Woodhaven Park

The walk from Rebecca’s house to the underground is all downhill. To make things even easier than that, Wyona and I have downsized our luggage since the first cruise, but remember we left for 59 days – which is a lot of luggage to get into 2 suitcases.  And we are in every kind of weather – London winter and the heat of the November Mediterranean. The major downsizing occurred when trying to leave Barcelona last time.  You can check on-line if you have extra baggage and it costs $50 for that second piece. Since we didn’t do that, we were going to be charged by the pound for that suitcase:  $300. No matter how Wyona tried to negotiate, the price was firm.  We took our luggage close to a garbage can and began to divest ourselves of anything that seemed superfluous:  pocket-sized hand lotions, back-up shoes in case our first pair of walking shoes got wet, previous papers reminding us of where we had been.  And if the items were heavy and small they went to our handbags.  Wyona, who is good at estimating weight, said she was sure her handbag weighed 35 pounds at that point, but they don’t weigh those.  Then back we went to pay for the extra suitcase which was now down to $158 – a lesson learned.  The agent had to give just one last warning to her, saying, your carrying ons are also the wrong size.  In Europe we have smaller restrictions and we don’t honour the North American Standards, he said.  Suitably chastised we will make sure neither of those mistakes happen again.  Too costly.    

This is our first time on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas. Thirty-eight hundred people were trying to get on the ship at the same time, which is doable if the boat’s computers have not gone down.  If so, then there is a two block line-up outside of the terminal, after which there is a line that snakes for 18 columns back and forth before it turns a corner and that that crowd of people is out of sight.  No end to it.  The serpenting row leads you past the same people, line after line, until you know them well: which ones are carrying their formal clothes over their arms so as not to have them wrinkled, which couples have dressed to the nines just for the getting onboard experience, and which groups have come, either as family or friends.  And I saw one hideous scarf so many times that it began to look beautiful to me.  Greg says that the British are good at cuing, that they line up and then are jocular as they wait for their turn at the final counter.  He is right.  They make their standard jokes with each other. I keep falling behind in the cue.  I do not know how I can get 4 people behind in less than a few seconds.  At one point Wyona lifted barrier, told me to duck under and said, please, try to keep up with us.  I will take any chance to get into the race again, so I ducked under the barricade.  But it wasn’t long before someone was pushing past me again. “Please,” I said, to her, “Go ahead, your group must have passed you.”

“Oh, no,” she said, “my group is way back there,” pointing over her shoulder and behind her back. “But I was ahead of you.”  And then a frosty silence.  She must have seen me slip under one of the tapes.

“Be my guest,” I said, “I am slipping back and having trouble keeping up with my sister and brother-in-law who are ahead of me.  If you can find a way to make it to the front of the line, I am going to be your helper, for just keeping up with my group isn’t working for me.”

The line that snaked in one room, then requeued into one long line, ever longer, in the next room. I don’t know how those other old people stood on their feet for 2 ½ hours.  I looked pretty young in comparison to some of them.  One couple we fashionably dressed, not a wrinkle on their clothes, but I said to Wyona, those two over there are going to be nothing more than skeletons if this line takes any longer.

The Disgruntled Table Mates

Pre-planning works when there are three people and eight suitcases to move out of the hotel, down La Rambla and onto the Blue Tourist Bus. That was about the last thing we planned as we went to bed last night. Greg noted that our walk turned many heads – we hope other tourists who were wondering how they were going to make the same trip. And in fact, one couple stopped our progress for no reason other than to ask, “Are you going cruising?” and “Why are you getting to the ship so early. You know you can’t board until 2 pm.” But we had this special knowledge: table changes are done first thing at 11:30 a.m. So our journey to the boat was easy and we were left with only one last item to plan. Wyona has wanted a window seat for the dining room experience and the only way was to get to the Dining Room right at 11:30 am and ask for that change to be made. The waiter led us to our middle table which gave us a great view of the staircase, in the middle of which sits a Grand piano and a small stage for dinner performances. Still the desire for a window view prevailed, since sitting for a formal dinner with a window view and at the same time having the ship leaves ports seemed like an attainable dream. Wyona and Greg made the desired switch ... while I watched the luggage and had lunch. 

“Are you the three Canadians we were told would be at this table,” the first people we sat with asked. “Yes, “ said Wyona, we asked for a table change. “So did we,” said Marilyn and Ron. We are here with our relatives, and the four of us don’t want to talk to each other over every meal. Fine. The next couple who sat down said, “Are you the Canadians we were told would be at this table.” 

“Whoops,”said Wyona. “Did you ask for a table seating change?” “Yes,” said Barbara. “What is this,” asked Wyona. “Is everyone at this table disgruntled? Is that what they do? Put all of the complainers at the same table?”

And so the evening of conversation began – all of us ready to discover who our dinner companions would be – Barbara and Sam from Maryland (where apparently the 600,000 who live in that State have no right to vote for their president). Politics is usually a topic we leave for the last day of the tour, but at the disgruntled patrons table, anything can happen.

Arta

Riding to Penzance

“Wyona is the great planner and executer of plans.

All day she has been aware of the buses we should take, and the train connections between the First Great Western and the South Western Lines that would us deliver us all the way to Penzance and back today.

Eyebrows would rise when conductors would ask her where she was going and she would say, “From London to Penzance and back again.

“Not the ideal way to have a leisurely trip,” one of our fellow passengers said.

I have always understood that the joy is in the process and not in the destination.

However when we were standing on the platform at Penzance, knowing that we couldn’t even get into town, but that we had to take the very train we had just come off of, back to London, in order to get home by midnight, I had a small moment when I thought we might just stay over the night, since the wind coming off of the bay was so beautiful, and the sun was shining so brightly.

You are brought us our first good day,” the man who checks the tickets said, and that is why the trains are so full today. Everyone has poured out of their houses and is going to the seaside after so many grey, misty weeks.

The first flaw crept into our perfect plan when a homeless person call out to us this morning, “The 205 is not in service”, as the bus speed by us.

We were content to take the next bus but he suggested we use the Tube to King’s Cross.

“Only one stop away,” he said.

I had wondered how he knew where we were going, but of course, he had seen us try to flag the bus down, and he and his fellow street sleepers were awake for the night.

“This is his front room,” I remembered, “and he knows who comes and goes on this street, for it is the street where he lives.

His suggestion of taking the tube might have worked if we had picked up the right underground line to King’s Cross.

Of course, along the way, Wyona helped two other people find their way on the tube, and also lost me since she was running down flights of stairs with the luggage, faster than I could follow her.

At one point I was at a four way junction, where stairs were going downwards east, west, north and south and I was calling in the empty halls, “Wyona, where are you?”
So we missed out first connection.

“This is only an experiment,” I said to Wyona, and she said back, “No, this is the real thing today. We are using our passes.”

Today was a hard day for me – I had to choose whether to write as we rode the trains, whether to take pictures or whether to just sit on the train and drink in the beautiful scenery and read from the guide book as we went along.

Southwest England, the District of Cornwall is where we have been today – Wyona planned a circular route so that we took the trains that follow the major highways to the end of the coast, and then we changed routes to take a small milk run back to London.

I took 600 pictures, not counting the ones I deleted.

This post has contained some of them.

Now we have to go to bed so that we can get up and be on the 7:20 am train for Ipswich tomorrow.

In fact, she told me if I don't go to bed our trip is off for tomorrow.

So, I just have one more thing to say.

Don't worry about us starving to death as you can see from the one suitcase that contained only our picnic lunch.

We took too much food today -- enough for 3 days, for four people, actually: radishes, red peppers, dill pickles, chocolates, 2 kinds of biscuits, a mixed of nuts and fruit that we never broke into, chicken salad sandwiches -- if we got trapped in a train station we would have been good for about a week.

As well, the first class passes include complimentary juices, tea, coffee, sweet biscuits, chips and yogurt covered pressed fruits and nuts.

Love,

Arta