To London, to London

 

[ There is a comment section, but no way for me to actually answer questions that are sometimes asked in those comments. I have decided to answer them at the beginning of the following month's blog. In October, someone asked how old I was when my dad died. I was 32.]

My favorite sport is travel. You may say that’s not a sport, but just trying to get through TSA at the airport is a marathon event: the dead lift of carry-on onto the conveyor belt, emptying your pockets and removing jewelry before the person behind you pushes past, and hand raises as you pass through x-ray, all while juggling a ticket and passport. And when you consider that a flight to Europe costs about the same as the basic equipment needed to take fencing lessons (my other sport), I stand by what I’ve said.

While I travel with my husband for vacations to destinations we’ve both never been to, when I go to the UK and Ireland, I usually go alone. His attitude is, “I’ve been there before; I want to go someplace different.”

My take is that there are still so many places in the UK and Ireland that I’ve never seen, I still need to go back.

Our conversation usually goes something like this:

Him: It’s cold there.

Me: It’s warmer there in the winter than it is here.

Him: It rains there.

Me: Surprise, surprise, it rains here, too.

Him: Not all the time.

Me: I spent a month in Ireland, and it rained one day in the Republic, and one day in Belfast while I was there.

But I don’t push the envelope. He knows I like to travel more than he does. He doesn’t mind. I go without him. There are places in the world I refuse to go. If he wants to see those places, he’s welcome to go without me.

You may wonder why I don’t travel with someone else, instead. I have done that. It has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, you get to discover somewhere with another person and share the experience. Often my friends can’t afford the trip or don’t have the time off from work to go. Others have commitments that don’t allow them to go. Of course, the introvert me also needs my alone time. Traveling with someone else is exhausting.

I carefully plan my trips, and if someone is coming with me, I give them a copy of the itinerary. It isn’t because I have to be in charge. In fact, I ask the other person where they want to go, what they want to do and see. I’m usually met with, “Oh, you know places better than I do. Whatever you pick is fine with me. And when I give the suggested itinerary, they never tell me if they aren’t interested in something I’ve listed. They give me the, “Oh, this is great.”

I don’t like to arrive in a country with no idea what I’m going to do. I did that once, and it was disastrous. I thought the other person had planned that part of the trip. They hadn’t, and as a consequence, we saw only what we could figure out how to get to on foot with our trusty Tourist Information maps.

It is frustrating, though, when you’ve planned events for the day, especially when some include buying tickets (in advance) for a timed event, and the  other person isn’t ready on time. Sometimes we miss the event entirely.  Yes, vacations should be relaxing, but they shouldn’t be boring. And I hate wasting money, especially over someone else’s disorganization. When I was a child, my family almost never went on vacations.  I have worked too long and hard to be able to afford vacations to have someone else treat it like it’s no big deal.

It’s also frustrating, after you’ve done all the planning because the other person won’t participate, only to find they had their own agenda they didn’t tell you about, and spring it on you at the last minute.

I have also travelled with someone who constantly sabotaged me throughout the trip. It reached a point where a foreigner I’d met actually asked me if said person was really my friend.

I mean, really, if you ask me to make all of the decisions, and you’ve seen and approved all of them ahead of time, don’t play games with it. I don’t jam pack the schedule. I have one, or perhaps two things per day scheduled, and the rest of the time is to relax and do spontaneous things. There are even days with no plans.

Maybe I’m just difficult to travel with. It’s hard to see me from the outside.

It’s simply easier to travel alone.

Of course, traveling in general has its own issues.

Unless I’m going to Ireland, I have to fly into London to go anywhere in the UK. This is because there are no direct flights from where I live to places like Wales or Scotland. First I'd have to fly to Toronto, Washington, D.C., Amsterdam (!) or Chicago – which is in the wrong direction.

That means changing planes, which in turn involves collecting my carry on, standing in the aisle for an extended period because people refuse to wait for the row in front of them to get out first. They don’t stop to consider that would be faster.

Instead, the (expletive, expletive) people in the back race up the aisle before the doors are open, and often before the seatbelt light has gone off, in the wrongheaded idea that they need to be the first one out.

This is another reason I call travel a sport. I keep expecting to hear the winner of “first person out” announced once we arrive in the airport, along with medals for first, second and third place.

Then there’s the Olympic race to wherever your connecting flight is leaving from – usually at the other end of the airport – and resettling in another plane for the now at least seven-hour flight.

I’ll pay a bit extra for a non-stop flight, thanks.

Once at the final destination, there is a mad dash so as not to be the last one in line at customs.

Customs is its own special world. I usually arrive in London between 6 am and 10 am. Mine is never the only flight. There are several hundred packed like sardines in each flight, since they moved the seats closer together. Want more leg room? It’ll cost you an additional $80. Care to move to business class? Another $2,000, please. They know at the airport what time the various flights are due to arrive. They come in at the same time every day. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people, mostly sleep-deprived, waiting to have their passport stamped.

There are perhaps 20 customs kiosks, yet never, including pre-Covid, are there more than two customs officials for British and EU passports, and two for the rest of us. Bring a good book and maybe one of those canes that opens out into a chair; it’s going to be a while.

The next leg of my journey is the trip from Heathrow or Gatwick to Central London. After collecting my checked luggage, finding the correct lift to the trains or the underground and purchasing my ticket, the journey is lovely. The trains are clean, well-lit and smooth-riding. They leave often enough that they’re not jammed with travelers.

It’s a nice change after an overnight flight where, unless you’re gifted in being able to sleep anywhere, or wealthy enough for business class, you get little to no sleep. Often the first two hours of the flight are taken up with the noisy prospect of flight attendants offering some form of dinner, and the last hour pretending it’s been long enough since dinner to feed you breakfast. In any case, there’s too much noise – and often crying babies – to allow for any sleep. And four quiet hours don’t exactly provide the recommended good night’s sleep.

From Heathrow, the high-speed train arrives at Paddington station, where I maneuver my luggage – which, over the years I’ve whittled to the size of a carry on suitcase – and whatever small carry-on I have, which usually contains my electronic devices.

I usually spend my first day in London to reacquaint myself with the place that feels the most like home to me. If I’m leaving that night to go to Scotland, I need to take the tube to King’s Cross station. There, I can get the night train to Edinburgh or the train to Hogwarts.

Once at King’s Cross, I can check my bags at Left Luggage, and start seeing the sights I’ve chosen for the day.

If I’m going to Cardiff, Wales, I don’t need to leave Paddington, since the First Great Western train line leaves from Padding to Cardiff. If I am going directly there, it’s usually only a short wait for a train, and in two hours I’d be in Cardiff.

On my most recent trip, I opted to spend a few days in London, and take day trips to nearby places I hadn’t yet seen, as well as a few plays on the West End – London’s equivalent to Broadway.

Staying in London means there’s still the matter of baggage. Most places, check in time is 2 or 3 pm.  Since I arrived in Paddington before noon, I had to deal with what to do with the luggage.

Most hotels and B&Bs will allow you to drop off luggage before check-in time if you’ve made arrangements, at no additional charge. If they don’t, there’s Left Luggage at Paddington for a nominal fee.

I usually try to get accommodations near the railway station I’ll be leaving from, to keep from having to navigate stairs and escalators when I’m trying to catch a train. I’ve learned from past experience that the cheaper places are inconvenient to railway stations going elsewhere, and they usually don't have elevators, so you may have to carry your luggage up a few flights of stairs.

Getting luggage around London is its own event. It’s almost always necessary to take at least one underground train to get from place to place. (This assumes you’re not going to splurge for a taxi, which I have done in smaller cities that don’t have the underground.) I’m adept at minding the gap and getting my suitcases over it most of the time. Most tube stations usually have lifts or escalators to transfer you from different level platforms and to the street level.

There is sometimes a problem when the underground station is quite old and not attached to a railway station. In this case, sometimes there are neither lifts nor escalators, and it’s necessary to take a long stairway, made to seem longer if your luggage is heavy.

I have stood at the bottom of a set of tall stairs, looked up and sighed, gearing myself up to pick up the heavy suitcase and making the climb, pulling myself up the railing while my suitcase threatens to pull me back down.

Fortunately, my experience has shown that Londoners are incredibly generous people. Most of the time, someone on the way up the stairs will see me preparing, and simply pick up my suitcase without a word, and carry it up the stairs, then wait for me to get to the top to claim my bag. They have my eternal thanks.

Of course, on the tube there are signs telling people to give up certain seats to those with special needs, pregnant women and the elderly. While I have never been handicapped or pregnant, apparently people can look at me and conclude I’m a senior citizen. While my chronological age qualifies, my inner self still identifies as 25, so it’s both a shock and a bit of an embarrassment to have someone give up their seat for me.

What’s really difficult is trying to decline the kindness when I will be getting off at the next stop. People take it almost as an affront for this senior to decline the designated seat just because the train will be stopping about the same time my bum hits the seat.

Sometimes people will assist me with getting my bags off the train.

Often, the most difficult place to manage luggage is where I’m staying. It’s really important to check out the finer points of hotels and B&Bs. Some hotels are more like B&Bs unless they’re big name places like the Sheraton or the Marriot.

If you book through Bookings.com or Kayak.com or any of a growing number of such places, you can find out whether or not there is a lift in the hotel. You can also request a ground floor room, but they don’t guarantee you will get one. 

If the booking site doesn’t have that information, they usually have an email address for the hotel, and you can find out that way.

If you really can’t manage multiple flights of stairs with your luggage, you may have to opt for a name-brand hotel which is often – but not always – more expensive than those with more old-world charm.

Once free of suitcases, the underground, walking and taking in the sights are much easier. There is no need to rent a car in London. Aside from the extra city tax when you rent in the city, there are buses and the underground to go anywhere you want within the city, and trains for places outside the city. Walking from place to place is fairly easy.

The usual suspects – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, The London Eye, and Trafalgar Square – are walking distance to one another. Hyde Park, St. Paul’s, The Tower of London and Carnaby Street are fairly quick underground trips from there – just keep your Oyster card topped up.

If you want to be spontaneous with visits to things like the London Eye or the Tower of London, you’ll need to stand in line (or queue up, as they say in London) for a bit. But a quick visit online either to the place’s website, VisitUK.com, Viator.com or Bookings.com, among others before your trip can get you advanced tickets and allow you to skip the queues. And definitely take advantage of the hop-on-hop-off busses. It’s a great way to get the lay of the land, as well as a ride from place to place, if not the most direct one.

Traveling can be exciting, even with some of the drawbacks. Like all sporting events, it’s all a matter of planning, and being realistic about what you physically can do.

The best tip I can offer is make a list of places you want to go, make sure you don’t list more places than you have days for vacation, then cut the list in half, and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Even if you guess wrong and have extra time, you can always add things. Just remember that traveling from one place to the next takes time, too.