Day 22 - London to LauncestonAuthor: jawapro
Date: Sat 14/02/2009 12:46 AM
After managing to write a blog entry every night of the trip (although only posted them when I had a chance) - I have finally slipped up. I’ve been home for a few days, and haven’t recorded the final entry yet.
On our last day in England, we spent the first part of the morning repacking our bags for the trip home, and then headed out to grab some final souvenirs.
For our first real time, it was raining in England. It had snowed, and rained a little while we were on the trains - but this was the first real time when we were actually rained on us when we were doing things. Still - it wasn’t very heavy - London didn’t really live up to it’s reputation of constant rain while we were there.
After getting those last souvenirs, we returned to the Contiki Basement, where we’d gone on our first night. They have a set of scales, which meant we could see how over-weight our bags had gotten. We’d already dumped some things like shampoo bottles etc that we didn’t need to cart back - and turns out that Emma’s bag weighed the same as when she had left (the extra stuff was counter-acted by the stuff she’d dumped) and mine was only a few kilos heavier - but that was enough to take it above the 20k mark (the max for the flights). By moving a few things between Ems and my bags, we got both a decent weight.
From here we went up to the Royal National Hotel (the hotel we’d stayed in the other nights in London) and went to the coffee shop there, which has free wireless. We posted the previous days blogs here - as you’ve probably already read. Unfourtuantly, this was also where I fell over. Emma was posting her blog, and I was headed back inside the Royal National to use the dunny, and I slipped on the wet footpath, and landed in a puddle. After being fine on the snow and ice thus far, it was the rain on the path that caught me out. Thankfully I’d just bought a London T-shirt which I was able to wear instead of my now wet shirt, and my trousers (which had mostly missed the puddle) dried off fairly well.
And then it was the final leg. Lugging our suitcases via the tubes to Paddington Station, where we could catch the Heathrow Express (which was covered by our Britrail Passes). We could have taken the tubes all the way to Heathrow if we’d wanted to - but we decided we might as well make the most of our last day of the Britrail Pass.
There are 2 Paddington Stations on the tube network, and this time we ended up in the other one (the correct one for the express) and this time Emma did find some bears. Apparently one of her friends is very into Paddington Bear - and she was excited to find Paddington Bears for sale at Paddington Station.
And that was my last photo I took until we got home. Heathrow isn’t very interesting - and neither really are the planes. We both managed to sleep on the first leg to Singapore, and watched tv and dozed slightly on the second leg back to Melbourne. Very disappointed - the chair in front of me didn’t recline, and the lady who scored it on the second leg kicked up a fuss and ended up being upgraded to first or business class (not sure which) and was given a pair of awesome sound canceling headphones to boot. Why couldn’t we get the dodgy seats?
I couldn’t even use my new Germany headphones, as the Qantas planes use stupid two-prong connectors. In Australia you can buy adaptors in the airports - but I couldn’t find any at Heathrow, and I looked.
This time in Singapore, we didn’t screw up, and made it back on the plane without any issues. No mad dashes down the length of the airport this time.
When we arrived in Melbourne, it thankfully wasn’t too hot. We got breezed through customs, who didn’t even want to look at the stuff we’d declared.
In Melbourne (which is actually a much nicer airport than Heathrow) we spent the few hours before our next flight reading the newspaper and watching the news about the bushfires in Victoria. It’s awful. We were both fairly shocked to hear just how bad it had been. We’d gotten some news about it over in England - but this was the first time we’d really heard about it properly.
And then it was a short hop back to Launceston. Dad met us at the airport, and had a second car at his work so we could take the other (mine) home from there. After almost a month of buses, trains, and planes - it’s brilliant to be in control of a car again. It did feel like we should have been taking photos everywhere - and we had to keep reminding ourselves that we were actually home now.
The afternoon and evening were spent relaxing (and sleeping - which Emma claims she did by accident) and unpacking all our souvenirs from the trip. It was a bit like Christmas, as we’d forgotten about some of the stuff we’d bought.
The next day was similarly wasted as we had no energy. Today (Friday) I’m heading back to Devonport to see how my house and cat have survived being looked after by Tim and Tom. Neptune probably won’t recognize me anymore.
And that’s it. Our epic trip is over. We had a great time - but no where beats Tassie.
Comments: 2
Maelstrom Fansite
