Last Day in London

Goodbye huge, long, British escalators.

On Sunday morning, Meera made me real homemade scones (after I was disappointed at not finding the kind I wanted at Borough Market on Friday).  They were quite delicious with raisins and all.  I then watched Grey's Anatomy online while she went running (which I really wanted to do, but I knew was a bad idea with all the trouble my ankles/knees have been giving me).  Her little yellow bird, named Bird, kept me company as it flew around the house. 

We left the house about 11:15 to meet her family for a big lunch in celebration of her dad's birthday.  There were 12 of us total, including one of Meera's cousin's children, Oscar, who was absolutely adorable (almost 3 yrs old). He gave me a hug goodbye after our 3.5 hr lunch - it was very sweet.  I couldn't believe how well he behaved sitting there for that long. 

At lunch, I had pork loin with roasted vegetables (including several I didn't recognize, but they were good) and it also came with "crackling" (pronounced cracklin) - I tried one bite of this just to be a good sport.  It tasted slightly like bacon...but is actually friend pork skin.  Oh yummy.  For dessert I had chocolate fondant with clotted cream.  Chocolate fondant is sort of like cake with melty chocolate inside (quite nice), and clotted cream is like the step right after cream and before butter when you are churning milk...which totally grossed me out, thinking that I was essentially eating butter like it was ice cream. But anyway, I ate most of it because a little bite went well with the rich chocolate. 

Afterward, we went over to Meera's aunt's house and sat around talking in her cozy 1970s living room.  Her uncle was also there who actually lived in Charlotte for six years, so the whole family was quite familiar with my city. 

Meera dropped me off at the train station at half past five and I took a train to Waterloo Station, then a tube to Liverpool Street Station, then a "replacement bus" for the train that was supposed to take me to the Harwich ferry (because of the bank holiday), then I took the bus for two hours to the ferry and was lucky to be one of the first ones off.  I practically sprinted to the ferry check-in desk and boy am I glad I did - the line ended up crazy long and there was only one man there to check tickets and passports and issue room keys. 

While waiting in line briefly, I started talking to this kid behind me (he was 19 yrs old), and he was a little nervous because he was about to embark on a one month journey - alone for the first time through Europe.  We started chatting and walked to the ferry together and after putting our stuff in our rooms (which were on the same hall) we toured the ship together.  I eased his fears about traveling and he thanked me profusely before we each headed off to bed, saying I made him feel much less worried and much more excited about  the journey he had planned through Europe. 

My ferry cabin.

So the ferry was not what you'd think when you hear the word "ferry."  It was more like a cruise ship.  There was a small casino, several restaurants, a huge gift shop, a movie theater, a game room and more.  My room was just like a cruise ship room and it was so luxurious to take a long hot shower in a clean bathroom all my own and sleep in a real bed. Unfortunately, the time changes by one hour upon going to Holland, so while my body felt like it was 11 pm, it was midnight Holland time.  I tried to go to sleep then, but it didn't really take and I was woken by the intercom announcing breakfast times at 6:30 am, thus getting about 5.5 hrs of sleep.