Things I Lost On My UK Trip

• My Brookstone NAP Travel Pillow which was square.  It’s not even on their website anymore.  I had to buy one of the neck ones to replace it.
• My palm stylus.
• My brand new earphones I bought for the trip after Pugly chewed up the last ones.
• My umbrella, which I replaced with a mini-umbrella of the UK flag.
• Two pounds — kid you not.

Tags: UK, vacation, Brookstone

Tripping in the UK [Part I]

Well, the first sign of any trouble occurred when I reached the Boston airport. Somewhere between the bus from Portland and security, I lost my nifty really soft travel pillow. Logan airport’s security and Lost and found were extremely unhelpful and rude and ended up giving me a long distance number to call, which I’ve since lost. Hard to believe that lost and found is a long distance phone number.

So, my first expense on the trip was at the Logan airport buying a new one at the Brookstone kiosk (and they wouldn’t give me a discount for loyalty either ).

Interestingly, the International terminal was the dreariest airport terminal I’d ever been in and had the least number of distractions I’d ever seen. (Little did I know, that this is apparently the norm overseas. Apparently only we Americans truly need to be entertained while waiting on the next plane.)

The seat in front of mine on the long flight over was broken and stuck in the laid back position. Fortunately, there was no one next to me to my right, so I moved over. Still, it annoyed me the whole time, especially when the man was offered a seat that wasn’t broken and after take off, he returned to the broken one. It also annoyed me that this family of five seemed to take over our section of the plane and kept changing seats and getting up and such. Only one or two of them had tickets for our area and they even comandeered my old seat. I don’t mind if you trade, but I do mind if you are inconsiderate of everyone else. Especially since it was a night flight.

I had some troubles with my legs spasming on the long flight over. There just wasn’t enough space to stretch them out and one of the stewards got snippy with me when I got up and brought my dinner trash to their work area. Apparently you’re supposed to just sit and wait for them to come get it but I really had to pee and there was no where to put the tray while I was getting up. You figure out the logistics.

Anyway, six hours after leaving Boston, I arrived in Dublin only to be herded to customs which went relatively smoothly. He basically asked me where I was going and why and stamped my passport and sent me on my way. Now, I don’t know if all foreign airports are like this or if it’s just in the UK but apparently once you get off of a plane, you have to go out to luggage claim — wave to your luggage as you go past it with an odd feeling that you may never see it again — and back through security…or at the very least some semblance of that. Going I had to do that scenario but coming back, they directed me to turn just before luggage claim back into the terminal arriving inside of an area just after security.

However, in Dublin, I got the distinct impression I was in some sort of narrow hall of a maze and that there would be cheese a the end…but I popped back out at security. I again had to be searched and again ended up in a fairly dreary terminal.

Mind you, it was now about 8am, London time and the middle of the night my time. I badly wanted some coffee and my great plan had been to arrive with no foreign currency because I’d been assured by my father that everyone accepts plastic.

He was wrong.

The coffee shop in the terminal in Dublin that has planes going to London does not accept plastic apparently. They will accept American dollars. $8 is not enough for a small cup of coffee and an apple turnover however.

Not only will the coffee seller give you a bad cup of coffee but he will also give you Euros as change. Both are worthless. The coffee will be undrinkable and the Euros will be unspendable in England.

I wish I had the apple turnover now.

Anyway, so the next flight seemed rather uneventful. In fact, thanks to the Lorazapam, I don’t recall any of it.

It’s also possible that the Lorazapam is to thank for my calmness in what happened next as PW said repeated over the next 24 hours that if it had been her, she would “totally have freaked”.

The truth of the matter is that only one piece of my luggage came out of the luggage belt and it was that small red one in the picture. In that bag was a designer spaghetti-strapped purple bridesmaid dress, two pairs of black flats, a corset, a silver shawl, a silver hand purse and very little else. (Thank goodness for having packed my meds in my backpack and thanks to peskyapostrope for the toothbrush tip!)

In my very drugged, tired state, I just walked up to the lost luggage claim guys and told them that my larger bag never made it. When they asked me what it looked like, I said, “Like this one but bigger.” I wrote down PW’s phone number and address and they said the bag would be delivered later that day. I really was just so tired I thanked them and walked toward the exit. Really I couldn’t be mad. It wasn’t like that incident with Delta at all where they’d just screwed up one thing after another all day long. Everything had pretty much been fine except that one of my bags hadn’t made it.

So, I stepped out of the doors that let me into London and there were PW and English and they were happy to see me and we all did the greating thing and I told them what happened and PW was amazed at how calm I was.

I will say this about Aer Lingus. As snippy as that one steward was, the lost luggage guy was very nice. He found my luggage (it has missed the rerouting in Dublin) and it had made it to London and got put on a delivery truck for PW’s house. He didn’t call to let me know though because he thought I looked so tired when I left that he was worried he might wake me up. That’s very thoughtful.

Anyway, I did get the rest of my luggage six hours later — I had tried to convince PW that if it hadn’t shown up, I could just wear the bridesmaid dress the whole trip, but bride that she was, she didn’t seem to go for that and insisted I wear some of her clothes. Oh well. I think that purple would have gone well at Stonehenge.

English’s family was anxious to meet me so there was a big BBQ at his parent’s house that night. I must say that I really enjoyed meeting them even if they kept appologizing for all of the family drama. I kept trying to assure them that family drama is what I’m used to, but I don’t think they understood. They seem like a lively bunch and I liked them all except for one of English’s brothers’-in-law who appears to be as PW termed it a real “leach”. Anyway, he’s a creep — more on that later, I think.

After dinner, PW, English, The Creep, the boy children, and I went down to a local English canal behind the houses to feed the ducks and then play with one of the boys’ new birthday presents, a remote control car. Here at least are some photos of the English canal, the only photos I took the first day:

I’ll stick a bit of English history in here so you don’t think I frittered my first day in England away waiting on my luggage. The way that the English got things about the countryside and into the side from its shores and ports was most easily done via water, not just by river but by these little man-made canals. The way that boats made there way down these narrow little canals was by mules, horses and donkeys, believe it or not. Yup, they were pulled on what is know as a tow-way as seen below. The animal would walk alongside the canal and pull the boat to its destination.

To be continued…

Tags: UK, Brookstone, Aer Lingus, Logan Airport, fibromyalgia