Part two of the trip begins in London. The numbers thus far: 4 months, 11 countries, 17 flights, 59 different beers, 5200 photos.
We’ve also reached our most northerly point at 51 degrees, coming right after Rio our most southerly point at 22 degrees. We’re a little more than halfway round the globe now.
Arriving in the highly developed old world of Europe didn’t present too much contrast, coming as we had from a couple of the most developed cities in Latin America. The good fortune of a Business Class upgrade on British Airways courtesy of longtime friend of my fathers also helped ease us into the luxuries of home.
Well, home away from home – we’ve stayed at my parents house in London for a couple of weeks now, and have really enjoyed the break from a traveling lifestyle. It feels a bit like cheating actually, to enjoy all the comforts of home (and then some!) when you’re midway through the epic adventure. But we’d be kidding ourselves to pretend we’d been especially roughing it anyway.
I had been kidding myself about how much work I expected to get done whilst stationary in London. Despite some of the fastest Internet, best coffee and fewest distractions of the entire trip, my progress was decidedly lackluster.
And seeing as I’m sitting in the back of Dad’s car somewhere in France writing this, and that we’ve booked up most of the rest of our days in London plus an onward flight (to Berlin) less than two weeks from today, not much is likely to get done. Oh well. Luckily some good people are on the case.
Time has once again run away from us, and brought the realization that 11 months isn’t actually all that much time in which to traipse around the planet. We’re continuing to ruthlessly cut items from the itinerary, most notably (and disappointingly) Spain & Morocco.
Standing in the queue at Versailles yesterday I offered some small advice on French vocabulary in Spanish to a couple of Argentines, and lamented that we’ll miss the opportunity to make use of our relatively competent Spanish ability again on the trip.
We’ll be back from France for a final week in the UK, before continuing eastward to Berlin, and eventually southward onto, presumably, southern Europe and eventually the Middle East.
(les escargots in Versaille. Every bit as good as they look)
Our initial, vague, and admittedly poorly considered plans were to buy a couple bicycles and cycle through a sizable swathe of Europe. On paper you’ll agree this is a particularly awesome idea. When it finally came down to working on the logistics I was forced to admit that we’ve arrived far too late in the season for this to make sense. Cycle touring Europe seems to be about Central Europe, long summer days, and well equipped camp sites. Or short loops in France.
I was pretty disappointed to arrive at this realization – cycling is one of the things I’m missing most whilst traveling. Plus we were kind of hoping to have free rein to eat as much as we liked for a couple of weeks ;-) Even our fairly zealous jogging schedule doesn’t afford that.
Even without buying bikes, though, things are about to get a whole lot more expensive…
(At the baths in.. Bath)