England

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Some Things I’d Like to See and Do in London

This post was edited on June 28th, 2016, after my last full day in London, to reflect what I did manage to get to!

London has never been on my radar. It’s crazy expensive and the weather sucks. It is really one of the last places on Earth that I ever thought I would ever visit, much less vacation in! But now that I’m committed to a short holiday there, I’m getting rather excited at the thought of visiting this ancient city!

I’m only going to have three full days there, plus my arrival and departure days, so I don’t want to over commit myself. Here are a few things that I’d like to do that aren’t a million miles apart and would be easy to get to from my Airbnb.

British Museum

This is the only thing in London that I knew I wanted to do before I started doing research. It is one of the biggest and most amazing museums on Earth and has some of the best exhibits on Ancient Egypt that you can see outside of Egypt itself. I plan to spend a full day there!

The London Eye

This is the famous “Ferris wheel” I did some research and it sounds like such a great way to see the layout of the city. I will only do this if I get a clear evening for it, though.

Palace of Westminster/Big Ben

This is the UK Parliament buildings. I just want to see the exterior. This is the landmark that will confirm to me that I really am in London.

The Tower of London (sort of, I saw the exterior)

Simply for the historical factor.

St. Paul’s Cathedral

For the amazing architecture.

Abney Park and Highgate cemeteries.

Because I like cemeteries and these are two of the most special in London.

The Babbage Engine

This was one of the first computers. It’s in the Computer History Museum, which also sounds interesting.

Guildhall Roman Amphitheatre

Because it’s a bloody Roman amphitheatre! Need I remain y’all that I’m a history buff?! 🙂

I also want to do:

A Murder Mile Walk.

Just because I’m fascinated by this sort of thing.

Have afternoon tea. Not sure where yet. This will be a huge splurge, but I’ll be celebrating the fifth anniversary of the start of my transcription business!

Of course, have a pint, or two, or three at a pub, again, to toast my business. 🙂

And just walk around and see what I find because that’s the best way to discover a city. I may add and delete things to my list once I arrive and see what I stumble upon.

Because my Airbnb isn’t right in central London (but also not a huge distance away), I plan to be out for very full days and will need to balance lots of walking around with things that will let me rest for a bit.

My rough itinerary:

Saturday, arrival day, will be consumed by the long trek from Gatwick to the Airbnb and trying to stay up until it’s a reasonable hour to go to bed. I will very likely recreate my first day in Glasgow, where once I’ve checked in, I’ll just walk around where I’m staying for a few hours. Saturday is going to be my initiation to public transportation.

Sunday, with so many things being closed or having shorter hours, should be good for visiting the Palace of Westminster, perhaps checking out Buckingham Palace, having afternoon tea, visiting cemeteries, and capping the day with the London Eye. I’ll look at my list above and plot things on a map to see what’s close to each other.

Monday is going to be my British Museum day and possibly cap the day with a Murder Mile walk. I’m a fan of the BBC show “Sherlock” and the restaurant Speedy’s that is featured on the show is right around the corner from the museum, so I might do that for lunch.

Tuesday will be my last chance to see whatever else I’ve missed. I’ll do like Sunday and see things that are close together.

Wednesday, departure day, won’t be a complete write-off since I fly out at 4:30. My airport transfer is picking me up at Baker Street Tube station, so I’m thinking of exploring The Regent’s Park, which is nearby.

My list is a good mix of both pricy and affordable things. Many museums are free and, of course, it doesn’t cost much to just walk around. I’m still figuring out the Oyster system as public transportation will be a big expense unto itself.

Food is very expensive in the UK and it’ll be interesting to see if what I did in Scotland 18 years ago will be applicable to London, ie. having one proper meal out a day (usually at a pub), but otherwise getting inexpensive takeaways (pizza slice, burger, fish and chips, pasties) and assembling my own picnics from items purchased at the grocery store (bread, apples, cheese). But knowing that I’ll soon be back in a little village having to make my own food with few, if any, restaurants nearby, I may be less worried about food my budget when I get to London than I think I will be… I know I would like to sample an English curry and possibly eat my weight in fish and chips! 🙂

My flight from Regina to Toronto is taking off at exactly this time in a week. I can’t wait to revisit this post in 12 days and see how I ended up filling my time in London!

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Well, That’s Bulgaria Sorted…

One thing that I have learned in life is that things fall into place in their own time. There’s no use fretting about anything and if something feels huge and complicated and overwhelming and full of obstacles, it’s probably not the right thing to be doing. And I’ve also learned that if something falls into your lap that fits perfectly, it’s not “too good to be true,” it’s just meant to be.

An example of this happening in my life was when I moved to a rental house in Gatineau from my house in the Gatineau Hills. The “house” was more of a shack, a decrepit mobile house that was falling apart around me. No matter how much money I poured into it, something else would go wrong with it. The loan on it was paid off, so after signing the lease on the rental house, I decided that I would just leave my house keys on the counter and let the owner of the mobile home park have the place for storage.But  I still put an ad on an online classified ads site offering the house for sale in the hope of getting something for it. I was brutally honest about the condition of the house and that the owner of the mobile home park was difficult.

Well, in the days leading up to my move, many, many months after I posted the ad, I got an email reply to the ad from someone saying they wanted my house, what they wanted to pay for it, they had cash ready, and they were sure that giving the landlord a couple of years’ rent on the lot up front would smooth their relations. The transaction went through. One of my friends said about the situation, “Anyone else on the planet, I would have called bullshit. But because it’s you, I know it’s true.”

So with that said…

Shortly after I bought my ticket to London on Monday and paid for accommodation through to the 29th, I got an email through a house sitting website asking if I would be available to house and dog sit from July 1st through as long as I possibly can (which is just shy of 90 days according to Bulgarian rules).

I got a bit more info and this is a go!

So from London, I am flying straight to Sofia, where my host will pick me up and drive me to a small village in the mountains. I will be living there rent free in exchange for watching the house, walking the dogs twice a day, feeding the dogs and the cat, and doing some chores. I will have good internet for work and I will have the odd weekend “off” (ie. not responsible for the pets) so I can go off exploring if I want. The house is located near a village with basic shops, walking distance (6KM) to a larger community, and backs up to many mountain trails that I look forward to exploring with the dogs.

Internet should be “adequate.” It’s “not fast,” but is reliable and works perfectly for Skype and Netflixing. Um, that sounds fast to me..

Just… wow. 🙂

Knowing that I will have so few expenses for the next three months will really make it easy for me to enjoy my time in London!

After Bulgaria, who knows. But I’m sure something will come up by then!

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Off to London!

Well, Passport Canada came through… I was so happy to see the “you have something at the counter” notice this morning because I knew all the packages I’m still expecting aren’t due till the end of the week so it had to be my passport! I got in and promptly went to skyscanner.ca to book my flight. I’ve been checking prices daily and the fluctuation is incredible. I really thought I would leave mid-week as that’s when the best prices always show up. Indeed, I saw a $400 ticket leaving next Tuesday on a route I was happy with, but I was hyperventilating at the thought of leaving that quickly.

I did one final scan of the month and an unbelievable deal through Travelocity popped up for next Friday, the 24th. Not only was the price great, but the route was perfect. It left Regina at 12:30, about the earliest I’d want to fly out since I have a 2.5 hour drive to the airport and I have to be there three hours early. It did have two stops, but one of them would let me finally add Newfoundland to my visited provinces list ( 🙂 ) and it was by far the quickest trip I’d seen between Regina and London clocking in at just under 13 hours. It would also take me to Gatwick rather than Heathrow.

But there was just one ticket left at that price… I lost out on a couple of Travelocity deals to Mérida while I was thinking things over, so I didn’t hesitate to grab my credit card. And I got the seat! I’m not happy I’ll be flying all the way to London on WestJet (ie. in a sardine can), but for $333, I would have been nuts not to jump on this deal! $333 for Regina to London! I can’t even get to Montreal for that price!

The way the flight is broken up will be nice. I’m flying to Toronto first, a three-hour trip. I’ll then I have the bare minimum of time needed to make my connection to St. John’s, 40 minutes. That will also be a three-hour trip. I’ll have a 1.5 hour layover, which is the perfect layover length, and then it’ll just be five hours to London. No sitting in the same seat for eight plus hours. Of course, I don’t expect to get any sleep so it’ll be interesting to see how I am Saturday when I land in London. 🙂

When I went to Scotland in ’98, I had a similar itinerary and hadn’t slept in almost 30 hours by the time I got to Glasgow. I pushed through my day, went to bed around 7:00 PM and woke up pretty much on local time the next morning. I’m hoping the same thing will happen this year. Yes, I might be nearly 20 years older, but I’m also much healthier. So I’m optimistic I won’t be a zombie for my whole time in London. 🙂

I’ve secured a private room in a house through Airbnb for four nights (three full days not counting the Saturday). It should be convenient to everything I want to see, not too difficult to get to from Gatwick, and at $56 per night, it’s right in my budget. So with the flight to London and accommodation being so inexpensive, I should be able to handle the outrageous food prices.

Now, to figure out the Oyster card system…

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One Major Itinerary Decision Made

For months now, I’ve been trying to find the cheapest way to get myself to Europe. I knew there had to be a city that would be insanely inexpensive to get to even from Regina and from which I could get to my next destination for very little. I thought that Frankfurt might be that city and, indeed, there are great deals there, but it’s not the best deal.

As it turns out, the best deal is… London! Actually, both London and Glasgow are very close in price, but if you’re going on to Central and Eastern Europe, then you might as well go directly into London since you’d have to go through there from Glasgow anyway. I am finally ready to book a flight as soon as my passport gets here. I should be spending the last week of June (this month!) or the first week of July in London!

I have three options to get to London:

  1. I can pay out of pocket for the whole trip and do the Regina-Calgary-London route in 13 hours door-to-door. Rates for that are between $400 and $450, but I’m seeing deals as low as $325 on less desirable routes.
  2. I can use my travel reward points and pay only about $100 in taxes and fees, to do Regina to several different Canadian destinations to London, with super long layovers in 30 to 45 hours… If I had a job that I could literally do anywhere, that option would probably be a no brainer, but since I don’t I think I will save my points for the trip home and just pay out of pocket this time around since I’m not on a super tight budget.
  3. I’m going to keep monitoring deals from Toronto since I can get to Toronto for free with my points. If I find something under $300 from Toronto, it would be worth doing the trip this way.

From London, I am sitting on three different possibilities. From least to most likely:

  1. I am waiting to hear back about a housesitting assignment in London for July. I know that I would very likely never get another opportunity to spend a month so very near central London for very little cost, hence why I am considering such a twist in my travel plans. But I find this to be a very unlikely outcome and it’s not one I’m counting on.
  2. I am also waiting to hear back about another housesitting assignment in a mountain resort town outside of Prague, Czech Republic. I would really love for this to work out, but the family is having trouble confirming their travel plans even though we have been talking about this for over four months! I won’t know for another two weeks and so I’m not going to make any plans beyond London at this time. London to Prague, or just about anywhere else in Europe, is so inexpensive that I’ll be fine to book at the last minute.
  3. Just do a few days in London and then fly to Bulgaria or to some other destinations and take my time getting to Bulgaria.

London is one of the most expensive cities in the world and was never on my radar of places for me to visit. When I was in Scotland 18 years ago, a lot of folks told me I should take the train to London for a few days and even then I did not see the point when there was so much to see and do in Scotland. I never regretted my decision. So other than the British Museum, I had absolutely no idea until a couple of weeks ago what I would want to see or do in London, but I did know that I would regret not spending at least a few days there. Now, I have a bit of an itinerary sorted out and I’m beyond ready to get there! 🙂

So if option one doesn’t pan out, which would give me a lot of time to explore the city, I found surprisingly decent Airbnb rates for private rooms. So as long as the accommodation doesn’t all disappear before my passport gets here, I can treat myself to a holiday in London for four or five nights. It will give me time to get over the worst of the jet lag and to see a bit of that huge city. However, I may not have that much time if the Czech gig works out since at the rate my passport is taking, I won’t get to London till the very end of June and I would be needed near Prague on July 1st.

But if option one does out, I would be in London till August 12th, and then in Bulgaria through the rest of August, September, and as far into October as I can stand the weather. I will then need to find somewhere warmish and out of the Schengen Area to hole up until the end of December, when I would head to Portugal and/or southern Spain for three months.

If option two works out, I would be in the Czech Republic to the start of August. I wouldn’t have had time to visit Prague at the beginning of my stay, so I would spend some time there, then go to Poland for a week and then start working my way down to Bulgaria. I have a detailed itinerary for that planned where I’d be able to see Budapest, Bucharest, Belgrade, Athens, and a host of other cities and countries before arriving in Bulgaria at the start of September. I would then be there as long as I can stand the weather, up through the end of November, and then my itinerary would line up with the first option.

If neither of the first two options works out, I’m probably going straight to Bulgaria.

But, really, I’m not ready at this time to commit to anything beyond getting to London other than being certain that I will end up in Bulgaria at some point (I have not learned to say, “Beer, please,” and “thank you” for nothing!) and that I want to spend the dead of winter (January through March) in Portugal. The Schengen Area rules are making things complicated and I have to make up my mind about Turkey.

Things are going to move very quickly in the next couple of weeks! Soon as the passport’s here, I’ll book a flight and at least a couple of nights’ accommodation in London. Once I know what date I’m leaving, I can plan to terminate my vehicle insurance, my power, and my cell service, all of which will reduce my budget significantly and help me pay for things like my worldwide health insurance and a special commercial policy for my electronics.

I’ve got my packing list pretty much locked down and am awaiting just a few more online orders to be able to start packing trials. You can look forward to a detailed packing list post when I get to that point, something I’m sure the ladies will enjoy more than the men. 😉

And, of course, I want to keep working as much as I possibly can before I go! I’m starting to refill the coffers a little and I have as big a client load as I can juggle right now, so I am leaving with no concerns on the work end of things.

I just have to remind myself that I’m not heading on a year-long vacation and that my focus should be on staying long-term in a couple of locations (my preferred mode of travel anyway) than trying to hit as many countries as I can since, surely, this won’t be my last time across the pond…

So London! Last time I was in the UK, a pint in Scotland averaged about £1.25. I have a feeling I’m going to get severe sticker shock the first time I walk into a pub in a few weeks! 😀

 

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Dumfries to Glasgow By Way of Carlisle, England

9:25 am

I guess that the Scots’ definition of ‘early’ is different from mine. The earliest train to Glasgow is at 13:30 and won’t get me there till 4. The earliest bus is at 4! So I figure my best bet from here is to go back to Carlisle on the 10:20 bus (sigh). I should be there by lunch. Since it’s a big centre, there are more likely to be buses to Glasgow. At least I’ll be seeing something ‘new’, rather than ‘bumming’ around here all day. I’m not meant to see the transport museum, I guess! Oh well, as long as I get to New Lanark tomorrow, the pamphlet’s made me very curious to see it ! Besides, isn’t this what travelling’s all about? Changing your flexible plans?! Why even bother to have a plan ? ! I just hope I’ll find a place to stay when I get wherever I’ll end up tonight! The important thing will be to be in the vicinity of Glasgow tomorrow night! Heck, this isn’t really a ‘waste’ of time, where in Canada can I get ‘stranded’ in Scotland??!!

I very much enjoyed my stay at Inverallochy (the B and B). The bed was incredible! It felt good to have a place where I could get comfortable (you know, in leggings, tee-shirt, barefeet, no bra, etc.) and know that no one would walk in on me. I can’t believe how not ready I am to go home! I’m not fed up in the least bit. I have learned a valuable lesson: be careful where you end up on a Sunday! Of my three Sundays here, or was it four? Yes, four. Two have been ‘downers’

1)   Pitlochry, being a ‘tourist town’, everything was open

2)   Skye. Good thing there was lots of walking country!

3)   Perth. Scone. Need I say more?!

4)   Dumfries. Nothing much happening!

Oh, I have had the most incredible month of my whole entire life!!! I actually feel different, more brave, more adventurous. Life is wonderful, I’ve allowed myself so many opportunities. I’m in Scotland for pete’s sake! Yes, no one can take this experience away from me. It belongs to me. Maybe I could get back here next spring break…!

noon

I’m on my way to Glasgow!!! I got to Carlisle with 5 min to spare. This bus requires reservations, but since there was room, they made an exception, no fuss at all, and very courteously.  I’ll be in Glasgow at two rather than 3:45. I might still be able to catch 1.25 hours of the transport museum! Things do work out for me. I’m starting to think that I might have a guardian angel !

5:19

I’m home!!! (That’s Glasgow!) I can’t believe how ‘far’ I’ve come in the last month. I navigated myself from the bus station with a minimum of map reading and no detours whatsoever. The youth hostel costs a £ more/night in July and August, so it’ll be £25/  nights. At least it includes breakfast!

I did make it to the transport museum and I had almost 1.5 hours to explore. It was sufficient. I liked the recreated street (the museum invented a street and lined it with shops and businesses from, I think, the 1920s. It included a fascinating history of the underground), and I can’t believe just how fascinated I am with old cars! Of course, the model boats display (it was huge) was my favourite. An hour more would have been great, but this was better than not going at all! So, my day wasn’t a ‘waste’ after all. I just hope I won’t have a hard time getting to Lanark tomorrow (I didn’t get a chance to go to the rail station, but I figure there should be several on a weekday). One day left. Boohoo!

A final note on Dumfries (that’s Dumfreece (like ‘fleece’), not Dum-freeze): I go to Scotland to get away from the Americans (not true!) and they ‘follow’ me here for a 4th of July celebration in the town square ! A final note on Galashiels: their travel agency featured a display on Canada with special importance placed on ‘tourisme Québec’ !

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