Solo Travel: The One In Which I Have No Idea What I Am Doing

Hello from (as I’m writing) London and (as you’re reading) probably Stratford-upon-Avon or York or Harrogate.

My tentative plan is to write about each place I visit as I visit them, because as much as I adore having a backlog of blog posts, I don’t adore writing about things when they don’t feel as relevant. Which means that the next couple weeks might include more (but probably shorter) posts and I’ll ease up some once I get into school. As always, we shall see and thank you bunches for bearing with me.

But now we should talk about the trip over here. ‘Twas kinda rough, and I have mostly felt like I have no clue what I’m doing, but I’m here and in a cozy room in London and all is well, so let’s be clear about that.

However, the #struggle started when the little check-in machine at the Columbus airport did a bad job of showing me how to scan my passport. I did what I thought the picture was telling me to about 10 times before finally getting it right. So, Delta people who make those machines… make them clearer. Please and thank you.

Then, I made the mistake of having a 73-pound suitcase. Apparently, 70 pounds is the limit. So, I took out a scarf, Anna Karenina (let’s be real, I wasn’t going to finish that during school), a notebook, and maybe something else? Can’t remember. It ended at 69 pounds. 

All this was after my mom, who is some kind of packing goddess, helped me manage to fit 10 days’ worth of stuff – clothes, workout clothes, shoes, a jacket, toiletries, chargers, adapters, blah, blah, blah – into a carry-on suitcase. Guys. I am the girl who can barely fit a weekend’s worth of stuff into a carry-on under normal circumstances. It was a freaking miracle. I might decide to shift the two bags around a little and take the bigger one to make the 10-day tour a little easier, but I think I’ll still ultimately show you how we did it because I’m so impressed.

There was only one TSA line open and it was painfully slow. The TSA agent got locked out of the system while I was in line, so we had to wait for him to log in and the whole system to reload before anyone could keep going. Then, my computer got pulled for inspection and all the little machines indicated that something was wrong with it. I swear, I’m smuggling nothing in my computer. Please let me fly.

After I got a couple snacks and a bottle of water and made my way to the gate, I heard my name paged by the TSA checkpoint. Not again. Turned out, I’d “only” left my passport and currency and IDs and boarding passes there. That’s all. I still have no idea how that happened, but it left me feeling incapable and irresponsible and teary.

As did the fact that I ended up having to check my 10-day carry-on because Delta has the tiniest overhead bins I’ve ever seen. And that I forgot the adapter for my wired headphones, so I had to use battery on my wireless headphones on the flight.

When we landed at JFK, I went to three different gates (and terminals) to get to the right one because, hey, every time I looked at the screen, the gate changed.

Thank goodness for Best Buy vending machines, because that was the only place I had time to snag a headphone adapter.

Fun fact: JFK doesn’t have those convenient outlets for phone charging, so I basically just turned my phone to low power mode and prayed it would last me all night. (I mostly just wanted to listen to Harry Potter while I tried to sleep, and it was nice enough to let me do that.)

Other fun fact: I wasn’t that hungry, so I didn’t prioritize dinner in my running from gate to gate. Two RXBARs became dinner.

One more became early morning breakfast. I slept through the plane dinner… and the plane breakfast. And not much else. What I’m saying is that I went 18 hours without a real meal and felt like I was dying afterward. A lack of sleep will also do that to you.

By the time I got to Heathrow, through customs, and through the cab ride to my first hotel, I just really needed food. The hotel restaurant was closed and I ended up wandering around starving with a phone that was somehow still at 30% battery until I stumbled upon a little (Thames!) riverside cafe. It looked moderately sketchy but again, ’twas a hunger emergency. And grilled sea bass (plus salad and fries) sounded solid. 

I waited what felt like forever for the sea bass and once again almost cried when I got it. Kidding. Kind of. It was a full fish. Skin, bones, eyes. You know.

Not what I was expecting, and I truly loathe eating around the bones of any meat. But I picked out what meat I could, ate the subpar salad and fries, and got some cookie dough ice cream afterward. Also, exhausted, I decided to stick to room service for the evening.

I couldn’t check into my room until a couple hours after I originally arrived, so I wandered around and snapped some pictures of Big Ben after lunch. I want to wander around with my real camera sometime, too, but I should have plenty of time to come back.

After that, I decided to come back to the hotel and see if I could check in. I wanted to charge my phone and chill. And that, plus room service and snack shopping, is exactly what I plan to do until I crash at around 8:30 tonight. Hopefully I’ll figure out what I’m doing over the next few days. Or I’ll just keep pretending. Hey, I looked like I knew where I was going while I walked around yesterday. That’s a start. 

P.S. I sliced open my finger while trying to open a Diet Coke bottle. Glass bottles don’t work for me.

Your turn:

Have you ever traveled solo?

What makes you feel clueless?