And So The Trip Begins...
Preface- At the time of posting these articles, It has now been a month and a half since we came home from England. While we wrote many of these blog posts following the events of our trip, so much has happened since then! CoVid19 hit the world as we were leaving Canada. Just barely making it back home as they were closing borders, we came home to a new world, mandatory 14 day quarantine and a new way of operating our programs. It has taken us awhile to get back to these, so we apologize that they are coming out later than originally intended. We will be retroactively posting these blog posts every-couple of days, re-counting the things we did and the people we met along the way.
Sunday, March 1st 2020, 5:30pm - Arriving two hours early for our flight, we quickly checked in and made our way to the terminal, bubbling with excitement of our trip yet to come. The exuberance died down as we found out we had an extremely delayed flight and we settled into our seats for a good four hours while we waited for our flight. It was an interesting time to be departing for a trip as there were early news reports emerging of the now widespread Corona Virus outbreak. When we finally took off for our overnight flight, about two hours behind schedule, it was 10pm. We were very grateful to have had a direct flight.
Sleepy Day - Monday, March 2nd
After a sleepless flight of about 8 hours and 7 time zones later, we arrived at Gatwick Airport just outside of London, immediately commencing our 2-hour public transit journey to Peckham in South London where we had booked an AirBNB. When we finally arrived tired and sweaty, it was about 4pm. In efforts to avoid destroying our sleep schedule, we freshened up and pushed ourselves to stay awake, heading out of house in search of dinner. After much wandering, we discovered that our originally intended rooftop patio was closed, forgetting that it was still Winter and not the breezy summer night the weather suggested to our Canadian skin. We followed some legs up a stairwell and happened upon a delightful ramen shop called Tonkatsu where we indulged in some delicious (while mildly incendiary in Alia’s case) noodle bowls. This shop along with our originally intended destination, were down a small, non-descript alley that turned out to be a huge hub of creativity hosting artist run centers, studios, food shops, co-working spaces, beautiful murals and even an on-display/performance style one room tattoo parlor. This mini Mecca of creativity was called the Bussey Building.
Inspired and full, we trucked home and promptly crashed at 8pm in our respective rooms after a very, very long day.
A warm bowl of noodles to end the day
Two weary travellers sitting down for their meal
