The Road Goes Ever On and On

Ok, so I lied about updating on Monday. In my defence, by the time we got back to Nick's, we'd been travelling for twelve hours (by car, bus, bus, plane, bus and tube) and wanted nothing more than to curl up and die. We did not curl up and die, but nor did we update the blog, of course.

( Here are some photos. )

You'll need to click on the photos to see them properly, because the layout cuts them in half and I'm way too lazy to resize them.

Wednesday was a very lazy day. I was supposed to run errands, but I realised that I couldn't sort out my bank account since I didn't know the account number, and couldn't collect stuff from my great aunt because she wasn't answering her phone, so instead I fell asleep on the sofa while Nick played video games. It was epic.

In the evening, Jess and I lugged our suitcases back to Fulham (where a very nice young man offered to carry my suitcase up the station stairs for me - I turned down the offer, but I thought he deserved a mention in the blog anyway). I then got dressed up for the first time since we got to England and set off for Madam Butterfly. Unfortunately, delays on the tubes meant that I arrived 15 minutes late (I know, late for the opera; I'm such an uncultured savage), but they let me stand at the back until the first interval, when I could go and find my seat. The cheap seats at the Coliseum really are the cheap seats. They were small and hard and awkwardly angled downwards, but still afforded a decent view of the stage, even if I was so far back that the singers were teeny tiny specks in the distance. The opera was amazing, and I was totally sociable and spoke to the people sitting next to me. No, not during the opera. I may arrive late, but I'm not that uncultured.

The next day was devoted to travelling. Jess and I dragged Nick out of bed at 9 so that we could drop our suitcases at his house, and then we headed off to Victoria, where we caught a bus to Stansted. Stansted is a horrible airport where people don't believe in decent signage, but we managed to find our way to our plane, which had seats only slightly more comfortable than those at the opera. We landed in Shannon, in Ireland, in the late afternoon, where I brilliantly managed to sprain my ankle as I got off the plane.

Fail.

We hobbled onto a bus to Mallow, where we were collected by Jane and Patrick, more relatives of Jess's, who took us to Annes Grove, their very beautiful family home. We spent the evening and the following day there, moving very slowly around the grounds. Jane and Patrick were absolutely wonderful, and Jane's cooking was amazing. We would have loved to spend more time there, but our expert travel planning skills meant that we had to catch another bus to the other end of the country this morning. The bus trip went well, and we arrived in Enniscorthy just after lunch time. We were collected by still more lovely relatives (or are these ones family friends?) of Jess's, and they've been looking after us excellently and feeding us chocolate cake even better than the Best Chocolate Cake Ever of a few entries ago.

In short, we are well. My ankle is healing fairly well, and I'm now able to walk almost at a normal walking pace again, although I do have an awesome bruise. We have photos, which are incredibly exciting. They'll change your life (no they won't). But right now I've been hogging the computer for way too long, so no photos will be posted until we're back at Nick's on Monday.

An update! At last! Lazy Ali is lazy.

When we last left our heroines, they were camping in a tent in Devon. We split up the next day - Jess stayed on with her family, and I journeyed on to spend a very pleasant night with mine in Guildford and Byfleet. We met up in London again the following day, where we invaded Nick's flat, left our stuff all over the hall and made ourselves at home. Lucky Nick. Matt came over later and we all played Mario Kart (Mar-Wii-o Kart, if you will), at which I did not lose, which was fun. Ok, so I may not have won, either, but I came close.

Once it was cooler (hooray heatwaves in busy cities), we ventured out to do some grocery shopping, and made black bean and butternut tacos (without the tacos) for supper. Between Jess's nut allergy, my veganism and Nick's inability to eat pretty much anything at the moment, it was a wonder we found anything to eat at all, and the tacoless tacos were pretty good. There was a moderate amount of rejoicing.

Yesterday, I woke up early, got bored after reading for an hour and tried to wake up the others, who seemed not to like this idea as much as I did. I went fruit shopping instead, and came back to find the flat still quiet. When everyone managed to stagger to their feet, Jess and I went shopping, spending slightly obscene amounts of money at David and Goliath before hopping (we didn't hop) over to Camden Town, where I bought a hoody to replace the jersey I lost in our first two days here.

We went on the London Eye River Cruise, with our very attractive guide, Adam. The sights were pretty interesting too. By the time we got on to the boat, we'd been in the sun for hours, and we were starting to get tired and grumpy. By the time we got off the boat, we'd been in the sun even longer, and this made us even more tired and grumpy. We considered ditching our plans to go and see Wicked in favour of Mario Kart and Rock Band at Nick's, but we soldiered on like the good tourists we are, muttering darkly under our breaths as we pushed our way through sticky crowds to the theatre that the show had better be pretty freaking AWESOME.

It wasn't.

In its defence, it wasn't bad. It just wasn't awesome. We were not filled with awe. We muttered darkly about this some more on the way back to Covent Garden (although by this stage, at least, the sun had gone down, restoring some of our will to live), where we playing excessive amounts of Mario Kart and Rock Band and got very little sleep. And we were content.

The night in the tent was... interesting. Jess managed to kick me in the head again, and the slope of the mattress meant that she would roll on to me, decide she was quite comfortable there, and fall asleep. We have since found new mattresses.

After breakfast we headed off to Salcombe (we spent the drive there thinking it was "Sulkham", and picturing a village full of very miserable people). As it turned out, Salcombe is a very beautiful seaside village, glued onto a vertical hillside. At least, that was what it felt like by the time we managed to drag ourselves up the last hill and collapse on the doorstep of the rugby club, where we left Jess and Alex to watch the game (as if there was any doubt in anyone's mind about who would win) while the rest of us trudged back down the hills of doom to find lunch. After lunch, we spent some time wandering around the shops, where we bought nothing because everything was very expensive.

We played Mao (I won). We played Mario Kart (I lost). We learned that French people are scared of jelly. All in all, a very lovely day with some very lovely people.

Yesterday, we went to Gloucestershire, where we stayed with Juliana and Christopher, relatives of Jess's. Gloucestershire is very beautiful.

( Pretty prettiness. )

We were happy. We had absolutely no desire to run away.

( These are our happy faces. )

We got taken to and speedily marched around a very beautiful sculpture exhibition, and we also dropped in to see the only church in England which still has all its original stained glass windows. We drove at speed through a village (Bibury?) which has apparently been named the most beautiful village in England, and we though (as it whizzed by blurrily) that it seemed to be earning the title fairly well.

This evening, we escaped, taking the train from ugly Swindon to Bristol Parkway, where we were collected by Alex, Jess's second cousin twice removed, or something, who drove us to their lovely home in Bovey Tracey (Devon). We met the family 5 years ago when they visited South Africa, and they're absolutely lovely people. We are most happy here. Jess and I are sleeping in a tent in the garden, which promises to be quite interesting. But then, if Jess manages not to end up with her foot on my pillow it'll be an improvement on last night, so I'm not fussy. Bring on the tent.

In sadder news, Amanda appears to have left us. We hope she's currently making her way around the world in other people's photos, but we can't help but miss her. It was good while it lasted. Bon voyage, Amanda!

The LJ-cuts failed in this entry and I'm really too lazy and tired to fix them, so I'm afraid we're just going to leave the messy formatting as is. Apologies.

Yesterday, Jess and I met Nick and Cath for lunch, and then Jess went off to meet some friends from home, with whom she sightsaw while I wandered the city. I met up with them in Covent Garden later, and we went for a drink in Soho before grabbing takeaways and inviting ourselves to Nick's flat to eat them. Thereafter, we went to Avenue Q, which was, of course, totally awesome again. With tremendous skill (and the help of the TFL website), we found an easy route back home and managed to make it all the way back to Clapham without getting murdered. We nearly got run over by taxis twice, but we're from Jo'burg. We can take it.

Yesterday was also the day we found Amanda. Not, alas, Ms Palmer, but a pink My Little Pony we named in her honour. We found her - again, the pony - by the side of the road, and decided that she was exactly the mascot we'd been looking for for our photos, so we adopted her.

Today we got ripped off at Madame Tussaud's, although we did have great fun, and got our photo taken with ( like zomg Zac Efron squee. )
Amanda cropped up in some unlikely places.

We went walking afterwards and ended up in Camden Town, where we became significantly poorer after lunch, ice cream and cookie at the InSpiral Lounge. From there, we went to St Paul's, and we were going to walk along the South Bank, but by that stage our feet were sore and we were tired, so we sat on the South Bank instead, and it was also pretty cool.

( MOAR photos. )MOAR photos.

Nick and Cath.

 
Me with Amanda.

Today, we almost went to the Baroque Exhibition at the V&A Museum, but then we found out we had to pay for it, so we wandered around and looked at the free exhibits instead. We were saddened by the lack of pressy buttons, but we felt very cultured, so that more or less made up for it. After the museum, we headed to a lovely vegan restaurant in West Kensington, where we had ( totally awesome chocolate cake. )

We got some very odd looks from the other people at the restaurant because of our constant exclamations about the awesomeness of the cake compared to other cakes, food in general and everything else in the world, but they didn't understand because they weren't eating the cake.

In the afternoon, we relocated from Julian and Hermione's to the Edwards' in Clapham. Everyone seems to be sad in Clapham. We didn't pass a single happy-looking person between the bus and the Edwards' house. The Edwards (Edwardses?) themselves, however, are perfectly lovely and perfectly cheerful.

Jess and I ventured to Leicester Square in the evening to buy tickets for Avenue Q, and managed to secure excellent seats for tomorrow for £22 each, which made us very happy. Then we wandered around for a while, made friends with a magician in Hamley's, ( got attacked by sock puppets and otherwise had a very pleasant time. )

( And now, more photos. )

( And some for the linguists. )

Today we went to the Science Museum, where we spent hours pushing buttons and spinning things. Then we found virtual pets (like the Tamagotchis of old) in the shop, and bought those, because growing up really is overrated. Expect pictures of Glorfindel the penguin and Glorfindel the chicken soon. After the Science Museum, we went to the Natural History Museum, where we found more buttons to press, as well as acting very grown up and actually looking at the exhibits without buttons. But only until our feet got sore.

After that, we thought we'd walk to a vegan restaurant in West Kensington, but we couldn't work out which way to go and we were determined to go on foot rather than copping out and taking the tube. In our wanderings, we learned a valuable lesson - take the tube. We never found West Kensington, and bought lunch at EAT instead. We took a random bus to find a park in which to eat it (the lunch, not the bus), and we eventually found a pretty little park near Victoria station, where I accidentally attracted every pigeon in London by throwing a square inch crust of bread to the closest one. It led me to reconsider the fate of the human race. We may not be killed by robots; the pigeons could easily get us first.

Jess and I arrived safely in London this morning, and expertly navigated the underground (hindered in no way by Jess's enormous bag, which is probably not the world's largest suitcase, although we have no proof of that) to make our way to Julian and Hermione's house, where we'll be staying for the next two nights. They're lovely, their house is lovely, and we still feel like we've been hit by a bus after many hours of awkward semi-sleep on the plane.

Being the hardcore and awesome people that we are, we ignored our tiredness with the help of tea, and braved the sunny streets of London. We strolled along Fulham Road or perhaps the other big one that runs parallel to it, feeling delightfully spontaneous as we set out with no goal in mind. After only a little planning, we spontaneously took the first bus that came along and spontaneously jumped off in Knightsbridge so that we could wander through Harrod's, where everything is shiny and confusing and expensive. We were incredibly restrained and managed not to buy anything (despite the incredible temptation of Jim Butcher's Turn Coat and a very cool vegan cookbook for students). I was ready to eat the cookbooks by the time we left, so we went to find lunch, and ended up finding a very cool place called Wasabi, where we got take aways. We walked to Hyde Park to eat them, where we sat on two conveniently-placed deck chairs in the shade.

It turns out you don't get to sit on the deck chairs unless you pay for them. Unless, of course, you're South African.

The guy who comes to collect chair money (what is his job title?) asked us for money, so we moved to sit on the ground instead. He asked us where we were from, and when we told him, we had a conversation which went much like this:

"So are you Afrikaans?"
"No, we're English."
"But you stay in South Africa."
"Yes, we live there."
"But you're from England."
"No, we're South African."
"But... you're English?"
"Yes."
"So you're from England?"
"No, we're South African. We were born there."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Um, yes."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"But you're not black."
"No."
"But you're South African... Where the world cup is?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"Yes. Really."

Then he rubbed his arm, indicating that we were cool because he was black and we were supposed to be black, and said we could sit on the chairs until we'd finished our lunch. We did so. It was very pleasant. There was much rejoicing.

After way more walking than our Johannesburg legs are used to, we found our way home, drank more tea, and had an epic nap of epicness. Now there is food on the stove and a long summer evening ahead of us in which we plan to do nothing exciting at all. Eugepae!