Back to the UK! Part 1: Getting Here

Funny thing about taking a 2 ½ year break from international travel, you forget all your routines… including things like taking photos (never mind posting them!), and putting blogs out into the world. 

 

Which is why I’m just now writing about the beginning of my trip when I only have a couple days left of it. Oops… oh well.   

 

But all that aside… Didja hear? I left the country! For the first time since December of 2019!

I can’t say that travel has lost its Covid-era hassles yet, much like the world hasn’t actually exited the days of the ‘Rona, no matter how much people like to pretend everything’s back to normal. I was originally supposed to fly into Manchester on June 2^nd, and spend a night there before taking the short train to Stoke on Friday for the Robbie Williams Homecoming gig. But a few weeks before, my Manchester flight got cancelled, and my only change options were to land into Heathrow, then go across town and fly to Manchester out of Gatwick, or change to a different flight out of Seattle that had no seats available. I said no to both, which meant I had to cancel and rebook my flights to leave Seattle a day early, and stay in London for 2 days instead of Manchester for one. And that was only the first wrench thrown in my carefully planned itinerary.

The other funny thing about getting back to international travel after a long hiatus is that some things never change. Heathrow is still a giant misery, everything takes longer than it should, and 9 of 10 travellers appear to have taken an IQ-reducing pill prior to arriving at the airport.

And going away to known and unknown far-off places is still my very favourite thing.

There’s not really much to say about my roughly 48 hours in London at the start of the trip. Despite having my first class sleeper pod, I didn’t get much sleep on the long haul flight, as usual. Which meant my first afternoon and evening was nothing but me trying to stay awake as long as possible to try to adjust to the time, as usual. My extra day was also largely unmemorable, just sleeping late, doing a bit of shopping, and getting excited about heading to my popstar’s hometown for the weekend. 

Before I knew it, it was Friday and I caught a train up to Stoke-on-Trent for Robbie’s 2 year delayed Saturday night show at Port Vale. 

But more on that in Part 2…