The Voyage - Days 1 and 2

Well it's almost two weeks into the voyage and I've decided to make my first blog post(s). I will break my daily entries up in sets of two-three days per post for ease of reading. At this point anyone reading my entries should be fairly up to date in regards to the "adventures" of our expedition; this is my rendition of our saga thus far.

Day One - London, UK.
I'll paint a quick picture of the crew's emotional, physical, and cognitive well-being post-14 odd hours of flying: grumpy, jet lagged, and impatient as all get-out, not a pretty picture. First order of business: finding the restroom; which will become a daily concern as the adventure progresses. A water closet is a restroom, just FYI. Second order of business: get monies. When attempting to convert some US cash into Pounds we had our first, of many, family disputes. This bout of consternation had a direct correlation between how tired we all were and our aversion to a pop-quiz (money conversion rates) immediately upon landing. There was discussion about how much money would be sensible to exchange since we were only in London for one night. For those who do not know, the UK uses the "Pound" as their currency and the next few countries on our itinerary use the Euro. Pounds in hand, we put our "grumpy pants" away and moved on to the next order of business: procuring our car.

On second thouht, I'll skip over the debacle of getting our car; London was full speed ahead...on the wrong side of the road. Going left on a roundabout sparked the backseat driver in all of us. Our first hour in the big city and this gaggle of Americans already smacked the low clearance sign in the parking garage and put a nice Doran style rip in the car top luggage carrier...

Skipping ahead of family dispute number two; London was kind of plain to me, I know any city needs more than a few hours of traipsing around in order to get a good "feel" for it, but currently my view of London is kind of 'meh'. We saw Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abby, Buckingham Palace, the palace gardens and some generic streets of London. We drove outside of London to our hotel, the roach motel. Realistically it wasn't the worst place I've ever been but it was pretty gross. On the up side, our Cod fish and french fries were AMAZING.

Lessons of the Day:

1. In Europe, chips are french fries and crisps are chips as we know them; 
2. A water closet is a bathroom.
3. Math conversion is important, especially when it's the height of the car in meters

Day Two - Ferry Ride to France.
We arrived at the White Cliffs of Dover and were mistaken for French natives until we spoke, thank you Tilly and your French plates. Onboard was a beautiful "English Breakfast" that instilled my first doubts about my compatibility with European foods. Toast was not meant to be deep fried, just saying. The cliffs of Dover are beautiful, very worth seeing. The ferry itself was huge and inside the gift shop were free sample shots of whisky! We drove through France and Belgium, not much to say. The next country we crossed into was Luxembourg. Literally as we crossed the country boarder the streets immediately became smooth and gorgeous. Clearly they use tax dollars efficiently. We stopped in at the small town of Clervoux which boasts a small castle, a US army tank with an 'underdog' history, and a Catholic cathedral, complete with an all girl's school choir singing 'Say Something' acapella. During the angelic rendition of the modern pop hit, I made friends with a cat in an alley. He was a bit of an indiscriminate whore. Vigorous kitty butt scratches aside, the day was pretty mellow and relaxing. Later in the evening, we arrived at Luxembourg's Hostel International. This hostel was off the beaten tourist path and it was very nice. Unfortunately we arrived 30 minutes after dinner was over but they, very nicely, reopened the kitchen for us and served a tasty three course meal. The rooms were nice, facilities were clean and modern, the whole experience was a breath of fresh air. I did not want to leave and would not have if I had known the next day would be a German road construction failure.

Lessons of the day:

1. If your hostel has a large window without curtains, take a look around for a sliding barn door window-cover instead of giving up and changing in the bathroom.