Wednesday 11/2: Traveling, Traveling, Traveling

I got up early so I could have breakfast before walking Elara to school (along with Grace and Ben). It’s about a 15 minute walk to the school, which gives Ben plenty of time to sniff everything and re-mark it with his wee. Grace says it’s a dog’s version of facebook…

Since Grace had to pick up a friend who lives not far from the East Midlands Airport, she very kindly dropped me off! We had a nice drive down (it took about 1 hour) and we managed to avoid the traffic jams. We said goodbye and Grace invited me to visit anytime—I’d love to come back, if it works out!

I was quite a bit early for my flight (the check-in hadn’t opened yet), so I figured I sit down and have some hot chocolate. Of course, when I saw that they had scones with clotted cream, I got one of those as well and sat at the café reading for about 45 minutes. Since I probably wouldn’t get lunch, I thought I was probably entitled to a bit of a late-morning snack!

Photo: CLOTTED CREAM!!! (and a scone and hot chocolate...)

Before I checked in, I put on both my sweaters, my rain jacket, and my scarf. I had added the food items to my bag, so I didn’t want my bag to go over the 10kg limit. Of course they didn’t even bother to weigh it. Sigh. And I almost died of overheating for nothing! However, when I tried to go through security, they informed me (after my bag had gone through the scanner) that they needed to look inside. The lady proceeded to pull out the two cans of beans, lemon curd, and clotted cream----and she CONFISCATED them! Yes, ALL of them. I pointed out that none of them are liquids and they were all sealed, but she said that they count as “creams” and that I could have mixed powder into them. (I’m not sure how I could have re-sealed a can of beans, though…) In any case, all my lovely food was taken from me. :( Airport security is so irrational.

At least the flight was fine—I just read and slept. When I arrived in Limoges (at 3:15pm), I discovered that there isn’t a bus that goes into town or to the train station. Bummer. The only transportation is a taxi. However, they explained that there’s a deal for going to the station if you can find another one or two people to ride with: €22 for the carload. There was only one other girl (about my age) who was waiting for a taxi, so we went together and the driver was really nice—he only charged us €20 total.

I had to wait at the station for 2 hours before taking a train down to Bordeaux, then I waited there for 1 hour, then took a train to Dax, which arrived late, so I had to rush onto my train to Tyrosse! I finally arrived at 10:50pm in Tyrosse and walked home, arriving at 11pm. Whew! What an exhausting day of travel—especially trying to change my head back into French again!