Iceland to England, Day 5, Sunday, August 16, 2015
Iceland has about four hours of darkness in August, and I basically drove through every single one. We left the house in darkness that morning to go to the airport. Oh, and it was still raining.
The Iceland airport keeps claiming it’s a really great airport. But it’s a disaster. It doesn’t open until 4:30, and just our airline alone had four flights leaving between 6 and 7. And maybe more. Those were just the ones in my area. All I know is basically everyone arrives at the airport at the same time. The lines are astronomically long, complicated by Wow’s byzantine luggage rules and Wow’s employees’ inability to know these byzantine luggage rules so that they basically give different treatment to every person. We had to get special treatment at security to get through, and when I politely asked a woman who was blocking passport control to fiddle with her bad if she would move, she glared at me so hard she was still glaring at me as she went down the escalator.
Finally we got to our gate and were then ushered outside to say one last fond good-bye to Icelandic wind and rain on our way across the tarmac. We were not at all the last people on the flight. In fact they had to hold the flight about 25 minutes to get everyone boarded. So that seems efficient.
While in line waiting to check in, we had one last
Conversation in Iceland
N: Look at that suitcase with the American flag on it. I want a suitcase with the American flag on it.
S: I want a bedazzled suitcase with “USA” on it in sequins.
N: With Neil Diamond’s face on it.
S: And every time you fly you wear a t-shirt with Neil Diamond’s face on it.
N: And hope desperately to someday be on the same flight as Neil Diamond.
Me: Freedom!
The flight itself was uneventful, if you don’t count the fact that my nemesis, Glaring Lady, was across the aisle from me. There was certainly no Neil Diamond or #1 Neil Diamond fan on the flight. I actually slept for most of it, especially buoyed by the fact that I knew that my driving responsibility for the trip had been concluded.
Once we landed in Gatwick, we paused to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was this fantastic expanse of large stalls that all had individual sinks. Like your own private bathroom. Gatwick won the trip for best bathroom. Every bathroom I tried in Gatwick was unique. I think Gatwick is really trying to innovate public restrooms. I appreciate this.
We were starving, so we stopped quickly at M&S, then retrieved the car. It didn’t have a back-up camera-I am so lost now without back-up cameras-but it did have automatic lights and windshield wipers, which made me very jealous. And this feature where the climate control maintained the temperature you requested. And then-L discovered it had a special sunglass holder. Basically this car was my dream car.
But of course L got an awesome car because, much like the man in the locker room at the Blue Lagoon, the car rental place guy was smitten with L. “You can call me Greg,” he wrote on the car rental agreement. With waggling eyebrows, I’m sure.
Anyway, that all made up for the fact that someone had tried to claim my luggage at Gatwick. Or at least thought it was theirs and examined it very closely. I guess they also had a Red Sox tag and a hot pink “S” on their luggage? A bit of an Ordeal, but the car rental experience reminded me of the true difficulty of L’s Ordeal: being irresistible to everyone.
And now I bring you the first
Conversation in England
Me: Sunday radio programming is weird.
L: What’s weird about it?
Me: It’s not like the programming the rest of the week.
L: But if it’s always the same way every Sunday, that makes it the opposite of weird.
Me: I suppose it depend on what you take as your baseline, yes.
We had time to kill on our way to T’s house, so, seeing a sign for Jane Austen’s house, we decided to investigate. The house turned out to be on a totally charming British street with some thatched-roof buildings and a tearoom and cars from 1922 driving about. In other words, just a typical British street.
Jane Austen’s house itself was a decent-sized building arranged around a garden. It had apparently been a gift from one of Jane’s brothers who had been adopted by some rich, childless lord. Most of the stuff in the house had belonged to the brother and the brother’s wife and children, because of the aristocratic penchant to save everything. Most of Jane’s belonging had been scattered to the wind after her death. They were really bad at figuring out who would be the most important Austen to posterity, clearly. But the building did have Jane’s writing table where she wrote her novels. It was super-tiny and I am super-impressed with her.
The best part of the house was that it had some costumes so you could play dress-up. Some scenes from Pride and Prejudice were re-enacted. I got stuck with the child’s dress and then was handed a broom, meaning that my friends see me as either a scullery maid or a witch, and I don’t know which is worse.
After the Jane Austen house, we continued on our way to Salisbury to see the cathedral. I had been there before on my first trip to England, and I half-remembered some stories the tour guide had told us, and delivered them as truth, as is my wont.
When we finally managed to find parking and walk to the cathedral, we realized that we had to leave immediately to get to T’s on time. So we turned around and went back to the car. World’s shortest trip to Salisbury.
Once back in the car, I added a Sainsbury’s as a via point to the GPS, so we could stop and get wine. We followed the GPS as it took us off the highway and down smaller and smaller side roads, until eventually I was convinced it was taking us to the house of someone named Sainsbury. And then, abruptly, there was a McDonald’s. It was like a secret hedgerow leading to America, we decided.
We had emerged onto a little rotary of businesses, including our sought-after Sainsbury’s, which was…closed. So I ended up at a gas station buying white wine. Classy. Then L convinced to me go back in and look for port. S was like, “They don’t sell port at gas stations.” She was right.
Alcohol procured, we proceeded to T’s house. T lives in this totally charming, storybook village and to get there you have to navigate these suicidal roads which were the reason I wasn’t driving in England. (That, and the reversed directions. “Your side first,” I had to keep telling L, as we kept automatically looking the wrong way.) These roads are undeniably picturesque, though. Sometimes the forest banks rise higher than your car and overhead is an interwoven thicket of perfectly trimmed tree branches and in America you don’t see roads like that unless you’re on a ride at Disney World.
Once at T’s house, we piled out of the car and rang the doorbell. And waited long enough that we were worried we might be at the wrong house, or that T had given up on us because we were so late (it involved on the tractor on the road; don’t ask), but then T’s son St opened the door, on a totally unrelated errand, and startled to see a rabble of Americans at his door. Apparently nobody had heard the doorbell. Or we hadn’t rung it properly.
No matter. We went inside and were presented with a roast (complete with Yorkshire pudding) and then Eton mess for dessert (my first time eating it, and it was delicious) and then we drank lots of champagne and played British parlor games and then we tumbled into bed.
The Iceland airport keeps claiming it’s a really great airport. But it’s a disaster. It doesn’t open until 4:30, and just our airline alone had four flights leaving between 6 and 7. And maybe more. Those were just the ones in my area. All I know is basically everyone arrives at the airport at the same time. The lines are astronomically long, complicated by Wow’s byzantine luggage rules and Wow’s employees’ inability to know these byzantine luggage rules so that they basically give different treatment to every person. We had to get special treatment at security to get through, and when I politely asked a woman who was blocking passport control to fiddle with her bad if she would move, she glared at me so hard she was still glaring at me as she went down the escalator.
Finally we got to our gate and were then ushered outside to say one last fond good-bye to Icelandic wind and rain on our way across the tarmac. We were not at all the last people on the flight. In fact they had to hold the flight about 25 minutes to get everyone boarded. So that seems efficient.
While in line waiting to check in, we had one last
Conversation in Iceland
N: Look at that suitcase with the American flag on it. I want a suitcase with the American flag on it.
S: I want a bedazzled suitcase with “USA” on it in sequins.
N: With Neil Diamond’s face on it.
S: And every time you fly you wear a t-shirt with Neil Diamond’s face on it.
N: And hope desperately to someday be on the same flight as Neil Diamond.
Me: Freedom!
The flight itself was uneventful, if you don’t count the fact that my nemesis, Glaring Lady, was across the aisle from me. There was certainly no Neil Diamond or #1 Neil Diamond fan on the flight. I actually slept for most of it, especially buoyed by the fact that I knew that my driving responsibility for the trip had been concluded.
Once we landed in Gatwick, we paused to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was this fantastic expanse of large stalls that all had individual sinks. Like your own private bathroom. Gatwick won the trip for best bathroom. Every bathroom I tried in Gatwick was unique. I think Gatwick is really trying to innovate public restrooms. I appreciate this.
We were starving, so we stopped quickly at M&S, then retrieved the car. It didn’t have a back-up camera-I am so lost now without back-up cameras-but it did have automatic lights and windshield wipers, which made me very jealous. And this feature where the climate control maintained the temperature you requested. And then-L discovered it had a special sunglass holder. Basically this car was my dream car.
But of course L got an awesome car because, much like the man in the locker room at the Blue Lagoon, the car rental place guy was smitten with L. “You can call me Greg,” he wrote on the car rental agreement. With waggling eyebrows, I’m sure.
Anyway, that all made up for the fact that someone had tried to claim my luggage at Gatwick. Or at least thought it was theirs and examined it very closely. I guess they also had a Red Sox tag and a hot pink “S” on their luggage? A bit of an Ordeal, but the car rental experience reminded me of the true difficulty of L’s Ordeal: being irresistible to everyone.
And now I bring you the first
Conversation in England
Me: Sunday radio programming is weird.
L: What’s weird about it?
Me: It’s not like the programming the rest of the week.
L: But if it’s always the same way every Sunday, that makes it the opposite of weird.
Me: I suppose it depend on what you take as your baseline, yes.
We had time to kill on our way to T’s house, so, seeing a sign for Jane Austen’s house, we decided to investigate. The house turned out to be on a totally charming British street with some thatched-roof buildings and a tearoom and cars from 1922 driving about. In other words, just a typical British street.
Jane Austen’s house itself was a decent-sized building arranged around a garden. It had apparently been a gift from one of Jane’s brothers who had been adopted by some rich, childless lord. Most of the stuff in the house had belonged to the brother and the brother’s wife and children, because of the aristocratic penchant to save everything. Most of Jane’s belonging had been scattered to the wind after her death. They were really bad at figuring out who would be the most important Austen to posterity, clearly. But the building did have Jane’s writing table where she wrote her novels. It was super-tiny and I am super-impressed with her.
The best part of the house was that it had some costumes so you could play dress-up. Some scenes from Pride and Prejudice were re-enacted. I got stuck with the child’s dress and then was handed a broom, meaning that my friends see me as either a scullery maid or a witch, and I don’t know which is worse.
After the Jane Austen house, we continued on our way to Salisbury to see the cathedral. I had been there before on my first trip to England, and I half-remembered some stories the tour guide had told us, and delivered them as truth, as is my wont.
When we finally managed to find parking and walk to the cathedral, we realized that we had to leave immediately to get to T’s on time. So we turned around and went back to the car. World’s shortest trip to Salisbury.
Once back in the car, I added a Sainsbury’s as a via point to the GPS, so we could stop and get wine. We followed the GPS as it took us off the highway and down smaller and smaller side roads, until eventually I was convinced it was taking us to the house of someone named Sainsbury. And then, abruptly, there was a McDonald’s. It was like a secret hedgerow leading to America, we decided.
We had emerged onto a little rotary of businesses, including our sought-after Sainsbury’s, which was…closed. So I ended up at a gas station buying white wine. Classy. Then L convinced to me go back in and look for port. S was like, “They don’t sell port at gas stations.” She was right.
Alcohol procured, we proceeded to T’s house. T lives in this totally charming, storybook village and to get there you have to navigate these suicidal roads which were the reason I wasn’t driving in England. (That, and the reversed directions. “Your side first,” I had to keep telling L, as we kept automatically looking the wrong way.) These roads are undeniably picturesque, though. Sometimes the forest banks rise higher than your car and overhead is an interwoven thicket of perfectly trimmed tree branches and in America you don’t see roads like that unless you’re on a ride at Disney World.
Once at T’s house, we piled out of the car and rang the doorbell. And waited long enough that we were worried we might be at the wrong house, or that T had given up on us because we were so late (it involved on the tractor on the road; don’t ask), but then T’s son St opened the door, on a totally unrelated errand, and startled to see a rabble of Americans at his door. Apparently nobody had heard the doorbell. Or we hadn’t rung it properly.
No matter. We went inside and were presented with a roast (complete with Yorkshire pudding) and then Eton mess for dessert (my first time eating it, and it was delicious) and then we drank lots of champagne and played British parlor games and then we tumbled into bed.