I am the Burgerfan!

At the start of March, we landed in Auckland at 6 am after 28 hours of
transit. After dropping our bags at a hostel, we hit the ground running and
started exploring the city, and exploring the world. A non-stop ride of
exercises in logistics and making-sure-our-stuff-wasn’t-stolen was rewarded
with a continual stream of surprise and amazement.

In life, Death and Taxes are inevitable. If you are travelling to Europe, almost as inevitable is having to go through the London Heathrow Airport. The lesson you should learn from this, is to either use some other airport, or ensure that your connection flights are all cleanly planned out for you in advance, and are on the same day.

Given the excellent selection of discount European airline carriers, we booked our own flight from Glasgow to London on Ryanair instead of having it on our flight package. The good part is that this flight cost £0.01, for a total after taxes of about £24 for the both of us. This is pretty good! Now, our flight from London across the Atlantic was at 10am on the 16th, and the Ryanair flights to London actually went to the Stanstead airport (which is a considerable distance away from Heathrow). Given that we could not reliably travel from Glasgow to London and catch our 10am flight on time, we opted to take this discount flight on the 15th.

Unfortunately, the shuttle from Stanstead to Heathrow actually cost more than the ryanair flight did. But we tossed our stuff into storage, and hit the Grand City of London for the afternoon…

An Afternoon in London

London can be a fairly vibrant city (depending on where you are in London), and has a seemingly endless supply of landmarks and other tourist attractions. What started off as a cold, grey, extremely rainy day, had cleared up into a mostly clear, bright, and warm day (yes actual warmth from the sun!) And so we tried to cram as much London as we could in about four hours. We crossed Millennium Bridge, and saw the replica Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. We walked along the modern aand trendy river-front Wharfs, and saw the British Airways sponsored London Eye [ http://www.londoneye.com ] . Immediately across the river, we walked by Big Ben, and walked up to Buckingham Palace. Since we weren’t in Edmonton when the Queen popped in for Alberta’s Centennial celebrations, it was only fitting that while we were in London she was up north somewhere for a major Horse Race spectacle. No tea with the Queen for us. We then walked over to Trafalgar Square, and Piccadilly Circus. Its interesting that McDonald’s is one of its major ad-space occupants, and yet in that building on the street level there is a Burger King.

I slept in London Heathrow Airport, and all you got was this lousy web log

The problem with London accommodation is a) it costs an arm and a leg, b) costs another arm and a leg in getting a shuttle to/from said accommodation, and c) traffic is very congested, so much so that our early check-in time would have required us to wake up somewhere around 4am to ensure that we actually made it to the airport on time. Since I need my arms and legs to carry my backpack around, and I want to fly back to North America, it didn’t make too much sense to pay for a room we wouldn’t use the full night. So we camped out in… the Heathrow Airport

According to the Guide to Sleeping in Airports the trick is to camp out a bench as soon as you can that doesn’t have armrests in the way. This allows you to stretch out and attempt to get a little shut-eye. In this context, we found the Cadillac of benches… it was tucked away in a corner, no walk-by traffic, and to boot, the lights directly above it were burnt out! Hurray!

Anyways, while we weren’t thrilled about this plan (in fact we were dreading this night for a few days prior), we figured we could ride this one out, since it was about as long as some of the bus rides we’d taken. With a little creative contortion, we managed to both fit on the four-seat bench enough to rest for a while.

I should also point out that we weren’t alone in this escapade. In fact on a nightly basis, people are sprawled out on the benches overnight, waiting for their morning check-in times. There were guys on the bench across the hall that were watching us and the other two bench sets beside us, and you can read their thoughts "any of you gets up and that bench is mine!" Sometime after midnight, a few people came by looking for benches, but all of them were claimed (hence, the camping a bench as soon as possible).

So between 11pm and 6pm we were on the bench, attempting to get any amount of sleep possible. And while it was in chunks, I have to say I got at least 3 hours of sleep, and that was enough to keep from being delirious until I could get on the plane and get some more sleep. And since it was a bench to lay down on, it was better than sitting around.

The homeland!!!

We left Europe behind us, and were delightfully on our way across the Atlantic. And I drank about a Litre of fresh Orange Juice on the plane. Being in the UK (and Ireland) for the last month left us with a selection of concentrate juices and cordial - not the most refreshing of drinks (the body just knows).

Touchdown! We arrived in……. Florida! We were ecstatic to be back in ‘normality’ with familiar brands and franchises everywhere in sight! And to be on the continent where everything just makes the most sense!

This evening we drove by a Quiznos and I almost left the car in the middle of the road to jump out and eat there. MMMmmmm toasty!

In the coming days, we will be hitting the Disney Theme Parks.

We went to Costco in Glasgow. It looks EXACTLY THE SAME on the inside as they do at home. Its kind of spooky, and yet comfortingly familiar…

We have now seen a small slice of Scotland…

We started in Edinburgh for a few days, walking around the stone-buildinged splendour of the Edinburgh Castle area.  You can still hear the horses of long ago on the cobblestone roads if you try.  We checked out the ‘Real Mary King’s Cross’ tour, which takes you underground into a place where the bottoms of some buildings were not fully knocked out when room was cleared for a larger building.  While this did not create an underground community, it did still allow for a snapshot of what life was like back in the time.

Bussing up to Inverness, I lost half of my main backpack buckle.  Fortunately there are an abundance of camping supply stores here.  The countryside has some resemblance to the foothill and mountain regions back home (without the tall mountains).  It just feels like things are rearranged a little.  The bus makes for an excellent way to see this countryside, this holds true for all the countries we have been through so far.

Inverness is a town of about 40,000 and has a decent size centre to look about.  It is also the home base for Loch Ness Monster tours.  Our package bundled a few things together, and to our fortune, we were the only two in the specific tour slot, meaning that we had some exclusive time with the van driver and was good.  We saw the Urquhart (I forget the spelling) Castle, which was blown up by its owners to prevent future pillaging and attacks on it.  We saw the Loch Ness 2000 exhibition, which leads you through rooms that tell you about findings and research on the existance or not of the monster.  Each room trails off in an "the end?" fashion, which is amusing.  And then after all this there was a boat ride down the Loch Ness itself.  And on the lake, we saw………….. wonderful scenery!  To our great fortune, we hit weather that was unusually brilliant.  Apparently it is always cold, grey, and foggy such that you cannot see across the lake, adding to the mystery.  But we instead had cold, blue skys, and calm water, showing us what the area truly looked like.  Did I see the monster?  I’m not going to divulge.

We then bussed into Glasgow.

We have spent the last few days in Galway, Ireland.  We are staying at the Sleepzone Hostel [ http://sleepzone.com/ ] and its been a great place.  It has free internet, and free wireless internet.  Consequentially, the kitchen is full of laptops and people surfing the internet.  I think its a good formula for a hostel to follow, instead of overcharging for internet access.

We have been taking things easy now (thats the plan for the rest of the trip actually), and since its been rainy, we have made good use of the internet also.

Last night we saw an Irish Dance Show, "Dance of Desire" [ http://danceofdesire.com/ ] which was interesting.  It is called a theatrical, but the story seems vague and lost on me, as it is more a series of Irish dances and music.  Very entertaining though, and we made up a plot that we think it represented, so we are happy with that.

Ireland is one very green country.