travels, races, and other musings

Travel Home, Final Thoughts, and Recommendations It was a little funny being in the same city as Roger but across town at different hotels. He was over by Victoria Station near where we had stayed on the first leg of our journey and was feeling better but not completely well. He had some anti-nausea pills from the doctor he visited and that helped him quite a bit. Emmaline and I got up and had a quick breakfast in our hotel. It was very basic with some croissants, toast, fruit, granola, juices and coffee, but at £5 it was a good deal. From there I decided we would get a cab back over to the entrance to St. Pancras station. The walk was only about 10-15 minutes, but the morning was chilly, Emmaline was tired and I knew I’d be pulling both suitcases. I was left with cash I didn’t feel like messing with changing back anyway and decided it was worth the £10 to just take the cab over there. I had looked at the schedules online and I thought there was a 7:20 train, but when we arrive...

London (again) We had to wake up a bit early to go to the airport for our flight. We had something quick to eat at Dru’s place and then Dru drove us to the airport. We were fairly early to arrive so we had a little bit of time to have a little more food there before it was time to board our flight. Unfortunately once we were boarded, we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour because an incoming flight had blown a tire on landing and was now disabled on the runway. They finally decided that they would be able to use half the runway, but then we had a long queue of planes so we had more waiting. The flight wasn’t too long and we were able to buy our train tickets on board so that we could save a little time once we arrived at London Luton airport. Once there, we had to walk forever around a bunch of construction to take a bus to the train station and from there we took the Thameslink to St. Pancras station and where we had a quick snack in a cafe in the station. I didn’t want to have a...

Geneva I woke up at Dru’s house and all was quiet. I turned on my phone to find several messages from Roger. He was supposed to fly home from London, but he had been taken ill overnight with a variety of symptoms, mostly GI related. There was no way he could travel. Between the two of us, we had only one computer and one SIM card that could make calls (his European SIM was data only). I started by calling Norwegian airlines. They told me I could rebook over the phone for a fee or online, still for a fee, but not as much. I logged in on the computer and rebooked the flight for two days later (Norwegian only flies between Austin and London every other day). As it happened, this was the flight Emmaline and I would also be taking home so I moved our seats so we could all sit together. Then I had to work out hotel. He had already contacted the front desk at his current hotel, but they had no vacancies for the next two nights so then I was working online and over the phone to try to find...

Travel Day This isn’t the most exciting day of our trip, consisting mostly of hanging out and travel, which was fine. We were ready for a break from being tourists I think. Though Roger did get a little sightseeing in, so I’ll let him guest blog his portion. You see, this is the part of the trip where we split up. Roger needed to get back to work as his vacation time is limited. My work being more flexible, I arranged for Emmaline and I to travel back to Geneva with Dru to stay with her for a couple of nights. We got up and ate breakfast and Roger’s flight being earlier, we said goodbye and he took a car to the airport around 8 AM to head back to London. From there he would do some sightseeing before his scheduled flight the next morning back to Austin. Dru, Emmaline and I had a leisurely morning of goofing around including making a carpool karaoke video of The Beatles “Drive My Car” using the chairs from the table and a plate (for a steering wheel). It’s about as silly as you’re i...

Rome Buckle up because this post has a lot of photos! The Colosseum is just super photogenic. Anyway, we got an early start to our morning because we had a tour booked for the Colosseum (including the Underground), Palatine Hill, and Roman Forum with What a Life Tours. I initially wasn’t planning on booking a tour for this, instead my plan was to do the Colosseum (and the other stuff) on our own and try to get tickets for the Underground directly from the Colosseum’s website on release day. Unfortunately, I was unable to secure them even though I was actually paying attention for this one. So I found a tour company with a few slots left and booked it. In the end I’m super glad we did because it was fantastic. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to our morning!  We ate breakfast in our apartment. We had everything we needed in the little kitchen. We packed up and left our apartment to meet our tour near the entrance to the Metro next to the Colosseum at 7:55 AM. Once ev...