iceland!
Dolphins use tools!
I'm back, how dumb is that? I wish I were still in Iceland, gettin' rained on and eatin' yogurt.
England was not that great, but that's more than partially my fault. I absolutely loved the museums in London, but I wasn't all that titilated by the city itself. I have nothing but praise for their ingenuity with sandwiches, but their food was otherwise pretty damned awful. Then, I got extremely ill, with some sort of sinus/sore throat thing from Peter, that quickly went from annoying to ridiculous. I got to see Jane Austen's house at Chawton through the haze of disease, though, and was of course romantically transported by seeing the very desk! on which she wrote! (They call that a "cottage"! It was god damned enormous and beautiful.) Then I rolled in to Exeter to find that it was a "bank holiday" and there were no busses to Dartmoor. My head was six times bigger than my body and throbbing disturbingly at that point, so I just walked down a likely street until I found a place with vacancies. It began to rain. I was so sick I could barely sleep. I looked over the bus schedules and decided to push on to Bath and skip Dartmoor, since I wasn't up to hiking in the rain and there were no convenient busses that would take me on and off the moor easily. I thought there might be tours from Bath to either Dartmoor or Stonehenge. I got to Bath and shivered in bed, but made an appointment for a tour that was going to Stonehenge and the Avery/whatever stone thingies. I got up the next morning and went into Bath, realizing that I had forgotten to take a map with me. No one I asked knew where "cheap street" was, and all I remembered was that it went off a traffic circus. There are a ton of traffic circuses in Bath. I wasn't able to find it before the rendevous and I felt awful, so I bought some juice, fruit, and soup at a grocery store and went back to the hostel. I drank some juice and went back to sleep, then woke up vomiting. I felt a little betrayed by this; was this really necessary, England? I vomited & had other nasty symptoms of foodborne illness all day, in addition to the crap of the cold, and at night my stomach was aching badly enough that it hurt to lie prone, so I sat up in the lounge all night, running off to the bathroom as necessary. In the morning, dawn came sweetly, and as soon as it was open, I dragged my carcass to a walk-in clinic, hoping they could give me IV fluids, and/or maybe a shot for nausea so I could stay hydrated. But it turns out that walk-in clinics in England just have nurses, who aren't allowed to dispense anything beyond an ace bandage, so the nurse at the front desk gave me a long list of doctors in the area, and told me to start calling and seeing if anyone could make an appointment for me. I tell you, I wanted to cry. I went to a nearby pharmacy and told them I was subject to motion sickness, so they gave me some pills. I sat on a park bench and took them with a minimum of liquid, and luckily they worked. My flight to Iceland was leaving that night, so I wanted to check out the Jane Austen Centre before I left, but there was no where to leave luggage at the bus or train stations, and my stomach ached like hell carrying my giant backpack, and overall I didn't think I was up to it. So I took the train to Paddington, rode the underground around a little while, and then hung out at Heathrow until my plane took off. I arrived in Iceland after midnight, due to plane delays, and the bus dropped me off from the airport at the wrong hotel, so I ended up walking across the whole city in a state of semi-humanity, but luckily a nice drunk Iceland boy in a flapping suit pointed me to the right street, and I curled into bed at 2am or so, local time.
I woke up in Iceland feeling like a movie star. Oh yes! I wasn't even sick anymore, really. I went off on a tour of the "Golden Circle", which includes geysirs and viking parliaments and waterfalls and giant craters. Eeeeee! I can't really remember how I spent the week, it was just day after day of awesome. Every where you look in Iceland, there's beauty. And the weather was awesome, about 50 degrees the entire time, either sunny with a soft breeze or crazy raining with winds and craziness. I got soaked to the bone three times, once while riding a horse. I completely missed all the Reykjavik museums - man, what did I do with my time? I just walked around in a daze of happy, I think, and went swimming a lot, especially when it was raining. I petted the ponies and looked at the little lambs skipping around up and down the hills. I think I took some pictures, but mostly I was too selfish to do that; if you want to know how awesome it is, you should go there yourself. None of the pictures I've seen, by the way, really do justice to the land. It's just absolutely incredible.
I'm back, how dumb is that? I wish I were still in Iceland, gettin' rained on and eatin' yogurt.
England was not that great, but that's more than partially my fault. I absolutely loved the museums in London, but I wasn't all that titilated by the city itself. I have nothing but praise for their ingenuity with sandwiches, but their food was otherwise pretty damned awful. Then, I got extremely ill, with some sort of sinus/sore throat thing from Peter, that quickly went from annoying to ridiculous. I got to see Jane Austen's house at Chawton through the haze of disease, though, and was of course romantically transported by seeing the very desk! on which she wrote! (They call that a "cottage"! It was god damned enormous and beautiful.) Then I rolled in to Exeter to find that it was a "bank holiday" and there were no busses to Dartmoor. My head was six times bigger than my body and throbbing disturbingly at that point, so I just walked down a likely street until I found a place with vacancies. It began to rain. I was so sick I could barely sleep. I looked over the bus schedules and decided to push on to Bath and skip Dartmoor, since I wasn't up to hiking in the rain and there were no convenient busses that would take me on and off the moor easily. I thought there might be tours from Bath to either Dartmoor or Stonehenge. I got to Bath and shivered in bed, but made an appointment for a tour that was going to Stonehenge and the Avery/whatever stone thingies. I got up the next morning and went into Bath, realizing that I had forgotten to take a map with me. No one I asked knew where "cheap street" was, and all I remembered was that it went off a traffic circus. There are a ton of traffic circuses in Bath. I wasn't able to find it before the rendevous and I felt awful, so I bought some juice, fruit, and soup at a grocery store and went back to the hostel. I drank some juice and went back to sleep, then woke up vomiting. I felt a little betrayed by this; was this really necessary, England? I vomited & had other nasty symptoms of foodborne illness all day, in addition to the crap of the cold, and at night my stomach was aching badly enough that it hurt to lie prone, so I sat up in the lounge all night, running off to the bathroom as necessary. In the morning, dawn came sweetly, and as soon as it was open, I dragged my carcass to a walk-in clinic, hoping they could give me IV fluids, and/or maybe a shot for nausea so I could stay hydrated. But it turns out that walk-in clinics in England just have nurses, who aren't allowed to dispense anything beyond an ace bandage, so the nurse at the front desk gave me a long list of doctors in the area, and told me to start calling and seeing if anyone could make an appointment for me. I tell you, I wanted to cry. I went to a nearby pharmacy and told them I was subject to motion sickness, so they gave me some pills. I sat on a park bench and took them with a minimum of liquid, and luckily they worked. My flight to Iceland was leaving that night, so I wanted to check out the Jane Austen Centre before I left, but there was no where to leave luggage at the bus or train stations, and my stomach ached like hell carrying my giant backpack, and overall I didn't think I was up to it. So I took the train to Paddington, rode the underground around a little while, and then hung out at Heathrow until my plane took off. I arrived in Iceland after midnight, due to plane delays, and the bus dropped me off from the airport at the wrong hotel, so I ended up walking across the whole city in a state of semi-humanity, but luckily a nice drunk Iceland boy in a flapping suit pointed me to the right street, and I curled into bed at 2am or so, local time.
I woke up in Iceland feeling like a movie star. Oh yes! I wasn't even sick anymore, really. I went off on a tour of the "Golden Circle", which includes geysirs and viking parliaments and waterfalls and giant craters. Eeeeee! I can't really remember how I spent the week, it was just day after day of awesome. Every where you look in Iceland, there's beauty. And the weather was awesome, about 50 degrees the entire time, either sunny with a soft breeze or crazy raining with winds and craziness. I got soaked to the bone three times, once while riding a horse. I completely missed all the Reykjavik museums - man, what did I do with my time? I just walked around in a daze of happy, I think, and went swimming a lot, especially when it was raining. I petted the ponies and looked at the little lambs skipping around up and down the hills. I think I took some pictures, but mostly I was too selfish to do that; if you want to know how awesome it is, you should go there yourself. None of the pictures I've seen, by the way, really do justice to the land. It's just absolutely incredible.