original seat the mother reclined her seat just as far effective trapping me where I was. The mother was holding the youngest of their kids while he sobbed about wanting his own bed and not wanting to see grandma even if she did live in London bridge ‘cause he hated that song.
I looked on enviously at the people across the aisle who were able to watch the small TV screens of the backs of the seats in front of them. They were able to choose between a dozen or so movies, sitcoms or music stations and their personal headphones also allowed them to drown out the crying and/or complaining children around them.
I was ready to tap the father on the forehead and ask him to let me up to go to the bathroom when one of the other kids started wailing for her teddy bear and the mother informed him he had to get it out of the flowered bag in the overhead storage compartment or take the still whimpering child she was holding. He chose to get the teddy bear. He sat his seat up straight and I was able to take a deep breath for the first time in forty-five minutes. As I watched him search three different overhead bins for the suitcase (they had really spread their carryons around) I noticed there was a movie available that I actually wanted to see.
A poet friend of mine once said that I was his proof that ‘Hope burns eternal’. What he really meant was ‘False hope’ but I choose to ignore that at times. I put in my headphones and started to watch the movie while daring to breathe normally.
I felt so much better that I even gave the business woman who I’d noticed traveled with only a small carryon bag a sympathic smile when the father put her bag in the floor to get to his daughter’s then balanced that one on the back of her seat forcing her to lean way forward at an awkward angle while he dug through it and held up various stuff animals for the little girl’s choosing.
The movie captured my attention and I was only partially aware of his discovery that said teddy bear must have been put in a different bag and his consequential search of 2 more of their carryons. The mother had sat up to help him and when the flight attendant offered me a drink, I was able to use the tray table on the back of her seat to set it on.
Oh I was really living it up now. I was watching a movie, sipping a soda, breathing fully, and angled in my seat so that my extra fluffiness could hang over into the empty seat instead of the aisle.
It lasted a little over 10 minutes.
The teddy bear was found and the mother quickly reclined her seat nearly spilling my drink. I was in fear of losing sight of my TV screen again if the father sat down when I got a tiny reprieve. Their third child urgently needed the bathroom and the mother threatened to withhold sex for a month if the father did not take him (even with my headphones in I clearly heard that so a good portion of the plane must have heard what should have been a private negotiation between them).
It took the man a few moments to decide but he did help the child climb over his siblings and mother and move to the line in the aisle that was forming for the bathrooms on my side of the plane.
My movie was at a really good part when the father and child returned to their seats. As he started reclining his seat, my hand shot up without conscious thought and stopped it several inches short of being buried in my chest again. Thankfully, the mother had leaned forward and was busy helping her kids rearrange themselves so she couldn't see my hand while he repeatedly shoved his seat against it.
I looked around guiltily to see if anyone had noticed my hand and might rat me out to the man. I met the teenager’s smirk. Would she talk? About that time the child in front of her started putting their seat back with the mother’s help. Her had shot up copying my move. I recalled that she’d had the kid practically in her lap earlier when the father’s head was in my chest.
Back row people unite!
The family finally gave up and settled for being 2/3s of the way reclined instead of fully reclined. I found I could angle the TV screen so I could still see it even though it was a mere 4 inches from my chest.
Life was good again…for about 30 minutes!
The pain reliever I had taken earlier for my earache wore off and the stabbing pain returned accompanied now by a feeling of pressure that made me fear a burst eardrum. I had to lean into the aisle then contort my body in a backwards C to reach my purse under the father’s seat.
I sat it in the empty seat while I dug through it in search of more pain reliever. Forget the over the counter stuff, I went for the stuff I had left over after having a tooth pulled (and some people think I over pack for trips, ha, I say!).
I hoped it would knock me out for the rest of the flight when it kicked in.
Hope burns eternal.
Nope, it just left me in that groggy land between sleep and wakefulness where you can’t concentrate enough to watch a movie or read but are vaguely aware of the crying kids, arguing couples and college guys rehashing their last night in the bar when so and so was puking and somebody else was getting laid and the other guy lost his car keys in the stripper’s cleavage.
I’m a real lightweight when it comes to medications so this state lasted 8 hours instead of the 4-6 listed on the label.
Focus on Italy and Paris, Day 2
Day 2:Fri. ARRIVE IN LONDON, ENGLAND.
According to guidebook: Check into your hotel. Then, enjoy an afternoon in the lively British capital. Uniformed Hosts are available to help you make the most of your time.
I began to come out of my brain fog after the flight attendants served breakfast. The sky outside the plane windows was a beautiful blue. I was excited to have the uncomfortable flight over with and get on with my vacation.
Once we actually landed and got off the plane it was about a twenty minute walk to the baggage claim area. Despite the weight of my checked suitcase it was a relief to have it to rest the backpack on because at least it had wheels. It was another strenuous block or so with all my luggage to the customs area. Weaving back and forth through the maze of marked off lines isn’t easy with bulky luggage but I was very focused on the fact that I was in a country I’d never been in before and I was anxious to get out there and explore.
Once again the customs official seemed to find it odd that I was on vacation but traveling alone. Does everybody have to keep rubbing that in? Gee, thanks.
Once I was done with customs, I had a few minutes of unease as I passed through a corridor with people waiting behind ropes on both sides. How would I ever find the tour reprehensive in this throng of people? I was nearing the end when I finally spotted a lady in a bright red uniform. She was holding a sign with my name on it.
After I told her who I was she called for a driver to come and meet me then offered to stay with my luggage if I wanted to use the toilet (no fancy euphemism for it in Europe). I’d already been asked 5 times if my luggage had been out of my sight at all so I had a moment of unease as I walked away from it for the first time in 16 hours. I got over that quickly when I was able to go into a stall without a balancing act. A driver in a 3 piece suit showed up after about 20 minutes and took possession of my big suitcase and backpack. We had another long hike through the airport to a multi-level parking garage. The car he led me to was just a regular mid-sized car but very clean inside. After stowing my luggage in the trunk he opened the back door for me.
As he backed out of the parking space he pulled a pen and piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. He started to write on the paper as he was going around the rows of parked cars. I was getting nervous. Surely he could have done that later? Then his phone made a chiming noise and he picked it up. It must have been a text because as we entered this cork screw type of ramp he was looking at the screen on his phone. I wanted to protest his inattention but was worried about seeming like a bad tourist. When we’d gone a couple of floors down, he started texting. I gasped loudly and was thrown forward in the seat when another car suddenly entered the ramp right in front of us and he hit the brakes. He ignored me and went right back to reading and texting.
There was a line of cars at each of the three exit lanes for the garage and it was moving slowly because each person had to pay for their parking. He let a car length of space form between him and the car in front of us while he was texting and suddenly another car darted in front of us.
He honked the horn several times and made a finger gesture at the other driver. It was not the same finger gesture made in the US. If you’re ever in the UK and want to show your displeasure with another driver, you use your index finger and a sideways motion. I resisted the urge to practice the gesture on him as he continued with his texting even when we were on the highway going 80 kilometers or so.
From the highway, London looked very much like any big city in the U.S.
We finally arrived at the hotel and he unloaded my stuff in an underground parking garage. He didn’t say anything just stared at me for a moment. I had bought some Euros before leaving Springfield but I didn’t have any small bills or coins and I was not about to give him a big tip after his inattentive driving so I didn’t tip him at all.
I trudged inside. There was an empty desk with the tour company's name on it and what I thought was the hotel reception desk. After waiting in line there for 10 minutes I was told I needed to go up stairs to check into the hotel.
The lobby, restaurant and bar area where packed with people. I had another long wait in line only to learn that my room was not ready yet. She suggested I wait in the bar but there were no seats available anywhere. I finally found a bare strip of window ledge to perch on with my luggage piled around me.
For the first time I really looked at all the people milling around.
OMG! I'd never seen so many in one place before. Suddenly, I didn't care how long it took for my room to be ready. Who needed to visit the Windsor castle with so much eye candy around?
Day 2, part 2
9 out of every 10 people in the lobby, bar, and restaurant areas were men. I looked a little closer and noticed there were clusters here and there. Each one consisted of a tall, muscular (not football linebacker muscular, picture kick boxer muscular) man (usually very good looking), flanked by at least two other tall, muscular men who seemed to be acting as bodyguards and/or assistants plus a line of men who stepped forward one or two at a time to have something (Poster, magazine, or a T-shirt they were carrying) signed or to have their picture taken as they stood by or shook the center man’s hand. It seemed a higher than usual number of the men in the lines were also buff.
As I continued my observation two reporters accompanied by camera men sat up interview areas. The closest one to me was not speaking English as he talked to several men (one at a time) so I still was not sure who all these guys were.
I figured I should probably know who some of these people were so I didn’t ask anyone about them. I decided I would find it out on my own when I was free to wander around without my luggage. In the mean time I began playing a mental what if game. What if these guys were …
About 40 minutes into this I began to get tired, thirsty and hungry but there was still no sign of an open seat in the restaurant areas or even the bar and grill area. Another 20 minutes and I was too uncomfortable to enjoy my ‘what if’ game. Finally one of the front desk people motioned for me to come back there. As she was giving me my key and explaining where my room was, I heard another employee ask a man if he was staying at the hotel or just attending the conference and classes. Ahh, so maybe the buff guys in the lines were learning how to do whatever it was that the guys in the center of the groups did.
Interesting but not enough to keep me from going to my room to deposit my luggage and freshen up.
After a shower I felt partially revived. I already knew from the escorted tour brochure that I could go down to the tour desk I’d seen in the basement and sign up for one of two afternoon excursions they offered. One was a tour of Windsor Castle and the other was a tour that included the Tower of London and viewing the Crown Jewels. Both seemed expensive to me.
Budget travel tip: If you know what optional tours are offered by an escorted tour group or cruise line (I do this all the time when I cruise), you can often find a comparable tour or excursion offered much cheaper than the one sponsored by the group.
A word of caution when you have a limited amount of time. Make sure you hammer out all the details before handing over any money. Are they going to have you back to the port, hotel or meeting place in plenty of time to get on your ship or rejoin the tour group?
Also don’t hand your money over to someone who says he will take you to the starting point (a lot of these guys get a commission for bringing customers to the tour operator but I have heard of con men who will disappear into the crowd with your money), wait until you get there, verify that everything you’ve been told about what is included, the times and price is correct then pay the ‘official’ person and they will take care of the guy who brought you to them.
I’ve saved tons of money this way but have also passed up some supposedly great deals simply because they seemed way too good to be true (less than half price) or I got a bad vibe from the person. It always amazes me how many times a person who is the victim of a con admits that they had some qualms but proceeded anyway.
After a shower I felt revived. I went down to the lobby again and looked over the brochures (every hotel the world over has them). I found a much more affordable tour that included the Windsor castle and the map showed one of the pickup points was only 1 block from my hotel. I had 2 and ½ hours though before it started so I went in search of food.
Once I had eaten, I was tired again. No biggy, I still had plenty of time for a nap. Back in my room I got out my little travel alarm clock and set it to go off in 1 hour.
I fell asleep almost immediately.
I woke up 4 hours later. Had I made the rookie traveler mistake of not setting my clock to the correct local time? Nope, it was the silly AM instead of PM mistake.
I checked all the brochures I’d gathered. I’d missed all the affordable tours for that day. Man was I disappointed, the tour group was leaving London early the next more so unless I wanted to venture out on my own at night I wasn’t going to see much of London.
I consoled myself by heading back to the lobby. I spent several pleasant hours sitting at a table in the hotel bar that faced the side lobby where they guys signing autographs and having their pictures taken had been relegated to. Three guys at a time would come down and ‘hang out’ for about 30 minutes and then they would leave and three more would take their place.
On a touristy note: the service where I ate lunch (one of the hotel restaurants) and where I ate supper (hotel bar & grill) was awful. Nothing like I’m used to in the U.S. They were slow to even acknowledge my presence, slower still to offer me a menu, another long wait for them to come back and take my order, rude when I asked for drink refill (forget them doing it without you asking) and even slower still when you asked for the bill. They messed up my order both times but both times it took so long to get my food that I didn’t dare send it back.
It wasn’t that they were busy and over worked either. The waiters and waitresses spent most of their time talking to each other and staring at the men signing autographs.
I looked around to see if it was just me for some reason. It wasn’t. All the customers were getting similar bad service.
The hotel advertised that they offered free internet access from computers they provided. There were 4 computers for the entire 350 room hotel. I waited about an hour to get 20 minutes on one.
I had intended to load pictures from my camera directly to my facebook page but found out they had blocked the USB ports so you couldn’t do that.
Oh well it was only the second day and I had 15 more.
Hope burns eternal.
I promise my next blog will have pictures.
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