It was daunting to think of going to Europe for 19 days after 2 years of sole care of my mom. She isn't dead, how am I going? But Emma needed us, Barry's not gonna be young forever, this was it bro. My somehow sober brother was all excited about stepping up, even wiping.
We book these tickets, non-refundable, and then Bruce is saying wait. I need to go to Indonesia. My girlfriend that I might not want to stay with because I'm part gay maybe, she got a concussion and she needs me there. But she slept with someone else so I don't know if I should go.
This is the conversation we had. The entire time in Europe, too, by the way. But the weeks in front of our trip with all the tickets we had booked and plans made, Bruce was balking (sorry) he was the balkland islands. Who needs to see Europe. He says. Just a bunch of gold toilets.
I spent weeks texting him about his girlfriend on non girlfriend. His gayness or non gayness. Finally just saying BRO. Somebody needs a spanking, and it's you. I shouldn't have to convince you to go on all expenses paid trip to europe that some people WIN on the Price is Right. You should be begging me to go!
The morning comes, Bruce sails in at the last minute. He does pack light, and brings a guitar, and I admire this, he does pack whimsy. We get the kids not going on the trip, Patrick and Brie, to drive us to the airport, we stack into one last photo and then we leave our van and the orphans staying home at the airport and we're suddenly all checked in and there we are. Two hours of pre-trip sitting in chairs. Can't believe we're doing this. This is happening. We skateboard down airport hallways to airport Panda Express and I don't know this but this is the last time I will be having consistent ice for a long time. This is also the only time my legs won't hurt and I won't be sweaty. This is the last time I will be me and I know me. Trips change you.
Bruce spent the whole time in the airport lobby making a neck pillow out of trash and duct taping it together. It was pretty genius actually. He used those air filled packing strips you use in boxes when you mail fragile stuff. And a BUNCH a tape. He put it on on the plane and his head looked like flamingo long. We were all laughing pretty hard. He worked so hard on it and then when we left the plane 10 hours later, he left it on the ground with the other trash. Eh, he said. Also, this ability to work and then ditch, the fun in the devising and not the product, a good lesson to me, grasping at everything to work and keep working, no matter how not fun. Vacations should be more often, to get good at them.
This navigating out of Heathrow began the next 19 days of navigation through airports, subways, buses, train terminals, water taxis, ubers and taxis, in a variety of languages. We lug our shit from paddington to St Pancras station and then pull our luggage to our hotel because it's a twelve minute walk but they don't say it's all cobblestone uphill and also begins the argument with Barry the Lion about why he's decided to bring two backpacks neither of which has wheels. He insists he will carry them both and we take them and stick them on our luggage, which eventually makes our luggage too heavy to pull and wrecks our luggage handles but no he doesn't need wheels. Wheels are for assholes.
We're in a hotel in King's Cross which is secretly a holiday inn under its other fancy name and has a pool and a hot tub both closed even though covid is over if you look around and see not one mask and all the signs saying Mask Required are still up but faded and used (just like all of us) so everyone ignores them. The kids fall on the bed jetlagged and I start my journey of looking for ice which I eventually abandon three countries later, but right now I just KNOW there's ice. Also there's a little candy store (some people would say liquor store) across the street, so I start my other journey of getting candy and warm sodas and meeting every british indian slash turkish shop owner in London. And I met a bunch!
We planned nothing the first day knowing we'd be tired but we did manage to use our oyster cards and navigate the subway down to the London Eye to see Big Ben and the Thames and get the kids a feel for their first foreign city, the heart of London. When Emma walked past the big ferris wheel and saw Big Ben across the water (she was in front, she's always in front), and turned around with that big filled up shining look in her eyes, that Emma - that (beside the neck pillow) was the real beginning of the trip of wonder. Seeing something she'd only seen in movies or storybooks, and that big kind old clock tower just sticking up there all majestic and old, a solid friend - that glued us to London. We bought some shitty ice cream off a truck but at least it was expensive and we found out that soft serve ice cream is made out of I'm pretty sure spray foam in London. So we never bought that again.
We took an uber over to picadilly circus which was good because they could all look out and see the sights, driving on the wrong side, and get a feel for the city. Emma apparently had the only phone that could order ubers, we were always looking at her to make a map happen or a car appear. She loved being the organizer but she also rejected it when she got angry or tired and of course we ignored her and continued saying hey emma where are we.
At Picadilly we walked in throngs of people like 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica but worse, and the kids bought a basketball and Emma saw a One Direction red telephone booth that she knew the boys had touched, and now she touched. One step closer to marrying Niall Horan.
The next morning we went downstairs for a hugely overpriced free breakfast but it was there and we could be in pajamas and where was the ice again? We uberred over to St Paul's, I can't remember now why we were uberring oh wait no we didn't, we went to Tower of London that day, and we passed St Paul's in the uber. I think our hotel wasn't very close to the tube, so we ended up ubering there more. With 6 of us it was harder to get people going, and also harder to keep people together.
Tower of London was our first thing all together, and of course we all splintered off. We saw the crown jewels first since i knew the line would get long and it was basically a conveyor belt past some fancy hats, but cool. The better parts in Tower of London were the - well, the towers. The king and queen's apartments, and how they're connected by a bridge and a tunnel, and all the windy stairs, and I thought the torture part would be the best part cause I remember that but in the last 30 years since I've been here, they had a lot of signs DOWNPLAYING the torture that England has used in the past, and really there was only a pair of big rusty handcuffs and the rack, next to big signs that basically said yeah, we're sorry.
We walked up many flights and saw armor, and horses with armor, and racks of stabby things they carried WHILE being in full armor and I just can't imagine any horse being okay with putting on all those shells of metal and then being ridden with a guy all laden in heavy metal. Like, just stay home, what's the fuss with these wars and stuff.
Barry waited downstairs cause it was alot of walking all through the ramparts I think they're called, and the best part was seeing the kids liking the plaques of history on the wall and finding the humor like one prisoner named Hew Draper and Nathan saying it out loud Huge Raper was kept here?
Afterwards we went to find ice cream and coffee and I'm not sure we found anything very successfully but the sandwiches at the cafe at the Tower of London were on the freshest baguettes a king has ever sampled, they were kingly in their perfection and they were weirdly curried chicken but maybe we were hungry they were really good.
We took a subway up to Camden where Emma will be staying just to get a feel for that town and like all of our cities on this trip, it looked like a movie set. It was packed with people like Venice Beach boardwalk, except it was on a canal, and had old stables made into shops, and a pastel housed street that was so soft crayony and Emma's place was sitcom style with a pool table in the lobby and neon signs and old big couches, and we had them show us her room or a room like her room and it was down skinny hallways with a green submarine hue and the rooms also glowed a kind of sea green, and I felt we should have brought her scuba gear. But we felt her town, across from Camden Market which has food and is always crammed and she won't be lonely. For sure. Then we took an uber to Abbey Road to walk the crosswalk, and I found an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's which I ate with a broken spoon because that is a meal to me when walking in heat, and we did abbey road because the beatles were THERE, right there, near their studio, just walking across the street and almost getting hit by a bus just like us. A buncha years later.
Then we walked a million miles to a bus to go home and Barry's legs said no more hills no more use, and we found a little street by our hotel that had no cars on it and we ate pizza and pasta and found a basketball court which we visited again later. I didn't like to eat in restaurants so crowded and loud and the water is hot so I got a pizza and ate in the park by the basketball court and later another day the kids would play basketball here with a group of guys, and our frisbee would begin its world tour. On our walk home to the hotel, they skateboarded and we all looked up to a man playing an accordian on his little porch as the sun set. Like an ode to his regular day, out in his boxers, playing his accordian, in London.
We explored the hotel gym, and then went upstairs where Bruce got in a wild discussion about trans rights and how Barry and I were too old to understand. The kids kept coming in to blink and then finally said hey it's bedtime.
St Paul's in the morning, and then Oxford.
If you dare.
