Day One of Travail: The Never Ending Day

This is a tale of traveling travail.

I must begin this tale with a list of excuses. To do otherwise would be to allow more stupidity then I am already going to admit. And there’s a good deal of it to go around, have no fear. I will, in no way, come out looking like the brightest tool in the shed or the sharpest crayon in the box, regardless of these excuses. The list follows and will make no sense until you have read the post (feel free to skim and return to them later). Nevertheless - I am putting my excuses front and center. 

1. We had to book the houses for the road trip before detailed planning for the move to England (in January to be exact - think about renting a beach house on the coast - one must begin at least six months in advance to get something decent).
2. We had to rent the van in France because it was thousands of dollars less expensive. 
3. We had no way of knowing about needing to pick up the identity cards until after we applied for them (instructions at the end of the process) and you can’t apply for them before a couple of months before your trip.
4. Googlemap time estimates in Europe are hours off. Much different then the States where they are more or less accurate plus or minus an car accident or two.
5. My husband thought of (thinks of) this tale as a tale of triumph. I think of it as a tale of mishaps and lost efficiency and a great deal of failure - of travail. But, we are still around and "what doesn't kill you it makes you stronger",  so I guess he is righter then me.

OK - on to the stupidity and failure.

On July 31st we awoke to the sound of waves in Rehoboth, Delaware. We had just finished 5 days with the best in-laws a girl could want. It was the perfect breather between packing up our home to prepare for our tenants and our 7-week European road trip which was going to culminate in moving into our Oxford home for 10 months. Around noon we packed up our few beach things, said our final goodbyes and drove 4 hours to drop off our van and catch our ride to the airport. 

We took 2 medium suitcases, two small suitcases, two travel camp beds, two boosters, two strollers and a small army of backpacks and kindles. Got to the gate with no problem. It was the last time I’d feel like, “I got this. I am ROCKING this.”

Our flight left at 8ish on a Monday night. I passed out the Melatonin gummies I had packed for this trip while the kids answered to siren call of Icelandic Air’s inflight entertainment. I tried to sleep, I did. But IT WAS HAPPENING!!! I was going to Iceland! To England! To Europe! I was NOT packing up my house! That might have been the best part in that particular moment. The only kids who slept a wink on the flight were the two who also had fevers (because, of course…). So we landed in Iceland at 2:30 AM EST. (6:30 a.m. Icelandic time). Honestly, the entire Iceland situation is a blur of utter and complete exhaustion for me.

There was at least 1.5 hours of kids collapsed on the airport floor in a dead sleep while John hunted around for the strollers (that ended up being checked all the way through to London). So we were stroller-less and had no plans except to wander around Reykjavik and discover cool Iceland stuff (the tours we had initially planned on doing were all too long for our 10-hour layover). There was also very long walks in search of a bakery. When we found the bakery there was a line. When we ordered eight croissants and paid for them we discovered too late that it cost $45. No way were they that good. The rest of Iceland for me was spent just trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other, carrying a small child or two and keep other kids moving. There isn’t a coffee or a 5-hour Energy strong enough to deal with that degree of tired.

I have pictures of Iceland that are beautiful and wonderful
However, this is the internal story, not the external story.
And these pictures are more accurate a portrayal of the experience
even though that does not reflect the awesomeness that Iceland is. 

Somehow we made it onto the next plane and landed in London at 9:30 pm that day. As we are getting off the plane Thomas (9 years old) starts wailing. Thomas is NOT a public wailer. He ascribes to the "real men don't cry" school of thought.

So we were pretty quickly alarmed. He went to the side of the gangway and just curled up in a fetal position on the floor. We requested a wheelchair and started thinking about how to get him to a doctor to rule out appendicitis. Parading through the airport, we picked up our luggage and then went to wait in line  for customs. The line was…absolutely amazing. Winding around and around and around a huge room. But, because of Thomas’s wheelchair we got into a very short and fast medical-needs line! Woohoo! But a very subdued woohoo because it wasn’t worth the price of the poor child’s pain. We were through customs by 10:30, which was awesome. Thomas’s episodes of pain seemed to be coming slower. Then it was revealed that it had been several days since he'd visited the bathroom in a particularly important way. Ahem. So at least at that point we were pretty sure we knew what was happening. He was still uncomfortable but we didn't think it would require hospitalization.

You'd think that at this point our night would be nearly over and light was at the end of the tunnel. And so it was, sort of. But before we could leave the airport John had to go rent a car for the morning run to Oxford (details on that ridiculousness to follow) and get SIM cards for the phones. He ran off to slay those dragons and I was there with the kids, the luggage, and the wheelchair.

All we had eaten in the last 35 hours were airplane pretzels and those highly over-rated croissants in Reykjavik so I hauled around all that stuff and all those people in search of some chips or chocolate (the only things available at 11pm on a Tuesday night in the airport). I ended up buying some very weirdly flavored Cajun Cheetos accidentally. Tired. So tired. Hungry. So hungry. So hangry, truthfully. It took forever. We didn’t leave the airport until midnight. We were now at 36 hours with no significant food or sleep, two kids with fevers and another one doubled over with abdominal pain. 
         John stuffed the tiny compact car with most of the luggage and most of the kids and drove them a harrowing half hour to an apartment we had rented for just that night (more will follow about the complication he encountered on his first UK drive). Rosie, Gloria and I took a taxi drive to the apartment. It took for forEVER to figure out how to get in. The kids were all crying or punching. In fact, we first walked into what was clearly some other person’s kitchen (at 1 am - poor folks - we probably scared the begeesus out of them). Finding the correct door we walked into a very cramped place without enough beds. The kids started collapsing onto beds here or there. Thomas was asleep the SECOND his head hit the pillow. A pain-induced first in his entire life (never has there been a more restless sleeper than him, usually). There weren’t enough beds for all of us so John and I put together the camp beds. I fell into my own bed in my clothes and hit a rock. I mean, it was technically a mattress but it was as hard as plywood. Of course. That’s about right. End of Day One. 

Kid-o-bunks in action. Cece on the bottom, Anthony on top. We used the heck out of these and we are still using them everyday in Oxford.

Day Two would be used for recuperating. NOT!

        This is where things get complicated. The devil is truly in the details. We needed to rent that compact car at the airport because John need to leave at the butt-crack of dawn to go and pick up his Damn Biometric ID Card (do you sense how I felt about that situation?). These are ID cards that we needed because we would be returning to the UK as residents. We needed to pick them up within 10 days of arriving but we were immediately leaving for France to pick up our van (see excuse #2) and we couldn’t delay for a day to take care of this business of moving (see excuse #3) because we had already booked 7 weeks worth of “holiday homes” on the continent and couldn’t just bump our itinerary back a day (see excuse #1). 
         In our planning phase we had learned this information in such a way and in such an order that our gentle entry plan with our day of recouping after a draining travel day just kept getting squashed right out and looking more and more unmanageable. To make matters worse our biometric ID cards had been mailed to separate post offices. Seven of them (the kids and me) in London near our one-night-stand apartment and John's to Oxford, near our future residence. Hence, John rented a small (cheap) car for the morning to 1. buzz over to Oxford. He was supposed to be back in time for us to get from the apartment, to 2. the other post office for me and the kids to pick up our Damn Biometric ID Cards (found out later that all 6 kids had to be present in order for me to pick up), 3. catch the train to 4. the Tube to 5. another train to 6. the taxi to 7. the ferry from Dover to France where 8. our van would be waiting and we would drive 3 short hours to arrive in 9. Normandy. With all the luggage. And the six kids. Having barely slept or ate. (Insert maniacal, devilish laughter because the DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS). 
          If you are wondering why we didn’t just plan to get a van and drive with the kids and the luggage to run these errands and then over to the ferry then you will be answered with the feeble excuse that it seemed absurdly expensive to rent a big enough van for one day and drop it off in a location other then where it had been rented. In retrospect, WORTH EVERY PENNY, is what it would have been. 

        I want to take a moment to refer you back to the aforementioned excuses. Did we think this would all work? Well, one of us had a lot of hope and optimism and one of us...didn't. 

Day Two in our next installment of my Tale of Travel Travails.