The Weekend
Roof tops as seen from our bedroom window
Friday: After work we decided to go out for a night on the town and see what the Bournemouth nightlife is all about… and discovered not too much if you are not interested in clubs or dance music. Any pub or bar you are in turns into a dance club at the stroke of 10. After hitting up one bar and having two different watery, flat and flavorless beers, we scooted back to the other end of town where we finally found a pub with potentially decent live music instead of some awful DJ. Unfortunately the band (the “StereoIronics”, a Stereophonics tribute band) was also pretty bad. At least the beers were good and we were able to watch some 5 foot tall guy dance his spazzy little heart out. Walked past the Bournemouth Eye on the way home. It’s this big hot air balloon that people can ride to get a great view of the city. They light it up at night like a giant balloon shaped lantern.
Saturday: Saturday was a rather cold, cloudy and windy day. A perfect day for the beach! We trudged out to the nearly empty beach and had a nice blustery stroll along the seaside. Decided to go for a walk on the pier, where we stopped for tea in a cafe and read out of the reach of the angry winds. After that we meandered up through the central gardens where among other things we got ice cream, watched the pigeons fight for dominance and found a flock of emo kids (or is it a murder of emos as in crows.) Knowing emo kids they would probably want to be a “soul crushing darkness” of emos.
It was on our walk home that we noticed “Gee there are a lot of kids walking around in costumes.” Although this isn’t too out of place as previously we had seen many people going to theme nights at the bars and clubs in crazy costumes. After asking around we found out that the University of Bournemouth throws a “Summer Ball” where all the uni kids get into costumes, drive out to a field near the airport, and party the night away to bands and DJs. Courtney was a little bummed that she didn’t know about this huge costumed event, but turned out it had been sold out for about 2 months and it rained the whole night, so no big loss.
-
- Old picture, but Courtney has the Camera
Sunday: Rained all day, so we stayed in and slept though most of it. (Yeah, we are exciting I know.)
Spent the last portion of the day watching the subtitled, Russian masterpiece: Solaris……Yeah that’s 3 hours of my life that I will never get back, but Dave insists that the book is good.
Number one reason why our bathroom is awesome.
Jealous?
Enough said.
My Papers are Clean
Slightly Moistened
Laundry day today. My lovely wife was so kind today as to do some laundry for the first time since we have been in England. Unfortunately, I had been keeping my passport in the pocket of my black jeans, as we are not entirely moved in as of yet and I did not have a place to put it. Courtney didn’t check the pockets. Results are the soggy pages you see to the left. I have not washed my wallet or anything in my pockets other than the occasional receipt or dollar bills. Now we had just laundered the most important document I have with me.
It had only occurred to me when we were booking a room for our next trip, for which I would need my passport. I ran downstairs to the washing machine, which is a side loader and would not unlock so that it would not flood the kitchen. After turning it off, then on, then pausing it and messing with the settings, we finally read the manual which lets you know that you have to wait 2 minutes before it will unlock for you.
Fortunately everything including the ID page and my Brittish Visa were intact, if a bit wrinkled. Courtney finds this whole mishap to be quite funny, although I find little humor in my own suffering.
“Hole” bunches of fun at the beach.
Hole. Brought to you by Courtney.
Went down to the beach again today after Dave finished up at work. Just about perfect out. Mid 70’s, Sunny and warm with a light breeze.
Walked along the beach for a bit picking up rocks and shells, then found a place to sit and relax. Dave read his book, enjoyed the sun and the outdoors and watched the people and the sea……I dug a big hole.
What else was I going to do with it?
Almost got down to the water level, but it got really rocky at the bottom and we started to run out of light. I found hole digging to be hungry work and Dave wanted some chow as well, so we stopped by ASDA (that is the British equivalent of Wal-Mart) for some provisions, followed by a hole in the wall fish and chips joint then turned in for the evening.
First Weekend in Bournemouth
The Bournemouth Pier and Beach
After finding a place to live on Friday we embarked upon our first weekend in England.
Saturday: The beach. I am posting this specifically to make everyone jealous. It was quite a lovely bright sunny day in the low 70s. Courtney was quite happy to not be the palest person around for once. The beach is a great sandy beach, although you do have to hike down a zig-zagging trail to get there if you don’t go down right by the peer.
Courtney lookin' good
There is amazingly little trash on the beach, and it is no where near as packed as your average nice California beach on a sunny summer day. David only got burned very slightly, a patch on one ankle and on the back of one of his knees, which I consider a success. Over all a quite nice day.
The Bournemouth Gardens
Sunday: Star Trek. Not very touristy I know to see a movie, but it is a very good movie. Live long and prosper. Afterwords we did catch some local flavor. We went to the Bournemouth Gardens and saw the aviary where Courtney tried to poke her fingers through the cage to get at the birds. We read some then watched a band that started playing. Some guy in neon blue Crocks walked out right in front of the bandstand 2 songs in and told the band to be quiet because they had woken his baby. We also got to see once again a bum wearing extemely short blue jean cutoffs and a denim vest (no shirt). Sexy!
I’m Not a Homeless Bum Now, Just a Regular Bum
Our new home in Bournemouth
Well, it was a close call, not many are dumb enough to to travel to a foreign country without a place to live and only 2 nights stay in a Hotel, but I am! Don’t worry though, after much searching the British version of Craigslist, we finally decided on a place. In part because it was a good mix of cheap and clean and close, and also because we were sitting in the hotel lobby at 5pm with nowhere to stay that night, but we are decided. Its a nice little house in the Sprinbourne neighborhood. The landlords were nice enough to pull us out a bed from somewhere and let us move in tonight, even though they didn’t plan on having it ready for another week. Anyway, here are the pics from the ad.
Our room
The Beginening: It Has Begun
Swine Flu
A 16 hour plane trip with 3 different stops over 2 days, nothing could go wrong with that right? …or so Courtney tried to assure me. She seemed to be right for a good while too.
The Journey started out fine enough. Up at 5am to catch out 7am flight to Chicago. Ate some Pizzaria Uno while in the airport and waited for our next flight to Newark NJ. Got into Newark late afternoon, had some sushi, which was surprisingly good for raw fish bought in an airport.
The Newark to Dublin leg was the longest flight we took. Saw our bags being put onto the jet as well. That was a relief. One of the last things I saw of America was the statue of liberty sitting there looking surprisingly small from the airport. Very poetic or something.
Although we didn’t get any free seats next to us (so much for the recession keeping people from traveling) the flight was still pleasant enough and we had those in-seat computer things upon which I decided to watch “Paul Blart:Mall Cop” for some unknown reason. Didn’t get any sleep on this overnight flight, but, what can you do.
The sun started coming up as we were set to land in beautiful Dublin, Ireland, and at 6:30 on time to boot! Then, out of no where ::cue dramatic music::
SWINE FLU
The captain informed us that we would be coming to a park on the tarmac for a little while because 3 people reported being ill. I looked out the window and saw in the middle of the tarmac a couple of police cars and about 4 ambulances waiting for us because they suspected that the sick people might have swine flu. So we wait. We are quarantined because the Irish Health Service isn’t quite sure what to do. After about an hour they decide they are going to send someone on the check out the sick people. So on come a couple of people in safety green vests and masks. Meanwhile I am looking at my watch as our next flight is at 9:30. Eventually they tell us that we are OK, and it is in fact not that evil dastardly swine flu we keep hearing about. So they are going to send busses over to where we are parked to take us to the terminal, and they will even unload us from the front and the back to make things go a little bit quicker. Turns out Courtney and I were sat in the very smack dab middle of the plane. Things even stop moving entirely at some point when the first set of busses fill up. Finally we make it back to the terminal.
9am. And we have to get our bags from one international flight, go through customs, and check our bags into the second flight before it leaves in a half hour. It turns out that a half hour is just barely not enough time to do all of those things when running around with the 100 lbs of baggage that contains everything we will use for the next 6 months. So after a half an hour of running around like that after only having had 4 hours of sleep in the last two days, in desperation we start walking to the ticket counters to see what can be done.
Apparently nothing is the answer. We just missed the only flight that day into Bournemouth, and Courtney’s class is the next morning before the next flight would get us in. Exhaustedly we start walking from desk to desk to see if any airlines had any flight to Bournemouth, and it just so happens they don’t. At least they said no in a lovely Irish accent that made it ever so slightly more bearable.
Plan B. Find the next best thing. Next best thing is a 4pm flight to a neighboring town and then a train ride that when added together slightly surpassed the cost of our entire inter-continental trip thus far. They love to get you on those same day tickets. Had to bite the bullet though, Courtney needed to get there that day, so we bought the tickets and Courtney passed out. We spent the next several hours there waiting for our flight.
Its about 4am the day after we started Phoenix time, about 24 hours into our trip. We find some comfy leather chairs near a Starbucks (you really can’t escape those things). Courtney sleeps, while I try desperately not to for fear of our luggage getting stolen. I slip in and out of sleep anyway having vivid and strange dreams immediately upon closing my eyes.
Eventually we get on that last plane where I am lights out immediately. Oh so good. Then a quick train ride and I have my second wind. Finally about 6pm, 28 hours after begining we pulled into Bournemouth station and had a taxi take us to our hotel, but being the masochists that we are we couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to walk around for an hour or two and see the sights before stopping at pub, grabbing some food and a pair of Caffrey’s then going back to our hotel and at very long last falling asleep at journey’s end.
Our Blog
This blog is about David and Courtney McMeekin as Courtney does her travel nursing thing in the UK and David does the same old thing different continent. For those of you who visited our wedding blog, we have the very best intentions of updating this more often with more interesting things and more photos of our travels in Europe. We will see how that turns out, but I am willing to give it a shot. Call it a mid-year’s resolution. Anywho… as we get into shenanigans, you should be able to find out about them here.
Courtney M.
The Nerd
A Nurse and A Nerd 