Day 18: First Day in England

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

          Today was England! I had never been to the infamous Great Britain, and now I have! It was totally amazing. We took a train through London so I was there for like 10 minutes. However, throughout the day I went to Cambridge, Birmingham, and we are spending the night in Liverpool. We did have to get up early, but England is still a very very nice place. 
          We went to Cambridge first, and we biked EVERYWHERE. We rented bikes right when we got there and we used them for 3 or 4 hours. That's the best way to go places because walking would've hurt so much and biking avoids traffic. It was a lot of fun, except for when I sort of crashed into a car. We were going in between the edge of the street and a lane, which was like 2 feet of room, and my dad made it through and he was speeding ahead. For whatever reason he didn't go in the biking lane and I didn't see it so I followed him and then I was stuck. I am a terrible biker, I'm not confident at all in my biking, and this tight space next to a bunch of cars did not help. I biked next to this blue car and I didn't want to hit his side view mirror so I stopped my bike, and it kind of leaned/fell onto his car. I say lean/fell because it did fall essentially, but there was so little room it was just leaning on the car. So thankfully the car was fine and everyone moved on with their lives, it was embarrassing though. I also got a Cambridge University T-shirt which I really like. 
          After Cambridge we took a train to Birmingham. Normally during the train rides we plan out which scavenges we're going to do (by we I mostly mean my dad). However, our Great Britain guidebook did not have ANY INFORMATION WHAT SO EVER on Birmingham. So we ended up going to a city with no knowledge of anything, and no map. Although, because we are now "such experienced travelers", we were able to find a map, talk to people to get information on what we needed, and move to the next city within 2 hours. 
          We were on the train to Liverpool at around 6:30pm, and we still had no place to stay. One of the scavenges was to stay at a place for under 50 some type of currency, and on the train we met Sue. She is a psychology teacher, and she has a friend who always stays at this hotel in Liverpool that happens to be extremely cheap. She was so nice about it, and she let us book it OFF OF HER PHONE! WHILE WE WERE ON THE TRAIN! Keep in mind we had met her like 15 minutes ago. So thankfully we had a place waiting for us when we arrived.
          When we got to Liverpool we dropped our bags off at the place we were staying, and then we just walked around for a little bit and did some scavenging. At that point I had 3 jackets on and it was dark and late. We were both exhausted. So we did some things, and then we ate a really really great dinner (which was actually a scavenge). It was a tapas dinner, which I've never had this version of tapas before. It was really really good, especially the ice cream. Oh my gosh the ice cream was AMAZING!! I didn't even care that it was 10pm, I still loved it and ate it all.
          After this we walked back to the hotel, showered (the floor was totally soaked), and it is off to sleep for 6 hours before going to our FINAL COUNTRY before NYC!!!! I cannot wait!! Until next time!! ;)

Daddy's View

We rolled in to St. Pancras station at 8am thru the chunnel from Brussels, got out, bought tickets for london to cambridge, then cambridge to birmingham.  The lady at the desk actually *refused* to sell us the ticket from birmingham to liverpool b/c she said "it's really impossible, you'll have to stay the night in birmingham."

Cambridge was a super highlight for me.  We biked the whole thing.

regarding biking and the opposite side of the street thing.  It's... disorienting.  Within the first 10 minutes i came within a screeching car and 1 foot of getting plowed over by a very flustered (my fault of course) white haired professor-looking guy.  His glasses were askew, hair is messy, passenger grabbing at his chest, I'm motioning sorry sorry, and we almost had a tragic GSH trip incident.

That aside, the rest of the time was stellar.  All of the British universities were free until recently, and now cost $9K per YEAR tuition, and $300 per MONTH for room and board.  needless to say, I was highlighting the virtues of a cambridge/british university to Sydney.

It all felt like one big movie-length 80s-benetton-ad.  Everyone spoke the queen's english, born in some far flung country, educated in some other country, were all colors of the rainbow, and somehow ended up in cambridge studying something global and important.  everyone knew the history of XYZ, was delightful, helpful.  tom the trinity college guy we spent a lot of time with wore a TOP HAT and a pea coat.  in may.  of course.

birmingham had the odd distinction of not even being MENTIONED in the england guidbook we had bought in brussels.  literally, not one entry in the index.  so we came in blind, but were totally charmed by the city.  very diverse as well - that was a very appealing theme across all the UK cities, just incredible, uncommon diversity.  more than any city in the US i've seen, and frankly any city across the world.

we got on the train to liverpool without a place to stay in liverpool.  thank goodness for the kindness (and cell phones) of strangers.  liverpool was a bit odd - pleasant enough, impossible to understand, and kind of an odd touristy/blue collar feel.  anyway, the best meal in london was there - indian/british tinged spanish tapas.  go salt house tapas.

some notable items:
-  this is the trinity college courtyard, made famous by chariots of fire.  btw, the whole story of which i didn't get until fellow GSH teammate MIKE of TSA PRE-CHECK told me the story with the 42 second bell ringings.  anyway, the interesting thing here was tom, the top-hat guy who was guarding hte gate.  the reason this whole courtyard is empty is b/c no one was allowed in at this time, i guess they take half hour breaks.  tom and we got to know each other, his daughters stories, our story, the GSH, etc.  anyway, he gives us a wink, sneaks us in, even takes our picture.  thanks TOM!


-  so we have to go "punting" in one of the scavenges.  that's like a flat boat where you push it along like we see in pictures of sicily.  i go up and ask them how to do this, don't need the full tour, etc etc.  they say it's easy, you can do it yourself, it's cheaper, no problem.  i am 100% certain they were off in the back room, laughing and taking bets on when i would fall in.  punting is hard.  when you go visit cambridge, do not do it yourself.  there is video which sydney has squirreled away in the cloud storage aether that i will eventually find and destroy of me doing a 57-point turn to move like 20 yards.  it was humbling.


-  this is john and his blind/deaf dog billy.  john's a retired taxi driver who's lived on his water taxi ("gypsy john") for 18 years.  he's had billy for 14 of those years.  we ran into john down in the gas light district.  he gave us a tour of his water taxi b/c they weren't taking fares during those hours, so we just hung out.  it's essentially like a really long floating RV.  he's lived on it continuously for 18 yrs, just going around coastal cities in england, and going to spain in the winters and RV'ing around there.  john was doing something handy to fix his boat, and he's my new hero.




-  this is sue.  she's a college psychology professor we met on the train to liverpool.  she's the heroine who booked our hotel that night (yes, dad of the year move, we were going to a city to arrive at night without any accommodations for me and my child).  next is tahir, a dentist immigrant who has lived in liverpool and worked out of birmingham for 27 years.  he was the first one i chatted with, and then sue jumped in.  the reason she jumped in was to explain the superlambanana, the weird yellow sculpture which is apparently the unofficial art mascot of liverpool.  it was just another supercool GSH moment where we ended up with a group of folks talking across races and cultures about lots of stuff in a random public place.  it was awesome.






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