Our taxi was right on time and we made it back in time to regroup before breakfast. Our train to Southampton was scheduled to leave at 11:25 and in true Bob fashion, we were at the station a full hour ahead of time. We'd rather be way early than deal with the stress of cutting it too close.
Things we learned about riding the trains in England:
1. Don't travel with large suitcases. There is very little storage room on those cars for big bags.
2. Don't travel on a Friday afternoon.
3. Reserved seats really don't mean that much. Don't waste your money.
4. It's typical to miss connections. Plan on missing yours if you have one.
5. People get bored when standing in a crowded vestibule for long periods and tend to strike up conversation. And believe me, they will tell you any and everything.
This is how it went down:
We reserved seats thinking we'd rather play it safe than be sorry since we'd never done this before. There wasn't a train that went straight to Southampton. We had to change trains in Wolverhampton (told you there are strange names for things here), and we had 10 minutes to do so. Bob said he knew that it was gonna be tight but there we no other choices. Having no idea what the station in Wolverhampton was like, whether it was small or large, busy or not, we really didn't
know what to expect, but were a bit concerned. Anyway, we board the train we're staying on to Woverhampton with all our baggage (2 large suitcases, a carry on with extra stuff just to lighten the load of my big bag, loaded down camera bag, purse, Bob's carry on with our headphones and miscellaneous stuff). There's overhead room for the smaller bags but what little luggage rack provided for larger bags was stuffed to the gills. So what do we do? For real. Bob puts our luggage in our reserved seats. LOL We sat in nearby seats that also said reserved but there wasn't anyone to claim them. At each stop (and there were quite a few) we crossed our fingers we wouldn't lose the seats. The Gods were with us - we didn't. Then ... they must've moved on to something more important because our train was about 10 minutes late getting in and as we dragged all our stuff over to the next platform (just a couple of flights of stairs, no biggie) our train was pulling off. We had to wait an hour for the next train. Not the end of the world, I know. The frustration came in because getting in touch with Lynne to let her know we'd be an hour later proved to be a challenge.
Even though I had purchased an international cellular plan, it didn't seem to be working. I had Lynne's number stored in my message in Facebook. Yeah, in retrospect I realize that wasn't the smartest. Well, messenger wouldn't work. I tried several times to post to Facebook and tag Lynne to let her know we'd missed our connection. Facebook wouldn't post anything for me. So then I sent Mike and Laurie both texts asking if they'd post on Facebook and let Lynne know we'd be late. It was a big stressful. Then the real fun began. :) Our train was on time - that was a good thing. There were lots of people boarding. That wasn't such a good thing. We both know it wasn't looking too good to get a seat and have a place for the big bags. It wasn't. Long story short is that we ended uo standing in the vestibule of that car until we got to Southampton - 3 hours later. I kid you not. Not the best way I've spent an afternoon in a while. But hey, we survived.
Lynne was right there to greet us and boy was she a sight for sore eyes!! We spent some time catching up with her and Joan before going to dinner at The Plough. Bob, Lynne and I all got the fish and chips, as it came highly recommended. Holy Mother of God. I wish I had thought to take a photo of the plate. It was a standard size plate and the fish was hanging off of it. I couldn't believe a person was supposed to actually eat all of that - in one sitting!! I did manage to get the fish down but left a lot of the batter. Oh, and the there was this whole discussion on mushy peas. LMAO. For us Americans, I guess I'd say it's petty much what it sounds like, mashed up peas. I'm not sure why baby food would be so appealing to adults but I'm not wasting too many brain cells trying to figure it out. I'm still practicing saying Southampton the proper way. Yeah, there was a whole discussion about that as well. It's not South Hampton. It's Southampton. Got it? LOL yeah, neither did it. I think I do now but I'm sure I'll be corrected if I don't. It's more like Sow thampton all together, really quick.
Now the big one - Yorkshire Pudding. Bob and I had some of that at Oddfellows the other night. I described it, remember? We were telling Lynne about it and I thought she was gonna have a coronary with us saying Yorkshire Pudding. Yup. Yet another thing we were saying wrong. It's actually Yorksure puddin'. That's the proper way to pronounce it. We're trying to remember that. I'm sure we'll flub it up again though. Could be worse. There could be long calculations involved instead of just touching a letter ...
We came back to Joan's, Bob and I unpacked and pretty much died - after playing some Fruit Ninja together on my iPad. I won that round. Tonight may be a different matter though. (I'm writing this on Saturday.) As we went to turn our lights out Bob says, "uh oh." SMH the boy done broke the light. It has a pull string and when he pulled it, it completely broke. Uh uh uh.
Not any major plans tomorrow. We'll see what the day brings. Maybe Bob will fix the light. :)
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