tgtravels

This is a blog about my travels. My "regular" life is much too boring to bother blogging about.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Birmingham/Bromsgrove/Hanbury/awesomeness

So, here I am. Jetlagged as hell and carrying a wee bit of a sniffle, but here nonetheless. The following things have happened so far:

-Thomas Cook REALLY crams people into the planes, I think there's even less room than Air Transat. I had a middle seat on my flight over, sandwiched between two rather burly men who made contact with me every time they moved. You can imagine how much I slept on the flight. I guess you get what you pay for - and I really didn't pay very much for this flight.

-I had the pleasure of informing three die hard Habs fans of Game 7's score in the Gatwick customs zone. They celebrated very loudly, and the customs agents told them to shut up.

-I've slept a lot, and at weird hours too. The couple that run my guesthouse are very pleasant, and have delighful Birmingham accents.

-I drank proper English beer at a proper English country pub with proper English people.

-There are sheep very close to my guesthouse. It's in the country, you see.

-I'm in Birmingham right now on a day trip, and have almost been hit by cars roughly 260 times. Evidently the cars here drive on the left side of the road. Who knew?

-It took me roughly 2 hours to begin complaining about the trains. How very English of me. But seriously, the amount they charge is scandalous: a return trip from London to Birminham, only about a two hour trip, cost about 65% of the cost of my flight. OF MY FLIGHT.

-The clouds move very quickly here. I had almost forgotten.

-I realized how much I like Birmingham, and regret not having spent more time here when I lived in Leicester.

Wedding tomorrow.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

So I'm buggering off again, and not a minute too soon. I'm off to England for a wedding + other matters, and then Scandinavia for an adventure. This trip will hopefully include scrumpy, baltis, Borough Market, Indian music stores, the cantankerous woman in Leicester who used to sell me cheese, the other cantankerous woman in Leicester who used to sell me jacket potatoes, schnapps, saunas, KD, rye bread, lingonberries, and so forth.

My plans in England are pretty set. 3 nights at a B&B in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, culminating in my dear friend Amy's wedding Saturday in Hanbury (just down the road from Bromsgrove). I may go into Birmingham the day before if I feel up to it. Then I'm off to London for four days of wandering, eating, CD bin digging, and other miscellaneous shenanigans. I will definitely be daytripping Leicester too.

And then, Scandinavia! I know the following: I am flying to Stockholm on UK Election Day, May 6. From there I'm heading to Örebro to visit my beloved friend Cailan. And I know that the weekend after, we're piling onto a ferry and heading to Finland (Helsinki? Turku?) for the Swedish long weekend. In between, ??? I'm thinking I might head down to Copenhagen to hang out with my dear friend Tiffany, who will have just moved there for the summer.

This kind of country hopping isn't really my bag these days. I much prefer to explore a city or region or country for a longer period of time. But I don't exactly have long periods of time to spare these days. Oh well.