Sick in London
After a night on the bus, we woke up stiff and groggy. AND it was Alec's birthday!!!! Unfortunately, I had woken up already not feeling the hottest. But by the time we had arrived in Scotland and started finding out way to our AirBnb house, I was rapidly getting worse. Since we'd arrived in town so early, we struggled to find anything open to get coffee and breakfast. We finally stumbled across a teeny tiny (and I really mean tiny) cafe and had a quick fry. Then we started trying to find our way to the house.
I tried to take in as much of England as possible but I was getting so bad that I couldn't even walk. We finally got to the house, met our very nice and eccentric host, and I assumed the fetal position. After a couple hours with the pain only getting worse, I insisted that Alec go out and see London. Because it was his birthday!! So I spent another few hours in the fetal position before I could even get myself into the shower.
Alec returned to the house after a little sight-seeing. I hadn't eaten anything, but knew that I'd have to try to get something in me. We went out to look for some dinner and found a cute little street with plenty of restaurants and opportunities for people-watching. We set up on the patio of a cute Italian restaurant. The food wasn't as hard to get down as I thought, and each drink helped a bit more.
After dinner, we had to go to the bar of course, because it was his 21st! And I'd been in bed all day dying. Not a fun way to celebrate. We had a fun night out and passed out for another early morning ahead.
The next morning we had to get up early and get a cab to the airport. Alec had reserved a cab online the night before. The company said that if they had an available driver, they would be in touch. Only Alec had never heard back from them. So he went walking over a mile away to the nearest station to get a taxi while I packed up because I was feeling just as horrible as the previous day. While he was gone, our host came upstairs to tell me that the taxi was waiting. I asked if Alec was coming upstairs to help me down with the bags (his were still in the room as well) but he said Alec wasn't there. I was really confused, but I didn't want to inconvenience the host since he'd been so nice especially with how sick I was. I grabbed all of our things as quickly as I could and made my way down the super narrow staircase. At the bottom, he remarked about how I shouldn't be lifting heavy things in my state. Yet he never offered to help!
He gave me instructions to pass on to Alec about returning the key, then wished me luck on our next leg of the trip. I was left outside with a taxi driver. But no Alec. The driver hardly spoke any english. I realized that this guy was probably from the service Alec had contacted the night before, and there had been some sort of mix-up. So I started trying to explain to him that his service was no longer needed, and where the misunderstanding had come from. But he did not understand whatsoever. I was on the verge of getting sick and fainting. But someone had to watch over all of our stuff on the curb of this random London neighborhood! Finally Alec showed up, in a new cab, as I had suspected. I told him that I was too sick to keep trying to talk to this guy, so he had to work it out between both of the cab drivers, neither of which were understanding any English, that we only needed one of them. Eventually he paid the second driver for the ride to the house and we got in the cab of the first driver to go to the airport. It was so much farther away than we expected. We were in the car for a couple of hours. Car sickness + mystery illness = not a fun time in general, let alone multiple hours. But we finally got to the airport and headed to France.