I did it! I'm finally in London! My excitement may seem a little overenthusiastic, but trust me, you would have jumped up and down like a six-year-old on Christmas morning when you arrived too -- not that I actually did that (looks down sheepishly).
The trouble started when I began packing at home. The thousand-pound information packet the program sent me instructed me to "pack lightly." Well, how do you pack lightly for four months? I quickly realized that I wouldn't be able to take all four pairs of brown-ish boots with heels. Visions of lugging my bright cerulean rolling monstrosities from the airport haunted me. I quickly tried to unpack the non-essentials of the trip.
My mom, the family's resident fashionista, (I know, but it would require an entirely different column) told me to take as much as I needed and just take a cab from the airport. She thought that it couldn't possibly be worth the hassle of lugging bags around London. But taking a cab would cost about 60 pounds while a train ride is only about 9. (Keep in mind the dollar equals about a half a pound). Outrageous, right? My partner in crime and I discovered that a train went right from Gatwick to a station near our apartments. So, being the cheap college students that we are, we elected to ignore my mother's warnings and just take the train.
I'll skip the boring stuff about the plane ride. It was really very easy.
The fun began when we arrived in London. After customs and passport control, we bought our super-cheap train tickets and headed for the platform. I had two large rolling suitcases and then a carry-on stacked on top. I was doing fine rolling merrily on my way when I got to the escalator that would take us down to the platform level. Now why would any person who isn't the spawn of Satan place dividers so that only one person (or bag) can go through at a time? It's just mean. Obviously a trap for tourists who overpacked.
You can imagine, I'm sure, the hilarity of two American sorority girls trying to pull their suitcases through without holding up the line only to stumble down the escalator and come to a screeching halt right down in front of the arriving train. Interestingly, I did not find it so funny.
So the train was there, and anyone who has been to the U.K. knows that there is a raised gap between the platform and the train. We had to physically lift the bags onto the packed train. I finally pulled out the bags in a Hulk-like burst only to find a crowd of angry looking people staring back at me. We managed to get the bags mostly out of people's way, except for one suitcase that just perched near the doorway looking abandoned like a lost child in the mall.
Our stop was coming, and we knew it. We figured that my friend could get off with the abandoned bag, and I would sort of toss the others off to her like a scene out of "Mission Impossible." When our stop came, we executed the plan impeccably.
Well, that's a lie. We were almost in tears by the time all the bags were off. But hey, they all made it. So now we had 0.3 miles to walk to our new residences. I'm sure I looked like the vulnerable American on the street as I struggled to even keep myself standing up straight. Then we finally reached our new home. And what greeted us? Of course, luggage's most famous foe: stairs.
Damn, it's really too bad that I traveled halfway across the world to learn something that I already knew: My mother is always right. No one show her this column.
Bailey's column runs biweekly Wednesdays. She can be reached at stephens@cavalierdaily.com.
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