Musings of Michael Linton

We landed in London and we confidently walked to get our rental car. That all went smoothly. They gave us the car keys and we went on our way. I went to jump in the car and was kindly reminded by my wife that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. “right”, I said, ” just getting the door for you honey.”

We started driving and it is a little different, but my strategy, I thought, was solid- closely follow the car in front of you. It didn’t help that we didn’t know where we were going. It needs to be noted that mine and Michelle’s and my navigating philosophies are polar opposites.  My strategy of getting somewhere is to jump in and drive and if we get lost to ask people or guess, but figure it out on the way there. Michelle’s strategy is to not start the car and go until you know where you are going.

Well, we were on our way. The first roundabout. I looked left and was following the car in front of me, missed the fact that a huge bus was barreling toward us- I quickly exited the roundabout and entered a different car rental place, where you can’t back up or else your tires will be popped. I was quite embarrassed, I then had to explain to the car rental people that I wasn’t returning the car, I was just lost.

Driving was a lot more difficult than I thought. More concentration required, narrower roads, unfamiliar area and signs and bad location GPS on the phone.

Michelle finally convinced me were lost and I stopped and added internet to the phone and asked a guy where to go. We were off..

After a few hours of driving we finally arrived in Bath, we found our rental place, which was an adventure in and of itself. Liam needed more baby food so we walked to the store, and found that the stroller wheel had been damaged on the flight, but was still functional. Liam didn’t mind. Next Day we were on to Stonehenge, which by the way is in the middle of nowhere.

I found it quite interesting. Definitely worth seeing. It wasn’t as tall as I had imagined or pictured. My journal for that day says  – “Stonehenge, it’s cool just because everybody thinks it is cool. Happy we went. Once in a lifetime thing- like, you don’t go back twice.”

Liam really seemed to enjoy Stonehenge. See the intrigue below.

After Stonehenge we went to find some dinner in Salisbury. We saw a huge cathedral and decided to go see.

It had an interesting modern art display that I really liked.

Also, while in that city I got a much needed haircut and talked to the hair cutter about our trip. She was bewildered why anybody would spend money to come see her city. It made me realize that we don’t really appreciate all that is close to us.

We didn’t want to take one long flight with Liam, so we broke up our flight out to London, into shorter flights- New York during the day, overnight flight the next day to Iceland (cheaper ticket), and then after one hour layover in Iceland on to London.

A day or two before we left for our England/Ireland trip I started to get a little nervous. All the regular concerns; can I fit 3 weeks worth of stuff in a carry-on, are work tasks going to be ok, do we have our plans and addresses and proper communications when we get there, and on and on and on. And then you add on the element of taking a 9 month old across continent and on overnight flights, packing baby food, diapers, stroller, cot for him to sleep in. Everybody around you looks at you like you are crazy, and not knowing what is going to happen you start to feel like you may be crazy too.

Here are a few highlights of our first international adventure with little Liam.

Mike Linton is no Ken Jennings

On the plane flight over there we played the delta trivia. I of course put my name as KenJen because Ken Jennings is the best trivia master ever. Half way through the flight, after I lose a round to others on the plane, a mother and a son come back to where were sitting and they introduce themselves as the others playing the trivia game and they just wanted to say “”hi”. I congratulated them for beating us. Well, I thought that was odd, but then I remembered what my screen name was- KenJen. They thought that they had just beaten Ken Jennings the trivia master and I saw the disappointment on the kids face when he finally made his way back to our seat 22e and found little old me and not Ken Jennings. That gave us a good laugh.

So some highlights from New York.

Saw the 9/11 Memorial

Then we observed the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, which I found quite intriguing, interesting and full of irony.

Found ourselves feeding and changing Liam anywhere and everywhere- this time in some random church cemetery (Michelle just informed me it was one of the oldest churches in NYC). And I was still taking pictures of everything. 

After our day tour of NYC, we made it back to the airport to catch our flight. We were a little nervous about the red-eye flight and having a baby that could cry all night, making it both uncomfortable for parents and passengers a like. We got three seats to ourselves for our overnight flight to Iceland. We discovered Liam loves drinking out of a water bottle, he is not too good at it, but he likes it. Well, he ended up doing really well on the whole flight

Liam slept like a little angel. All our worries for the 14ish hours of flying across continent were put to rest as Liam slept like he was in his crib. He cried for about 7 minutes on the overnight flight over to Iceland, but his mother pacified him and mostly the loud sounds of the airplane and the fact that everybody has earphones in helped it not be as stressful as we thought.