Hello, d-land! I’ve been quiet for a while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been up to anything. In fact, I’ve been very busy!
My summer vacation started about a month ago and boy have I been making the most of my time off this summer. I started with a week long vacation to the beach with my family (mom, older sister Angel, and younger sister Amber plus her baby, Max). It was Max’s first time at the beach seeing the ocean and luckily he is a water baby and didn’t mind the ocean or the pool at our condo! We had mornings of coffee, bacon and eggs, grits, fruit, and many other yummy things and long days on the beach. My mom’s best friend, Cindy, actually came with us for the first time in 4 years even though physically getting around is very hard for her. She was determined to come and she even did make it out onto the beach once with her walker (lol, imagine that in the sand!).
Not even two days after I got back from the beach, I went on a trip to France and England with Nick’s mom, stepdad, and two younger siblings. This was my first trip to Europe and it was a lot of fun! The bulk of our trip was in England, but we had a long layover in Paris, which we took full advantage of, naturally! What I didn’t realize is that I would be in Paris for the day on literally no sleep. When you hear that the flight to Paris is 7+ hours, you think, oh, I’ll just get my night’s rest on the plane, right? That’s what I totally thought, but by the time the snack, drink, and dinner services were finished and the cabin lights were finally dimmed, there were only THREE HOURS remaining until we landed. I literally thought oh shit, I didn’t sleep!! I also had just taken a melatonin gummy!
So I snoozed as I best as I could and then boom, we were in Paris at 7 am. We collected our luggage and checked it into this storage place at the airport so we didn’t have to haul it everywhere and then we freshened up as best as we could. I personally *hate* being anywhere unshowered, and here I was, a big fat ugly American in Paris unwashed! I did the best I could to at least look okay for pictures. We took an Uber straight to the Eiffel Tower which was a bit of a drive and I was surprised to see how much graffiti was on the interstate walls along the way. I guess some things never change no matter where you go! Our Uber driver dropped us right at the Eiffel Tower and it’s definitely bigger and more impressive than I thought it would be (insert “that’s what she said” joke here). We then had lunch at a cafe across the street where I tried escargot for the first time and yes, I actually LIKED it. They came bathed in a garlic butter pesto type sauce, so what’s not to like about that?
We then Ubered to the “Latin quarter” as my mother-in-law said there was lots to see there, so we spent a lot of time there walking the streets, taking in the scenery, and checking out the shops. We got croissants (chocolate for me) and that’s about when our steam ran out (remember, we had skipped a night of sleep). Nick’s mom is about to turn 55 but you would never know it as she looks incredibly young and is slim and fit. She was telling us we were only a 15 minute walk from Notre Dame but we literally just couldn’t do it. Nick’s stepdad is 65 and not so fit so he was toast and while Nick’s siblings are young (20 and 18), they don’t do well without sleep (they become angry and grouchy lol). Then there’s me, who is big and fat and very out of shape. I was so glad when everyone else gave up and said they couldn’t walk to Notre Dame because I was thinking to myself that I didn’t know if I would make it if everyone agreed to go. It wasn’t just all the walking, but it was the combination of all the walking and having not slept at all. So much to my delight, we Ubered back to the airport. I mean I wasn’t actually delighted to miss Notre Dame, but old buildings aren’t really my thing anyway. Lol Nick’s brother even said that he was so tired that he was going to start hallucinating soon hahahaha. We all were very out of it on the Uber ride back to the airport and all dozed off at some point.
So even though our “day” (really, just several hours) was over in Paris, we still had so, so far to travel before we would actually sleep in a bed in England. Just going back through the Paris airport was an ordeal as it was so big that we had to take a shuttle between terminals. We walked and walked and stood in lines for ages. We finally got on a plane headed for England but of course we had ANOTHER layover in Frankfurt, Germany that we had to get through first. It was a short layover, though, but once again we were racing through another big airport on no sleep and going down escalators only to have to scale 8 flights of stairs. It was EXHAUSTING and I am NOT fit!
Another short flight and we finally landed in England with Coventry, Birmingham being our ultimate destination. In a daze, we took yet another Uber to our hotel. It was a bit of a drive but it was wild to be on the other side of the road. It was so confusing especially when going through a gazillion roundabouts - I never knew which way to look or yield lol. I am a very good driver but I don’t think I could get used to driving on the other side like that. Sure I probably could for simple drives on straight roads, but those turns and roundabouts had me all confused.
Anyways, we finally arrived to our very nice hotel so SO ready to dive into our beds only to find that a mistake had been made, no offense at all, on Nick’s mom’s part, when it came to booking the rooms. She booked 3 rooms and one room was supposed to have 2 beds for me and Nick’s sister and her friend to share. It turns out there was one room with a king bed and two rooms with one queen bed each. That configuration would work with 3 couples, but me and Nick’s brother were both singletons, so that left someone without a bed. It turns out the second “bed” in one of the rooms was a couch bed, which she hadn’t realized. So, in all of our very tired and cranky states, we had to try and figure out a sleeping arrangement for everyone.
For some reason, Nick’s mom gave the room with a *king sized bed* to the brother, a singular person. Nick’s sister, cranky and tired, went into a fit about how that makes no sense for him to get the biggest bed when he is one person. I totally agreed with her on that and didn’t understand why my mother-in-law herself wasn’t taking the nicest room with the biggest bed since she was the one paying for it. The solution was clear to me that I should be nice and flexible and volunteer to sleep on the couch bed in the room with Nick’s sister and her friend in the queen bed, BUT - I had not slept in 24+ hours and just hauled my big ass around numerous airports and foreign cities and I needed to sleep in a REAL bed. I am 34, the brother is 20. His ass is young and skinny so I voiced that he should sleep on the couch bed in his parents’ room, leaving the girls with their own room and me with my own room (I wanted it so bad, you have NO idea). Luckily, that is exactly what happened. The girls got the big room with the king, I got one of the queen rooms, and the brother had to bunk with his parents in the other queen room (the parents didn’t take the king as it had no couch bed for the brother. Sorry, dude.
This hotel was nice and my room was HUGE. The bathroom and shower were super nice and when I tell you how awesome that hot shower felt after skipping a day of bathing and then traveling so much…it was basically indescribable. I’ve never appreciated soap and hot water more! One thing that was strange is that England does these little glass half doors on the shower…idk why the door didn’t go all the way to the wall? There was no way not to get water on the bathroom floor with such a design, but oh well, I just had to put a towel down.
You have no idea how it felt to finally crawl, freshly showered, into a fluffy soft bed in a cool, air conditioned room. I finally went to sleep at 2:30 AM England time and I did not wake up for 12+ hours lol. I didn’t set an alarm and just let myself SLEEP.
I’ll have to finish the rest about the trip to England later as I’m so sleepy!
10:05 p.m. - Thursday, Jul. 13, 2023