10-Night France, Iceland, and Norway Cruise - Day 1 & 2 Travel from Austin to Southampton

Austin to Southampton

It’s back to Europe for another adventure. As seems to be our lot in life lately, we figure out how to pivot and roll with the punches. I’m sure my trip reports would be quite dreary without a bit of drama! But we still had fun, of course. Traveling on this trip is Roger (my husband), Emmaline (our 15 year old) and me. For the first leg of the trip, we will be joined by my friend Dru and her husband Nils who live in Geneva. You may recall Dru from our 2018 European adventures. She was supposed to be with for our adventures in Europe in 2020 but, well, we know how that worked out. So I’m super excited that we were able to coordinate some time together for this year. 

I wish I could say that our travel was uneventful, but it turned out to be quite the event. Our direct flight to Heathrow was scheduled to take off at 6:10 PM and it was slightly late departing (maybe 15 minutes) but we made up the time in the air. None of us slept very well on the flight and by the time we made it into Heathrow at 9:30 in the morning local time, we weren’t real cheery. Roger was even less cheery on account of a crazy huge yawn he had on the plane. He yawned so big that he felt something pop in his jaw and then was in agonizing pain after that. Passport control, bag claim and customs were super efficient and easy, but Roger was feeling worse and worse. We made our way to a cafe to sit down and have a sack and coffee. Roger decided to get up and go use the restroom and a couple minutes later a flight attendant was in the cafe area calling out “Summer? Summer?” Roger had felt dizzy and they had helped him onto the floor. 

They called the airport paramedics and a young EMT arrived shortly thereafter on a bicycle. She took all sorts of vitals and Roger was perfectly normal for everything. He said his stomach was really upset, maybe from the pain and the stress and not eating a ton and not sleeping. I travel with a pharmacy so I gave him some Zofran and Gabapentin to try to help with both nausea and pain. Eventually he was able to get up and get into a wheelchair which is basically where he stayed until we got him onto our coach for the ride to Southampton. I just knew that if we could get him onto the bus and he could crash out, he’d feel better on waking. Which…fast forward, is exactly what happened. Our coach departed pretty much on time at 12:20 PM and we arrived in Southampton around 2:20 PM or so. 

In the midst of all this, Dru and Nils arrived and I teared up when I hugged Dru because it’s been 5 years since I’ve seen her and she’s basically like a sister to me and SOOOOOO much has happened in my life since 2018. (The pandemic, death of my dad, death of my mom, death of my step-mom, and breast cancer. In that order.) It was just so amazing and wonderful to hug her again. 

Upon arriving at our hotel in Southampton we walked the 15 min walk from the coach station to our hotel and arrived around 2:40 but we had to hang out because check-in time was 3 PM at the Premier Inn Southampton Cumberland Place. After we were able to check in, we freshened up and made our way to the Sea City Museum which was right around the corner from the hotel. We were there for a little over an hour. The museum is primarily exhibits about the Titanic with lots of really interesting stories and items from the ship and Southampton at that time. 

We left there at 5 PM and stopped into a grocery store to buy some bottled water as well as some local items that Emmaline wanted to try (Monster Munch and Cadbury dairy milk chocolate). She wasn’t so into the Monster Munch and we ended up tossing the rest of the bag. After that we passed by a couple of the Titanic memorials in the park near our hotel, as well as a war memorial. After that we went to dinner at a little pub about 10 minute walk from our hotel called Smugglers. We all enjoyed our meal but we were starting to fade. Well, our family was. Dru and Nils only had about an hour and fifteen minute flight from Geneva so they were doing fine. 

We went back to the hotel and got everything ready for our tour the next day before we all fell into bed and crashed. 

Click here for Day 3.