![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chezmaxAwesome Things: England, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taldragon, cynicaloptimist, targaff, sioneva
Sucktastic Things: Tonsillitis, transatlantic flights, losing keys
In balance, the vacation was nice and relaxing and was a nice change of pace from the normal life. It was much slower paced than I had anticipated due to me getting the worst sore throat of my life....
So on Wednesday, the 14th, Jer and I did some last minute packing, met my grandparents for lunch and gave them a house key (to cat- and plant-sit), and then met up withclawfoot who was so gracious as to drive us to Toronto and later the airport, with a brief stop at okoshun's and epi_lj's place to say "Hi" and for me to lose my only remaining house key in their couch (thankfully, found later and returned)...
I was starting to feel kinda crappy about this point, with a bit of a sore throat, but a couple tylenol perked me up for a bit, and it was onto the plane we went. We flew overnight into England. Our seats on the way over seemed rather cramped, and we were in the middle seats with no view of windows (it was a large jet with the seats split 3/3/3... we were in the middle three), and it all rather sucked a lot and I didn't get much sleep and Jer got a sore neck and it was all just miserable and sucky.
Seven hours later, Thursday morning, we arrived at Gatwick, utterly exhausted. We got our luggage, and I navigated the airport to try to find the gatwick/heathrow shuttle and eventually got us onto a coach there, with the most uncomfortable seatbelts ever. At Heathrow, we met up withtaldragon and cynicaloptimist our most gracious and wonderful hosts, who piled us into a cynicaloptimist's car and shuttled us to their place. I spent most of the remainder of the day in and out of sleep hoping to fight off whatever it was that was plaguing me and catch up on sleep. Later on we had some tasty tasty tasty italian take-away pizza, and we went to bed.
Friday,taldragon took J and I on the grand whirlwind tour of central London, showing us the Houses of Parliament (they're... much bigger than I expected, and make Canada's parliament look kind of tiny.. also, the guards conspicuously carry scary guns (like submachineguns).. whoa.), Buckingham Palace (pretty, nice parks around, but you can't taunt the palace guards anymore cause they're too far away), Westminster Abbey (way too expensive to go in, but nifty looking), and a bit of a walk, taking a break to have a meal at Hard Rock Cafe (did you know the first one was in London? And the whole memorabilia thing started out as a bit of a joke because Eric Clapton wanted to reserve a table, and donated his guitar to do so, and Pete Townshend thought his guitar was just as good, so donated his? And the rest is history...), before returning home to relax for a bit. I think we had leftover pizza for dinner.
Saturday,taldrgaon took J and I to Greenwich, where we went through some neat museums about timepieces and clocks and stuff and I hopped back and forth over the Prime Meridian (east! west! east!) and has tasty appetizers at a French restaurant, and then headed back, where the four of us went for tasty tasty Chinese (mmm, crispy duck) and saw a crashed ATM stuck at a Windows XP boot screen (Diagnosis: the ATM runs Windows XP. Bad idea :P). My throat was *still* hurting, but I tried to ignore it and suck back lozenges and ibuprofen. I started having problems sleeping cause of the pain. :(
Sunday was a more relaxing day. We decided to stay in (well, except to go grocery shopping, and see a bit of Uxbridge) and Jer made our wonderful hosts some cheesecake, and we did laundry, and generally relaxed. We ordered in some Indian for dinner, which I had very little of... it hurt too much to eat and I didn't have much of an appetite. I also got very little sleep this night because every time I swallowed it felt like someone was stabbing me in the throat. So....
On Monday,taldragon was back to work, so J and I were on our own. Our first stop was a doctor, since at this point I suspected I had tonsillitis, and it wasn't going to get better on it's own. I left with some antibiotics and some antiinflammatories. We then headed to the London Eye, and got a really good view of the city (pics later!). I had intended to do a little more touristing, but I was feeling utterly crappy. I could no longer talk without pain, and I was tired and cranky, and it was owie, and so I opted to go back and rest for the day. I can't remember what dinner was this night (maybe it was the Indian? and I'm confused about Sunday? taldragon, do you remember?).
I slept better Monday night, and early Tuesday morning, Jer and I caught the train to Manchester. I was in much less pain and much chipperer. We walked to our hotel, enjoying the sights of the city along the way (wow, Manchester had a much more modern vibe than I was expecting... apparently they've really cleaned things up in the last 10 years) and stopping for lunch at a place called Barburrito, which had tasty (but fast!) Mexican food, went on the Manchester ferrius wheel, and then had a brief nap in our hotel. We then met up withtargaff, sioneva, and their toddler, thedoughtnut and had tasty Pizza and hung out for a bit. Jer and I then saw Iron Man at the Odeon at The Printworks (a multi-venued entertainment complex), and retired for the evening.
Wednesday, we went to the Museum of Science And Industry and saw the Body Worlds 4 exhibit that happened to be there. We then wandered around the rest and read more than we ever needed to know about plumbing and sewage (which is interesting from the point of view of a quickly growing city where these problems hadn't been already worked out...), and saw a lot of neat old engines that drove the industrial revolution and wereally only scratched the surface of the museum. We then met up with Graham, a friend that I had worked with during my stint making cell phone games, and had dinner, before catching the train back to London, just in time to say goodnight totaldragon and cynicaloptimist
Thursday, we got up at the crack of stupid so we could catch our plane.cynicaloptimist was so very kind as to drive us directly to the airport, saving us dealing with busses and coaches and other fun things, saving us a bunch of effort. The flight back was much more comfortable, and I kept busy by reading (I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods) and playing the DS Zelda game. We caught Airways Transit from Toronto back to Waterloo, and attempted to stay up. I think I ended up going to bed at 7:30p (being 5 hours jet lagged)... Friday was spent just relaxing....
Anyways, a great great thank you and shout out to our most wonderful hosts and guides,taldragon and cynicaloptimist. England was definitely an interesting place, with just enough culture differences to keep us on our toes, and lots of neat things to see.
I wish I had had the time and energy to see more, but I guess that just means we'll have to go visit again! Can't wait to go back to see more...
taldragon, cynicaloptimist, targaff, sionevaSucktastic Things: Tonsillitis, transatlantic flights, losing keys
In balance, the vacation was nice and relaxing and was a nice change of pace from the normal life. It was much slower paced than I had anticipated due to me getting the worst sore throat of my life....
So on Wednesday, the 14th, Jer and I did some last minute packing, met my grandparents for lunch and gave them a house key (to cat- and plant-sit), and then met up with
clawfoot who was so gracious as to drive us to Toronto and later the airport, with a brief stop at okoshun's and epi_lj's place to say "Hi" and for me to lose my only remaining house key in their couch (thankfully, found later and returned)...I was starting to feel kinda crappy about this point, with a bit of a sore throat, but a couple tylenol perked me up for a bit, and it was onto the plane we went. We flew overnight into England. Our seats on the way over seemed rather cramped, and we were in the middle seats with no view of windows (it was a large jet with the seats split 3/3/3... we were in the middle three), and it all rather sucked a lot and I didn't get much sleep and Jer got a sore neck and it was all just miserable and sucky.
Seven hours later, Thursday morning, we arrived at Gatwick, utterly exhausted. We got our luggage, and I navigated the airport to try to find the gatwick/heathrow shuttle and eventually got us onto a coach there, with the most uncomfortable seatbelts ever. At Heathrow, we met up with
taldragon and cynicaloptimist our most gracious and wonderful hosts, who piled us into a cynicaloptimist's car and shuttled us to their place. I spent most of the remainder of the day in and out of sleep hoping to fight off whatever it was that was plaguing me and catch up on sleep. Later on we had some tasty tasty tasty italian take-away pizza, and we went to bed.Friday,
taldragon took J and I on the grand whirlwind tour of central London, showing us the Houses of Parliament (they're... much bigger than I expected, and make Canada's parliament look kind of tiny.. also, the guards conspicuously carry scary guns (like submachineguns).. whoa.), Buckingham Palace (pretty, nice parks around, but you can't taunt the palace guards anymore cause they're too far away), Westminster Abbey (way too expensive to go in, but nifty looking), and a bit of a walk, taking a break to have a meal at Hard Rock Cafe (did you know the first one was in London? And the whole memorabilia thing started out as a bit of a joke because Eric Clapton wanted to reserve a table, and donated his guitar to do so, and Pete Townshend thought his guitar was just as good, so donated his? And the rest is history...), before returning home to relax for a bit. I think we had leftover pizza for dinner.Saturday,
taldrgaon took J and I to Greenwich, where we went through some neat museums about timepieces and clocks and stuff and I hopped back and forth over the Prime Meridian (east! west! east!) and has tasty appetizers at a French restaurant, and then headed back, where the four of us went for tasty tasty Chinese (mmm, crispy duck) and saw a crashed ATM stuck at a Windows XP boot screen (Diagnosis: the ATM runs Windows XP. Bad idea :P). My throat was *still* hurting, but I tried to ignore it and suck back lozenges and ibuprofen. I started having problems sleeping cause of the pain. :(Sunday was a more relaxing day. We decided to stay in (well, except to go grocery shopping, and see a bit of Uxbridge) and Jer made our wonderful hosts some cheesecake, and we did laundry, and generally relaxed. We ordered in some Indian for dinner, which I had very little of... it hurt too much to eat and I didn't have much of an appetite. I also got very little sleep this night because every time I swallowed it felt like someone was stabbing me in the throat. So....
On Monday,
taldragon was back to work, so J and I were on our own. Our first stop was a doctor, since at this point I suspected I had tonsillitis, and it wasn't going to get better on it's own. I left with some antibiotics and some antiinflammatories. We then headed to the London Eye, and got a really good view of the city (pics later!). I had intended to do a little more touristing, but I was feeling utterly crappy. I could no longer talk without pain, and I was tired and cranky, and it was owie, and so I opted to go back and rest for the day. I can't remember what dinner was this night (maybe it was the Indian? and I'm confused about Sunday? taldragon, do you remember?).I slept better Monday night, and early Tuesday morning, Jer and I caught the train to Manchester. I was in much less pain and much chipperer. We walked to our hotel, enjoying the sights of the city along the way (wow, Manchester had a much more modern vibe than I was expecting... apparently they've really cleaned things up in the last 10 years) and stopping for lunch at a place called Barburrito, which had tasty (but fast!) Mexican food, went on the Manchester ferrius wheel, and then had a brief nap in our hotel. We then met up with
targaff, sioneva, and their toddler, thedoughtnut and had tasty Pizza and hung out for a bit. Jer and I then saw Iron Man at the Odeon at The Printworks (a multi-venued entertainment complex), and retired for the evening. Wednesday, we went to the Museum of Science And Industry and saw the Body Worlds 4 exhibit that happened to be there. We then wandered around the rest and read more than we ever needed to know about plumbing and sewage (which is interesting from the point of view of a quickly growing city where these problems hadn't been already worked out...), and saw a lot of neat old engines that drove the industrial revolution and wereally only scratched the surface of the museum. We then met up with Graham, a friend that I had worked with during my stint making cell phone games, and had dinner, before catching the train back to London, just in time to say goodnight to
taldragon and cynicaloptimistThursday, we got up at the crack of stupid so we could catch our plane.
cynicaloptimist was so very kind as to drive us directly to the airport, saving us dealing with busses and coaches and other fun things, saving us a bunch of effort. The flight back was much more comfortable, and I kept busy by reading (I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods) and playing the DS Zelda game. We caught Airways Transit from Toronto back to Waterloo, and attempted to stay up. I think I ended up going to bed at 7:30p (being 5 hours jet lagged)... Friday was spent just relaxing....Anyways, a great great thank you and shout out to our most wonderful hosts and guides,
taldragon and cynicaloptimist. England was definitely an interesting place, with just enough culture differences to keep us on our toes, and lots of neat things to see.I wish I had had the time and energy to see more, but I guess that just means we'll have to go visit again! Can't wait to go back to see more...
no subject
Umm. I saw some Doctor Who? :)
no subject
no subject