Last December I traveled to London with my boyfriend to experience the holidays in a different country. We were staying in Shoreditch, an artsy little neighborhood in London, for nearly two weeks.
The two the things I was most excited for were having high tea one evening and then roadtripping to Salisbury the next day! Ironically, these two things went the most wrong.
The day of our reservation for high tea was a fairly warm one. The sun was shining the entire afternoon. We’d spent the morning horseback riding through Hyde Park. On our way back to our flat the sky became gray and we just knew it was getting colder. We wanted to shower and get dressed up for our fancy date! We had about two hours to fix ourselves up and make it to the tea room just in time.
However, when we got back to the flat our door would not open. My boyfriend, Mike, must’ve tried the lock about 50 times before we admitted we were really screwed! It wasn’t budging. The rain started, two hours had passed, and we were still not making any progress with opening our door. Eventually we called a locksmith – the only one open that late. Thankfully someone picked up. Another hour passed before the man came. He examined the lock and told us the handle had literally rusted and we never would have been able to open the door. He ran out to his truck and came back with a saw that had to cut through the metal bolts! We’d missed our tea, but hey, we got a new door…
The next morning we woke up early, ready for a better, and hopefully warmer, adventurous day. The car rental establishment told us we’d have to pick up our car no later than 8:30am. We calculated the distance and left early enough to give us an extra 15 minutes in case the cabbie got lost or such. About 10 minutes later, to add to all of our stress, we pulled up to a cottage. A house! No car rental place to be found. They gave us the wrong address – where they used to be located. I was ready to lose my mind!!! We must’ve walked around for half an hour before a man directed us to the nearest car rental agency. When we arrived they told us our reservation was, yet again, at one of their other locations. We were incredibly late by the time we finally got to the right place. Thankfully they understood we’d had a very hectic morning and gave us our car without any question.
Finally, we were off. Fast-forward two and a half hours later…
It was about noon. A light drizzle was enough to fog up the bus windows almost entirely. The air outside looked frigid, a dark sky swooping low to the ground. The ride from the information center was only about two minutes or so. I sat, camera looped around my neck in my narrow seat. Tourists from around the globe packed the rows behind me, chatting in their native tongues. I leaned over Mike’s lap, pushing his head out of my way teasingly, trying to see if it was finally in view. All I saw were miles and miles of emerald green grass, damp and dewey. A single raindrop slid down the window right as I was about to turn my head. For some reason, it made me smile. The raindrop created in its own path, down to the window frame. I thought of the bus creating fresh tracks in the muddy road beneath us. The bus halted sharply and the doors swung open.
I grabbed my Mike’s hand and stood abruptly. We had to be the first one’s off the bus. I had no patience left! The air felt even worse than it looked once outside. The drizzle of rain had turned to sleet and hail, hitting us in our eyes and ears. It was painful and hard to see, but when my eyes adjusted to the light I’m sure they nearly popped out of my head. I felt like fainting – and it had nothing to do with our chaotic morning or the hailstorm striking us. We were here. We’d made it. Stonehenge.
There is no way to travel the world and expect to have everything run smoothly. There are bound to be missed flights, cancelled excursions (or tea dates), language/cultural barriers, etc. I may have missed out on having a high tea experience in England, and we may have had a really rough time getting to Salisbury, but I learned a valuable lesson: embrace the mess!
A few things may have gone wrong but I was still in an amazing country with my very best friend. We shared countless laughs over our misfortune then, and when re-telling the story today, we laugh all over again. Beautiful memories can be made in both good and bad times. Go with the flow, don’t be too uptight, and enjoy all the crazy messes life throws your way. It makes traveling all the more worthwhile!