I'm entering this post approximately one and a half years after my trip to England. I had the opportunity to re-read my posts and blogs as I got ready for my trip and my travelogue as I traveled through England.
Here are a few of my after-comments as I sit back and reflect:
1. Prior to leaving, I did some rough calculations on how many times I thought I'd be riding the train and tried to factor in my potential use to determine whether or not it was worth my money to buy my rail pass in advance or wait and buy point-to-point when I got there. I decided to buy ahead of time and I should have waited to buy point-to-point in England. I REALLY wanted to go to more places than I had the time or inclination to get to and I ended up losing money on transportation. Lesson--Factor in the fact that I might get so doggone tired that I can't drag myself to the train station to make it out of town!
2. I didn't anticipate how crowded Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum would be and I wasted some time in line and I reallly should have decided well in advance if I even wanted to go to this museum. While researching my trip, I thought it would be a nice diversion but once I got there, I realized I didn't really care if I got in or not and wasted time getting there and trying to decide if I wanted to continue to wait. Lesson--Stick with my gut feelings about whether or not I want to visit an attraction, even if all the reviews are positive and everyone tells you to go.
3. I knew there was allot to see and do in London but I really underestimated how many things there were to do and how long it would take to do everything. Lesson--Work hard at overestimating all the things I want to see and pare down according to how much time I plan on spending in the area.
Other than these few things, I've got to say this trip was an awesome experience. It was my first experience traveling overseas alone and even though I got a little homesick, I loved the experience.
Traveling alone makes me feel as though I can do just about anything! If I can get completely lost and find my way back to my hotel, if I can make my way all over London by tube, train, and bus without panic, if I can walk and walk and walk until I think my legs are going to fall off and STILL keep going, if I can do all of these things and more and do them away from my personal safety zone, then I can do anything.
And if I can do it, you can too!
I am devoting this particular entry to the chore of packing.
Packing for any trip can be exciting but we tend to over-pack and take along every incidental we can think of, don’t we?
My personal travel guru is Rick Steves. If you haven’t ever caught any of his travel shows, they air only on Public Television but you can get tons of hints and tips on everything related to travel on his website. His series “Europe Through the Back Door” was instrumental in turning me on to overseas travel and I’ve been a fan of his ever since. I could go on and on about all of his shows and everything I’ve learned from reading his books but suffice to say you need to check out his stuff on your own whenever you’ve got the time.Rick’s mantra regarding packing is this: Pack light. You’ll hear him say it over and over again; you’ll never be lugging a couple of suitcases up a hill while you’re running to catch a train and thinking, “Gee, I wish I’d packed more stuff.” I took what he said to heart on my first overseas trip and plan to do so again on this one. I packed one suitcase/bag that could fit into the overhead compartment and carried a backpack on the plane with my necessary flight stuff. That was it. It was hard to do and even with that, I think I packed too much, but live and learn, eh? I have found (and used) all of these websites and then whittled down all the information to make my own packing list. Find one you like and do the same. I guarantee, you’ll travel better if you do.The first one is, of course, Rick’s packing list. Keep in mind that he is a man and women must make adjustments but the fundamentals are there. His website also has recommendations for what women should pack.The second site is fun and informative. It’s called OneBag.com, The Art & Science of Packing Light. It’s a great website that offers tons of tips on what to pack and how to pack it. The author also provides bits of science and information on the how’s and why’s of packing. All in all, a wonderful site you’ll probably bookmark it and use over and over again.(*Note to readers. As of this re-posting, the site for the universal packing list appears to be down at this time. If you wish to try again in the future, http://upl.codeq.com) The Universal Packing List is an interactive list that lets you input information about how you’re traveling, what the weather will be like, what you want to take and the type of place you’re staying at and then generates a list of the items you should pack based on the information you feed into it. It generates a pretty lengthy list but it might clue you in on something you didn’t think about AND it lets you email that list to yourself and/or your traveling buddies for further review.The last site I love to use is The Independent Traveler’s Interactive Packing List. This is a great resource because it also allows you to input your own information by checking off the box next to over 100 listed items (and there’s even some space for you to add your own personal stuff) then when you’re done checking off, you click the button and the list is generated for you already categorized by heading. All that’s left for you to do is print it and/or email to yourself and use it!Don’t forget to check with the airlines and the national transportation websites to update yourself on what items can be carried onto a plane legally because you know that stuff is always changing. Also, if you’re planning a trip outside of the country, make sure you know their rules about carry-ons also. For example, in the UK, (until last week, this was relevant for all airports but was recently lifted for London-Heathrow) carry-ons were limited to one bag only. That means that when I get ready to leave the UK, if my laptop is in a bag or backpack, that’s my carry-on limit and all other bags must be checked. Although I don’t necessarily like checking my baggage, I’m more inclined to feel better about doing it on my way home than on my way out because at least at home, I know I’ll have extra clothes.Anyway, I hope these websites come in handy for you and as it gets closer to my travel date, I’ll let you all take a peek at the bag that I’ll be taking with me!
I’m guessing that alot of you probably think it’s too early to be getting ready for a trip that isn’t going to happen until April but I’m a bit over-anxious and excited. I want to know about everything that I could possibly do, see, eat, ride, and watch before I set foot on British soil. Once I’m there, I’ll whittle down my must-see list to something that is hopefully manageable with a few days of plain rest and relaxation thrown in for good measure.As I find things to do or see, I’ll put the links and pics in here so you can do a little discovery of your own. Sound good? BTW, when you see a blog entry with this symbol (~) before the entry title, you will know that that particular blog entry contains information that is relevant to travel in general and not specific to my upcoming trip. Also, I just want everyone to know that if I’m mentioning a website or a product, it is based strictly upon my own experience with that website or that product. I have no ties to any company or business out there in web-land and I don’t get paid or compensated in any way to endorse anything. So...are you ready to get in on the planning of this trip with me? Lets go...
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