“Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless, newborn baby–I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to–I just don’t care.”
ELIZABETH GILBERT, Eat, Pray, Love
Our last day in the United Kingdom was an interesting and sad day. I woke up that morning feeling slightly under the weather with head congestion and a stuffy nose, but I was eager to see what Belfast had in store for us on our last real day in the United Kingdom. We walked to the harbor, about a mile from our hotel, and visited the birthplace of the Titanic, and the Titanic Museum. The area that we walked was where the Titanic (and it’s sister ships) was designed, built, and launched. We saw the slip-yard where the giant ship was built and launched into the water.
The museum was fascinating! The structure of it itself was beautiful. The museum took us through Belfast during the time period and how it was the perfect location for shipbuilding. We got to see how the Titanic was built, the day-to-day lives of the dock workers that built it, the materials used, and the dangers the workers experienced ever day. It took us through building it, launching it into the harbor, adding the boilers that powered it, the infamous funnels, and all the elegant and elaborate furniture and decor. We got to see the set up of a first-class, second-class, and third-class rooms on board the ship and the different White Star Line china plates that were used for the different class citizens. And then we got to the sinking of the ship; there were the distress signals that the Titanic sent out all over walls and videos of survivors speaking about that fateful day. And then they had videos of the recovery attempts of the Titanic.
The slip-yard where the Titanic was built and launched. You can see the outline of where the Titanic was on this slip-yard.
After spending time at the Titanic Museum I could really feel my cold start to kick in and there was no way I would be able to walk to and walk around the Ulster Museum so we returned to our hotel and decided to take a nap, maybe I would feel better after that to continue exploring, but I was bedridden and we stayed in for the rest of the night. We did however get to watch the building across the street from us catch on fire. We looked out the window at all the smoke billowing out and the firefighters that came and put it out quickly. It was an exciting moment for a bit, but then I went back in to bed and watching TV. I was sad to have spent my last real day in the UK in bed, but if I had known what was coming in the next 36 hours, I would have gladly been sleeping the day away.
3:00 AM: I set about twelve alarms to go off 1-2 minutes apart just to make sure we didn’t sleep through them. We had packed up all of our stuff already so we were able to quickly get ready and check out of the hotel. We reached Belfast International Airport just before 4:00 and returned our rental car. At this point I was feeling awful. I had no cold medicine or tissues or anything and I just wanted to sleep. But when we went to check in our bags at the EasyJet counter and the girl told us our flight was delayed four hours to London, I quickly perked up due to adrenaline. We were supposed to fly into London Gatwick and land around 7:00 AM. Our WOW air flight was 12:20 from Gatwick to Reykjavik, Iceland. A 4 hour delay would barely give us time. Luckily there was another EasyJet flight leaving Belfast at the same time as our other flight except it was landing in London Stansted. They put us on that one for free and we were able to get through security and get some breakfast. I hate how airports in Europe (as far as I’ve seen) don’t tell you your gate until 30-45 minutes before it takes off! I absolutely hate that, because when I get to an airport I like to go to my gate immediately just so I know where it is and then go exploring to grab some food or just wait patiently at the gate. We just sat in the airport, counting down the minutes until they showed us where our gate was located on the screen and then had to rush off in the direction it told us too. Now London Stansted is one of London’s more northern airports and London Gatwick is it’s most southern. So we flew in to Stansted and then spent almost 100 GBP and almost 3 hours on trains to get all the way down to London Gatwick, where we still almost didn’t make our WOW air flight. And Alex almost got arrested at the Tube station in Victoria. Instead of using his train ticket as we exited the Stansted Express, he pulled out his Oystercard and his oystercard was then charged like over 7 GBP which was way more than he had on it and he couldn’t get through into the tube station while I was on the other side like What the Fuck is happening. Some lady let him squeeze through with her and that’s when the police officer stopped him and asked him if he would like to spend a night in London jail. He had to go back through, put some more money on his card and then we were on our way again to get to the Gatwick Express to the airport. At Gatwick, we stood in line at the WOW air bag check-in and of course in front of us were about three large groups of people all checking in, seriously like each group had 5-10 people in it. We barely made the bag-close time for our flight and went up to security amidst the loudspeaker apologizing for the huge delays in security. We were starting to mildly freak out. As we got up to security they had just opened up another station and we actually made it through rather quickly for security standards. We then rushed to our gate and waited a few minutes before boarding the WOW air jet to Iceland.
The flight to Iceland was less than three hours and we got to see beautiful views of the country as we landed. I only wished our layover was longer so we could get out and explore! I’ve always wanted to see Iceland. When we landed we walked down the steps of the plane onto Icelandic soil (or tarmac) and had to take a shuttle to the main airport. So I can say that yes, I’ve been to Iceland before, because I actually stepped outside the airport (ha!). We quickly bought some snacks that I thought I would be able to eat, wasn’t entirely sure because the ingredients were in Icelandic. And then we looked at our tickets. We were sitting in different seats from each other. On a NINE HOUR FLIGHT. I knew there must be a mistake, I had purchased the seats online myself and knew we were sitting together! We went to the help desk by our gate and they told us that they had to switch the aircraft last minute and had to assign random seats. We could get our money back for paying for the seats later though. Our hopes rested on the fact that maybe one of our seat companions would willingly switch so that we could sit together.
We got seats just across the aisle from each other by the emergency exit so we had plenty of leg room. But as we got onto the plane we realized the plane did not have an essential component for long ass flights across the world: a TV! What the hell kind of airline doesn’t have TV’s for transatlantic flights? We quickly found out a few things about WOW air on this trip, and are unlikely to use them again unless we are flying to Iceland (and even then, maybe not). WOW Air tickets are SUPER cheap, like stupidly incredibly cheap. Even during peak-season to London, like when we went, the price was unbeatable. However; we had to pay for baggage and for our seats. They don’t offer food or drinks, not even water, you have to pay (A LOT) for anything. Seriously we had to pay $3 for a small water bottle. And they don’t have ANY in flight entertainment. And we were on a backpacking trip of the UK, we didn’t bring our laptops and didn’t have any movies on our phone. The plane didn’t offer Wifi to buy; there was nothing. After purchasing baggage, seats (that we didn’t even get to use), food and drinks, the price probably equaled that of a British Airways or United Flight, which would have offered complementary drinks, food, and had the TV’s! I fortunately had my book and my music of course, but Alex didn’t bring anything! I love reading on flights, but nothing makes the time pass faster than watching movies.
So when everyone took their seats, we asked the girl next to me if she would trade and hop over the aisle to Alex’s seat so that we could sit together. She said “no” and that she had paid a lot for this seat. I hadn’t expected a flat out no like that; I grumbled that we had also paid for seats together but that didn’t work out. She still refused. Luckily the guy next to Alex was much more understanding and switched with me so that Alex and I were able to sit next to each other on the long flight. I don’t know what he would have done if I didn’t sit next to him because he spent the next eight hours playing minesweeper on my phone as I read.
Before we got in the air though we sat in the plane for almost two hours. That’s right, they put us all on the plane and then we sat on the tarmac for TWO FUCKING HOURS before our flight took off because of some air traffic problem. We could’ve been in the airport, eating dinner instead of having to buy terrible, over-priced airplane food, but instead we sat. Two hours later we were up in the air. At that point we had already been up and traveling for about 16 hours and we were exhausted; but seriously, how can anyone sleep on a plane? We tried so hard! Anyway, longest, most boring flight. Luckily we were at the emergency exit with our huge amount of leg room and the bathrooms were right in front of us so we had an easy time with those. I had to go in every two seconds to get more tissue to blow my nose because I was entirely sick and miserable. Nothing is worse than traveling when you’re sick.
As we landed in LAX, my head and ears were so congested that they refused to pop; it was such a painful landing for me, I thought my head would explode. But as we landed and my ears didn’t pop, I seriously could not hear a thing. It was awful! After landing we walked out of the plane onto the tarmac and had to take a shuttle to the airport. Seriously, what the hell, I don’t think WOW Air has a hanger, we landed out in the middle of nowhere and had to take this long ass shuttle ride to the airport, where we stood in line FOREVER to get through passport check and customs. Seriously, the LAX customs was so unorganized, I had never experienced anything like it. We got through 5X faster in London and we were the FOREIGNERS! We were U.S. citizens here and it took maybe an hour to get through? Maybe more? At London Heathrow, when we first arrived, it was such a quick process, and even quicker for the UK and EU residents who got to walk through a different line and basically just flash their passports. Customs at LAX were awful and there were so many pointless steps involved. We had to scan our own passport and confirm information that we already confirmed on the immigration form they have us fill out on the plane. It then takes your picture and prints out a slip of paper with your info and picture on it. (What the hell is a passport for then?!) Homeland security then stamped the stupid paper instead of passport (seriously what is our passport for then?! The stupid paper literally had the same info as our passport!) and then we handed our cards in to the guy and went to get our baggage and NOT declare anything and hand in our little paper passports. My god it was a ridiculous process.
So now we were finally at LAX, much later than we had planned to be. We were going to take a bus to the MetroLink and take a train to Ontario or San Bernardino. I looked up the train times and we were too late for any of the trains that would take us to Ontario and the only train we could make for San Bernardino left at 9:45 PM and didn’t get to San Bernardino until midnight. We were so exhausted, we had been up for over 27 hours, and we were not going to take a train to San Bernardino at midnight. If anyone has ever been into the depths of SB, it is quite terrifying, even in daylight. Luckily, we have amazing friends that do amazing things for us, and our two friends drove out to LAX to pick us up and take us straight home in the comfort of their car where I could sleep and not worry about my stuff being stolen.
I wish I could say that was the end of our crazy travels, but the next morning we woke up and drove 7+ hours to Northern California where we stayed at our parents’ house for a few days before driving back down again (but this time with my mom and dog, Sirius) to move the rest of my things out to Arizona. But that’s a whole other story.
Despite our travel day from hell, I look back so fondly on our trip. It ended way too soon, I could have stayed and traveled for weeks and weeks after. The United Kingdom was a beautiful, fun, and history-filled place to travel around. There was still so much to see and I can’t wait to return to explore it some more! Scotland was definitely the highlight of the trip, but I can’t think of a single day that I did not enjoy.We learned a lot about the countries, the cultures, and the histories of each country we visited. The people were so wonderful and kind, and we made so many memories. I highly recommend a jaunt across the pond to the U.K. for anyone.
Already missing the green hills of bonnie Scotland, the bustling streets of London, and the misty roads of Northern Ireland’s coast.
Our Last Day in the U.K. “Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.
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