If it was up to me, I could happily stay in London forever. Especially now that there are only half of the people that I am used to sharing elbow room with. London without tourists is my own personal heaven. My family, however, is ready for the next big adventure. Per Eli, “London is A LOT, it’s just A LOT”. They obviously had forgotten how heavy those packs are, though, and may have been convinced to stay in London if they had needed to carry them further than the train station. The pictures show size but, unfortunately, cannot convey the weight. We will be thinning stuff again soon and may be down to our skivvies before we get back to the U.S.!
Those are a couple examples of what I love about London, but I will admit my reticence to leave may be fueled, in part, by my slight nervousness to drive in the UK. Part 2 of our trip, which started today, involves spending a month in a rental car driving around England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland. Anyone who knows me at all, knows that I am not nervous about driving. Ever.
Driving on the other side of the road from the other side of the car, though, is a little nerve-wracking. Did I mention that it’s a stick and the shifter is on my left? Thank goodness the pedals are at least in the same places! I am sure I will get used to it soon, but it wasn’t something I was looking forward to.
The fees and miscellaneous hoops that car rental companies require are different and mind-boggling. I was completely lost and even the counterperson was a little confused and thinks I paid VAT twice. Also, just in case I started to get comfortable, the rain returned!
To add to the foreign-ness, there are signs like these that I may never understand:
The good news is we arrived at our hotel in Coventry without incident and got to enjoy the pool. The boys have not gotten to swim since last fall so they were thrilled with that. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant because I really was not up for any more driving tonight and will swim again in the AM before we check out. In the meantime, I am going to go try to figure out how to avoid humped pelicans….
Happy 4th of July, all! We’ll check in again soon!
4 Comments
Roni Wicker · July 4, 2021 at 10:39 pm
Well, how can you avoid those pelicans if you aren’t allowed anti-social driving?
Marc Bahan · July 4, 2021 at 11:21 pm
Picturing you driving in London avoiding humpback pelicans 😂😂😂
Karla &Joe Peskuski · July 5, 2021 at 2:17 pm
Ya I think Roni and us would like to see a picture of these humped pelicans.
BA · July 7, 2021 at 9:12 pm
I had to know. I didn’t actually think that pelicans were being somehow transformed into traffic humps, but had to replace my grisly (fowl?) image with actual facts. It turns out that despite the fact that you may also see zebra, puffin, toucan, and Pegasus crossings, they are extremely unlikely to be crossed by those actual animals. It would’ve been way cooler if they did – I mean, so long as they weren’t disfigured.
https://bit.ly/AnimalXing
https://www.2pass.co.uk/crossing.htm
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