THE UNITED KINGDOM - GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

I experience my first flight delay flying from Tanzania to England. I had to spend 6 hours in Ethiopia. To recompense, they gave us food vouchers. And I ate my meal off a table which was actually at about a 60 degree angle. No joking! The table was actually slanted.

Hands up who has done the London Underground?
Now imagine doing the London Underground after having had no sleep, not knowing where you’re going and lugging around 40kg of luggage. It was some fun, I can tell you. Thankfully, there are many nice people in London and when there were no nice people I asked the closest person to help me. Eventually I found my way to my hostel (which was the former residence of Samuel Palmer, of Huntley and Palmer’s crackers fame) and after doing some much needed laundry, I headed into London.

I love London and London loves me. It loves all the same things I do and we had fun. My first day in London was spent wandering reasonably aimlessly around Greenwich Village. Admittedly, I had gone to Greenwich to see Big Ben. My reasoning: Greenwich Mean Time. Time = clock. Clock= Big Ben. Ok, I was wrong. So I spent the day walking through Greenwich Park and seeing the Royal Naval College and the Royal Observatory (and the real GMT). The weather in London was nicer than it had been in either Vietnam or Tanzania. Good old British Summer time.

I couldn’t figure out why no-one in the hostel had an accent. Then I realized they were all Kiwis or Aussies. There were a small handful of Americans but literally everyone else was from the Antipodes. The girl in the bed beside me had graduated from Otago the year before. And I actually didn’t meet any English people in my entire first day in London. All the airport staff, the hostel people, the waitress where I had lunch were not from the UK. Apparently London is the only city in the world that has every single nationality represented.

The underground is much more fun when you’re not dragging a couple of suitcases behind you. Day number 2 was spent sightseeing. I got off the Underground at Westminster and oh my goodness, there’s Big Ben and oh look, the Houses of Parliament (which are really quite impressive). It turns out you have to pay to get into Westminster Abbey and I ain’t paying 10 quid ($30) to go to church! So I just looked. A big walk up Victoria Street took me to Buckingham Palace.
Again, I just looked at the outside. Even if I had wanted to go in, I would have had to have queued for about 4 hours. A lot of people wanted in. After that I got lost. But I loved getting lost in London. I ended up finding Soho and Covent Garden! I got overly lost on the way to Notting Hill though and arrived just as the Portobello Market was packing up for the day.

I only had 3 days in London (this time) so I was supposed to finish the ‘major’ sights on my final day. I succumbed and paid to get into St. Paul’s Cathedral (it was cheaper than Westminster) but it was worth it. It was a long way to the top of the dome but the view of London from there was incredible. I was sad that I didn’t have anyone to test out the Whispering Wall with though so I’ll be going back. Then I just sat on the steps of the Cathedral and felt that I needed tuppence so I could feed the birds (I’ve seen Mary Poppins too many times). Then off I went to get lost again. I headed in exactly the wrong direction from where I wanted to be going but it turned out to be a very fortunate mistake. After unknowingly walking across the Millennium Bridge I came across Tate Modern and spent a few hours walking around there and when I’d finished I left and stumbled across the Globe Theatre, just as a play from the Summer Season of Shakespeare was beginning. So I had the chance to watch theatre as Shakespeare wrote it (i.e. I stood for 3 hours watching ‘Coriolanus’).
But it was quite possibly the best piece of theatre I have ever seen! It did however mean that I was running late for my bus to Bath.

God was rather pre-emptive in his grace again and my bus had gotten a puncture on its last trip and was 10 minutes late. So was I. Thank the good Lord! So I arrived in Bath. I stayed with my friend Paul and a couple of his friends and generally just had a good time. Bath is a beautiful town and as my guide on the walking tour kept stressing, it has had 2 major periods in history; the Roman period and the Georgian period. But it really was a great place just to wander around and that’s how I spent my first day. After my walking tour I went for ‘tea’ at Sally Lunn’s. Not only is this the oldest house in Bath (which is an old city) but it is also home to the world famous Sally Lunn (a round, kind of semi-sweet bread for those not fortunate enough to be acquainted with this delicacy).

I also managed to squeeze in a trip to Bristol. It’s only about 15 minutes from Bath by train so I spent a day there, again just wandering. I did window shopping rather than sightseeing and it was nice to spend a ‘normal’ Saturday. I caught the passenger ferry from the city centre back to the train station and oddly enough I was the only person on the boat. So I had a personal cruise up the canal. Rather pleasant really. I finished up that day with a trip to the Baths. The lady at the tourist information was right when she said it was better at night. You get given this phone thing and along the way there are numbers that you ‘dial’ and someone on the other end spouts out info about the Baths. It was reasonably interesting but very often I was happier just to listen to get the gist and then marvel at the ingenuity of the Romans. There are actually 2000 year old drains that still work! The baths were lit up by torches and the lamp light on the water was a pretty spectacular sight.


400 years of fashion. That’s how I spent my last day in Bath. The Costume Museum is located in the Assembly Rooms and if you have ever read Jane Austen you will know about the Assembly Rooms and the Pump Room. Sadly I couldn’t get into either of those as they were closed and cost lots, respectively (I did however walk up the Gravel Walk where Anne Elliott walked with her beau, whose name I have forgotten). The Costume Museum was fun though. I wished I’d lived in the ‘20s.

The next stop was Witney, just outside of Oxford where I was to visit Ruth, who has been my best friend since I was 3 years old. She was just back from Slovakia. In fact, I arrived before she did. And we only had one day before I had to head to Northern Ireland. So, like we always do, we spent the day talking and laughing and not doing much. Boy, it was good, both hanging out with Ruthie and not doing much. After 6 weeks of traveling you really begin to appreciate stopping and sleeping. Your head gets pretty full of amazing sights and thoughts and to take a day to process some of it without refilling on awesome is quite nice actually.

The terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic flights was foiled while I was in London and so security was tight throughout the UK. A sleepless night traveling from Oxford to London included a reasonably long stint in the Luton airport. So at 4.30am I was not really in the mood to be told that I would have to check my hand luggage on and I would be charged for it as excess baggage. I nearly cried. The excess baggage came to more than the cost of my flight. But they let me take my laptop on so it was ok. But I arrived in Belfast and for an entire day the room felt like it was spinning (admittedly, I felt like that quite a lot while I was traveling. I really liked boats because then the room was supposed to be moving). That was a family-filled day where I saw grandparents and aunts and cousins and everybody but I don’t really remember much else. The next day my grandparents took me for a drive. We ended up in Kilkeel so I could see where Nomes would be living. There are a lot of fishing boats. We stopped at this little car boot sale thing and I was shocked that everyone was speaking Northern Irish. And then I remembered.

It was off to see the other side of the family the next day. My cousin was getting married and I was able to be there for the wedding which was great. I got to see the whole family, including one of my cousins who I had never met before (due to his not being born last time I was home). It was a beautiful wedding and I was so glad I was there. There was a chocolate fountain! Actual chocolate cascading down, with things to dip in it!
Obviously that wasn’t the only reason I was happy to be there.

The next stop was visiting friends. All these 2 day stops were crazy. But my friends had organized a birthday party for me, which I didn’t know about before I got there so I felt special. It turns out that my friends who didn’t know each other before I left now do know each other so I got to see everyone at once.

Nomes was supposed to turn up on my actual birthday and we were going to stay in my home town for a few days but at the last minute she had to change flights and I was stood up. So I quickly had to make some new birthday plans. It was alright on the night though. My lovely friend Catherine took me to the funfair and out for lunch. It was someone else’s birthday on the same day and his party had been planned in advance so I spent the evening at somebody else’s party (and someone I didn’t know). That was quite tough but I guess that’s what happens when you go away for 4 and a half years. It was so good to see everyone again though and it’s good to know that we’re still friends even though we live in different hemispheres.

Other than all the new apartments (of which there are thousands) Northern Ireland really hasn’t changed much. But I was shocked at how quick it was to drive between Belfast and Coleraine and Newcastle. We used to do these drives a couple of times a year when I was little and I remember them taking all day. We even used to take picnics to eat along the way. But I guess when you’re used to driving 5 hours to get to Christchurch driving across Northern Ireland doesn’t seem long at all. Less than an hour in fact. And I must say, one thing I loved about the UK was that a cup of coffee could be procured for £1.75. I feel better about that than spending $3, even though £1.75 is actually more. It felt like home (the coffee was part but not all of that feeling).