BROKEN

That trip might have broken me.  Going into it I knew I'd face two big challenges:  too long away from home and too many people/socializing.  My introvert NEEDS quiet, alone, downtime between socializing and "going and doing".  And I'm really a homebody with no enormous desire to see the world, although there are some things I'd like to see and do if I could see and do them in an afternoon.  So I entered into the plan for 5 weeks in Great Britain with this trepidation: I might get homesick and suffer a bit from "too many people" burn out.  Well, that was an underestimation.

We started with 4 days in Illinois to attend a 3-day extravaganza of activities to celebration Hub's Class of '68 50th high school reunion.  I was only one year behind Hub so I know all those people too.  It was interesting/fun/tedious.  And frankly it was shocking to see how all those people had aged so much more than Hub and me.  Sad.  😉

Then we hopped a red-eye 747 from Chicago to Edinburgh for the first of our two scheduled tours.  Met the tour director who was a hoot; a woman about our age, native Scot, and full of fun and vitality and interesting stories to tell to enhance our trip.  The other 24 tour-mates were also very nice people; a few quiet ones, a few partiers.   But we didn't go to make lifelong friends, and since we like each other's company a lot, we didn't go out of our way to socialize at every opportunity.  Still....we basically all lived and ate and traveled together for the 10 day tour of Scotland.  Saw some cool things.  (Later blog post.)

When that tour was over, we had exactly 2 days to regroup before meeting our next tour director and tour group in Bath, England for our Best of England and North Wales tour.  One of those in between days was spent with a dear friends who live near Edinburgh who took us to cool, non-touristy places and cooked us a home-cooked meal in their lovely country cottage.  Highlight.  The other day was a flight and bumpy bus ride to Bath.

The new tour group was, shall we say, less vivacious.  And the tour guide rather dour.   We were already tired, wishing we'd only scheduled one tour, and sort of counting the days until it was all over.  We steeled ourselves for what we now knew was ahead -- a nonstop itinerary and living with a new group of people.  We were at this point embarking on a 14 day tour, with 5 days alone in London tacked on to the end.  We had barely begun.

We ended up learning that our tour mates were pleasant enough folks, but the tour guide never did win us over and in fact began to grate on us to the point we mostly tried to ignore him.  He added very little to the information we could read in a guide book.  He had a lot of rules.  We felt reprimanded at times which started us to giggling.  We ended up sitting in the back of the bus binging on shortbread cookies and making fun of him.  Small rebellions.  Saw some cool things.  (Later blog post.)

When that tour was finally, thankfully over, we still had our 5 days in London.  We moved to the luxe hotel we'd scheduled to pamper ourselves and sprung for an even better room -- a suite.  We were so relieved to be finally, blissfully alone.  But I was still homesick, having missed my granddaughters' first day of school, her birthday, her father's (our son's)birthday, and her parent's (our son and daughter in law's) wedding anniversary and likely a million things our other son and his girlfriend were up to.  We kept up with headlines, but gratefully missed the minutiae of the Kavanaugh debacle.  I worried about my garden and whether my friends would remember or recognize me.  I posted daily photos and trip updates to FB (when I had WiFi) to help me remember what we were seeing and doing because it all became a blur.

It really was a whirlwind.  Never enough time to truly ground in any one experience before we were on to the next.  The pace was not our pace.  Active extroverts had a blast.  Introspective introverts got tired.

I was so happy to arrive home!  But it was also disorienting to realize we'd left the end of August when it was still summer and returned in early October in autumn with darkness descending by 6:30 p.m.  I was jet lagged, fighting a head cold, enduring a cluster of every few days migraines, totally exhausted and feeling like I'd never find my equilibrium again.

I am improving but, after two weeks home, still not back 100%.  A friend who traveled to Poland this past summer for an extended stay told me it took him and his wife a month to recover.  I'm half way there.

It feels so incredibly disingenuous to complain when we know we are blessed by the opportunity to have taken this trip.  We saw and did and experienced; learned and grew.  We are truly grateful and with time will be more appreciative and joyful about the experience.  We have about 2000 photos to remind us of all we've forgotten in the blur.  Still, the fact remains:  I'm a homebody and an introvert and next time (there's a hopeful note!) I'll do it differently.

At least, that's the view from here....©

SKIP TO THE LOO

I just got back from five weeks of travel in England, Scotland, and Wales.  I'll have plenty to write about for awhile, but let's start with the restrooms.

Between the tours we took, and the time on our own in London, I believe I visited most of the public restrooms in Great Britain.

First, never call them "restrooms".  If you do, people may do their best to accommodate you by referring you to a place that lets rooms with a bed -- to rest upon.  What we euphemistically call "restrooms", the Brits call out in plain language, "toilets".   It is perfectly polite to inquire, "Where's the toilet?"  Signs everywhere show the way to the Gents and Ladies TOILET.  If you want to be fancy, you can say lavatory, which has been charmingly shortened to "loo".  Our Scotland tour guide would assure us that at several points throughout any given day we'd have ample opportunity on our stops to "Skip to the Loo".

In the US it is sort of a crap shoot (hahahahaha) as to the cleanliness of any given facility.  Not so in Britain, at least in the places I visited which were mostly touristy spots, but still.  They could easily have become degenerate given the high volume traffic they accommodate, but almost without exception they were sparkling clean and fresh-smelling.  The glaring exceptions were one Starbucks and one McDonald's where Hub and I used the facilities in a pinch.  I don't know what that says, or maybe I do.  These are American establishments.  We need to clean up our act!

The British loos were well-maintained, well lit, clean, and sanitary.  There were none of those fastidious paper toilet seat covers, but I never felt I shouldn't put bum skin to seat anyway.  And if I did (hello Starbucks) I merely did the squat and hover thing women have learned to do, and was grateful for my exercise routine that keeps my thighs muscular and my balance steady.

What I loved most about the stalls was how private they were.  None of those open at the top and bottom doors that barely offer a private moment; these were like little rooms!  Full doors that when closed provided a cozy toilet room with no one peaking under or potentially over.  How did you know if they were occupied?  When you closed the always working, never broken latch, the outside showed a red indicator; available showed green.  (Like we see on those gross port-a-potties here.)

Hand washing was a bit of risk, however.  I never learned why but the hot water tap is turned up to boil all over Britain.  Signs warning of VERY HOT WATER were to be taken seriously.  So if you go, be sure to be cautious and get some cold water mixed in, which can be a bit of a chore given that there is often a two faucet set up -- one for scalding hot and one for icy cold.  Many, thankfully, were a one faucet (automatic sensor) set up that provided water that didn't take your skin off.  Another thing that keeps the loos cleaner is that I almost never saw a paper towel dispenser anywhere.  All hand drying is done with those blow drier things on the walls.  I generally get impatient with those and end up wiping my wet hands on my pants, but they did cut down on waste and clutter.

The photo I'm including is from probably the best public toilet, but not by much.  Most were great.  This one is from the Tower of London just outside the Royal Crown Jewels exhibit, so they have a high standard to meet.  You will note that this one has a bit less than the fully enclosed toilet room I described above, but still pretty private and very stylish.

I had hoped to get shots of more loos, but most of the time they were jammed with other tourists, and whipping out a camera would have just seemed creepy.

At least, that's the view from here....©

STARRY, STARRY NIGHT...OR NOT

"Are the stars out tonight?...I don't know if it's cloudy or bright..."  Do you remember that line from a song to which I don't recall the title? (Name that tune!)   Well, we went stargazing in Hawaii.

We booked a pricey tour (a rarity for us). We justified it by recognizing the opportunity to get to the top of Mauna Kea with a guide doing all the driving and narrating, have a dinner on the way, see the sunset from up top, and get a close-up of the night sky through their telescopes (a 7-1/2 hour tour).  The cost suddenly seemed worth it.

With great anticipation we met our driver/guide at the tour headquarters in Kona-Kailua.  A few others from our tour were also there.  We got on our brand new and really comfy14 passenger mini-bus and headed out, with high spirits.  We drove about 15 miles -- to pick up more passengers.  We drove another few miles -- to pick up our pre-made picnic suppers (BBQ chicken or Tofu wrap).  We drove another 30 miles to pick up more passengers.  All along the way our guide entertained and educated us with Hawaiian history and lore, geology and culture.  Still -- it's a lot of driving and the first hour basically felt like we were getting nowhere as we went out of the way to make stops.  No matter I was still so excited!

Our fellow tourists were a fine group.  I had already pegged the young couple across the aisle from us as newlyweds, which turned out to be the case as I learned as we all took turns introducing ourselves.  The give-away for me was the way the new husband kept fingering and twirling his wedding band.  My son did the same when he was first married with a similarly startled, contented, quizzical look while contemplating the ring finger.  There was another newlywed couple from Seattle (vintage Mariners T-shirt made us recognize their home town), a middle-aged couple who met on E-Harmony -- he the talkative one from Houston who seemed annoyed that the task of teaching his grandson to hunt deer fell to him since his son refused to do it.  Generational clash, I guess.  There was a lovely couple from England who asked insightful questions listening carefully and with interest to the answers.  I don't recall details about the others,  but all seemed very happy to be on the tour and eager for the star experience.

We stopped at the base of the road to the summit of Mauna Kea.  An old sheep shearing station, abandoned, provided a picturesque backdrop for our picnic supper set out at tables under a big awning tent.  The food was surprising tasty and we enjoyed the time to wander around, shooting photos and starting to acclimate to altitude.  We were at 7000 ft. elevation.  We were encouraged to drink as much water as possible (they provided souvenir water bottles) to ward off any elevation-related dehydration headaches.  I hate headaches.  I drank.

Back on the bus we continued up, up, up.  At about 8,000 ft. elevation we stopped again to see a huge radio wave receiver just like the ones in that old movie, Contact.   Still looking for life in the great beyond.  I filled my water bottle and kept drinking.

Up we continued, passing the visitor center at 9000 ft. elevation and venturing onto the 4 mile section of dirt road that is recommended for 4-wheel traffic only.  It was a washboard, but not terrible.  Plenty of "regular" cars were braving it, but car rental companies probably frowned on the practice.

Finally, we reached the summit.  The elevation was just under 14,000 feet.  The wind was blowing like crazy.  The tour company provided parkas for which I was most grateful.  We knew enough to wear long pants and real shoes.  I couldn't believe there were people up there in flip-flops, T-shirts and shorts!  At top are a variety of observatories housing research telescopes of varying sizes.  While they are guarded by park rangers, they are not necessarily staffed by the scientists who study the Universe.  Each is hooked to a computer somewhere else and the computer tells the telescope what to look at and remotely aims it in that direction.  Arm-chair astronomy!  The landscape was stark but hauntingly beautiful.

I would really have enjoyed it a lot more if.....I hadn't followed the hydrating directions to extreme.  I got out of the bus and felt the predicted lightheadedness of high altitude, but no headache (yay!).   But, the predominant bodily sensation was "I gotta pee so bad!" -- distractingly bad.  The two Port-A-Potties were down the hill about a hundred yards.  I knew my lightheadedness would make the trek back up the hill more than a little uncomfortable.  I noticed the sun beginning to set behind a bank of clouds, but all I could focus on was my brimming bladder.  Hub, what a trooper, found a big transformer box at the back of the parking lot and guided me behind it where he stood guard while I dropped trou and squatted.  When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.

We rushed back to the western edge of the parking lot and just caught the sun descending into a cloud.  It was stunning.  And quick.  Within a few minutes we were back on the bus heading to the Visitor Center where we'd get to see the majesty of the Galaxy, the Main Event!

Except we were no sooner underway when those clouds thickened, darkened, and let fall a dowsing rain that didn't let up and which also provided us a thunder and distant lightning display.  We still stopped at the Visitor Center, hopeful the storm would pass.  It didn't.  No stars.  We loaded up again and drove the 40 miles back to where we'd started six hours earlier.  The driver was markedly quiet and drove much faster -- like a horse to the barn.  I felt it was a long day and a long drive for a picnic and a hurried sunset.

To say we were disappointed is an understatement.  So much so that we went back on our own a few days later --not to the top, but to the Visitor Center where the skies were clear but the moon had waxed to half-full and its brightness created a glow that made many of the stars disappear in the moonlight.  We did look through the telescopes there and saw craters on the moon, rings around Saturn, and a star cluster.  So all was not lost.  The tour company gave us a 30% refund and the brownie muffin we had on the way off the mountain was outstanding, so there's that.

What I know now is that the starry night sky in Kalani was the most magnificent sky we would see on the whole trip, planned tour notwithstanding.  A good reminder to appreciate what's right in front of me instead of thinking the grass is greener, or the sky is starrier, somewhere else.

At least, that's the view from here... ©