England, Days 1 and 2

Friday, July 27, 2012

We got to England yesterday. We left Wednesday at 1:00 and it didn’t actually take two days to get there, but we lost most of Wednesday because of the time difference. On the 9 hour plane ride from Portland to Amsterdam, I watched three movies (the Iron Lady, Big Miracle, and a documentary about a highschool football team called Undefeated). I didn’t really sleep, which was stupid. They fed us about 4 full meals, which was ridiculous! I do not need to eat that much. (But I did.) Then we had about a 3 hour layover in Amsterdam. The first thing I noticed was the undeniable smell of alcohol. Then body odor. Apparently Europeans aren’t so big on deodorant. The layover was long and boring and Cherisse kept wanting to leave the airport. (Obviously not gonna happen. Hello, stupidest idea ever. When you have a layover, you don’t leave the airport unless it’s like a day long. Plus we had to go through security again so it would take up more of our time.) By the end of the layover, it was noon local time and something like 4 am to our bodies. We were craaaaashing. I slept the entire hour and a half plane ride to Leeds. I was asleep before the did the video thing. One kind of annoying thing that happened was their seat numbering was weird, like ABE were together and CDF were together, so Cherisse and I didn’t end up next to each other. It didn’t really matter because we were both out the whole time. Then we slept for a lot of the drive back to Catherine’s house. I think it was like 2 hours? My sense of time wasn’t doing so hot anyway and falling asleep for most of it didn’t help.

They have kind of three stories to Catherine's house, with the kitchen, living room, and bathroom on the ground floor, two bedrooms on the next floor up, and just Catherine’s bedroom at the very top. The staircase is super narrow and steep and winds up and it’s kind of treacherous trying to find your way in the dark. I think Catherine said it’s a terraced house. The bathroom only has a bath, not a shower, and the hot and cold taps are two different faucets, so that seems interesting. I think I read about that in Harry Potter. Maybe it's a British thing?

We had fish and chips for dinner last night. They call the place you buy them a “chippy” but I kept accidentally calling it a fishy. I felt a little anxious when Catherine pulled them out of the bag because the paper it was wrapped in was literally dripping with grease. All I could think of was how bad that was and how I was going to feel super gross when I ate it and I hadn’t run in two days and I was going to smell like grease and fish. But I was kind of hungry, and it’s part of the British experience, so I ate some. They’re not crispy like American fries; they’re more like home-cooked fries because they’re softer. They were fine...I didn’t think it was spectacular, but I’m not really a fish person. We got a fish cake instead of the normal fish they give you, because they normally give you a fried fish. A literal whole fish. Cherisse and I couldn’t believe it. And the amount of food they give you is insane! So much food. After dinner Cherisse and I took like a two hour nap. Then we went on a looong walk with Catherine and her 13-year-old brother, James. We walked to this park that had an old Victorian mansion called Cusworth Hall. It was pretty cool but it was night when we got there so we couldn’t go inside. The walk was really pretty and it was nice to stretch our legs. We pretty much went to bed as soon as we got back. I was exhausted. I had made plans to run in the morning and James said he wanted to go with me, but the alarm went off at 5:40 this morning and I turned it off. I was so tired!

We got up and went to Scarborough today. It’s a town on the seaside. (The North Sea.) I took a bath--that was interesting. I was just trying to wash my hair and it was tough because of the water not mixing. I wanted to do it under the faucet so the water would be clean while I rinsed but the hot tap was too hot and the cold tap was freezing. I did my best and tried to be fast because it’s the only bathroom in the house. Catherine made us bacon and crumpets for breakfast. (I didn’t eat any bacon.) Crumpets reminded me of a cross between an English muffin (which isn’t really an English thing, turns out) and a pancake. Scarborough is kind of like Seaside, only way bigger. I think it’s probably comparable to beaches on the east coast, with shops all over and a boardwalk and all that. I had never been somewhere like that. The public bathroom had this sink that had a dryer attached, right in the middle of the faucets. (Apparently not having the hot and cold water mix is normal here.) We bought some donuts from a booth and they were pretty good. We walked around the shops and went into an arcade for a while. Arcades here aren’t really the same--instead of tokens, you use actual money. Their arcades are just full of gambling. It’s totally normal here. Cherisse and I blew about 15 pence (sort of like cents) on one game trying to win a Russian nesting doll. No dice. Then we went down and built a sandcastle and put our feet in the water for about one second--it was freezing! We walked around to some more shops and found this clothing store that was selling American and British flag spandex. Whaaa? Cherisse and I put them on in the dressing room and took pictures but we didn’t want to spend 5 pounds on them. But then we found another shop that was selling American flag shorts and we both bought a pair. They were still 5 pounds but we figured shorts were better than spandex. Then we bought some “candy floss”, AKA cotton candy. It’s exactly the same.

We stopped at a store called Morrison’s on the way back. It’s pretty much Walmart. Well, a Super Walmart. Cherisse and I were looking for phones so we can call each other if we get lost and we can get in touch with people we’re meeting up with and all that stuff. That Morrison’s didn’t have any so we had to stop at the one in Doncaster by Catherine’s house. We went there and spent like half an hour waiting for someone to help us and then pay 40 pounds for two phones. It’s not too bad. But then it took FOREVER to get the phones working. We had to “top up” before we could use them (fill up the pay-as-you-go thing with money) and that was a hassle because the shop didn’t take cards, only cash, and then we thought they weren’t working because Cherisse put the numbers in wrong so I spent an unnecessary two hours or so on the phone with customer service. Oh well. We’ve got them figured out now. We ate at a pub called the Sun for dinner. Again, everything was fried. I was pleasantly surprised to find the menu included vegetarian stuff, but vegan was basically impossible. I had salad, vegetable samosas (vegetables fried in like a wonton wrapped type thing) and these things called poppadums and dippers. I don’t even know how to describe poppadums. It looked like a big elephant ear, but super thin and white. It sort of tasted like mashed potatoes. The dippers (aka dipping sauce) were gross. I didn’t even eat them. One was a mango chutney. Catherine said chutney is like jam, but the mango chutney was sort of spicy. I don’t know how to describe it but I was almost gagging. And the other was some kind of ranchy type stuff but I didn’t like it. We also played pool at the pub. I was losing miserably--Catherine only had one ball left and I had only hit one ball--but she hit the 8-ball in so I won! It was pretty funny and this semi-drunk older couple was watching us and laughing.

We’re getting ready to go to Ireland tomorrow (technically today by now) and I’m pretty excited! Our taxi leaves to take us to the Manchester airport at 4. That’s in 4 hours. Yikes. Mark is in Ireland right now too and we’re hoping to meet up. That would be fun and we would feel super cool about being world travelers.