from dusk till dawn and more

Well i'm back in room in Brighton, back to not-so-great-english coffee and not-so-warm sunshine. coffee and sunshine nevertheless though! Spain was really great, a lot better than i expected. :-) And while in the end I'm glad for the change in flights by Ryan Air (from Monday morning to Tuesday evening) because it meant i got to hang out with a couple more people that i really wanted to see, it did mean that it took THIRTEEN HOURS door to door. Man i might as well have gone overland! slight exageration but still!!

And no, nothing was delayed, nothing went "wrong" so to speak, so why did it take so long? let me explain...

• 16:45 left Darby's house to catch bus from Bormujos into Sevilla, which got me there sooner than expected, so had a last meander along the River Guadiana, finished my book ("The Hungry Always get Fed" by Heidi Baker, sure I'll be mentioning it soon), and watched groups of Americans sunbathe on the river banks, and Spanish boys in bicycles being stopped by the police. I then went a dropped by Loyda at a coffee shop as she'd told me she had something to give me: a beautiful bag from her beloved Colombia - which turned out to be rather useful on the journey!
• 18:45 bus to the airport, where i worried slightly about the overweightness of my hang-luggage but was relieved to see no sign of weighing scales! Then, last spanish coffee and last consumption of sweetness (pastry) - i've given sweet things up for lent but had 'time off' as it were while in Spain.
• 20:45 boarded the plane as the sun set. another slight panic about slight excess of hand luggage and Ryan Air's "one bag only" thing, but got through fine
• somewhere an hour changed but i get confused which was
• 00:00 after a chilled flight, and feeling grateful that i don't have to get a visa everytime i travel (after seeing the passports of the Russian girl and Pakistani boy sitting next to me!), i rushed through stansted to get the bus to london. thankful i booked online as i don't think everyone got on. randomly bumped into a girl i've met before in Brighton! small world...
• 01:30 arrived at Victoria, only to find the station closed. they only open the gates a few minutes before a train goes. having eaten a cornish pasty to calm me, i decided to catch the only train going anytime soon - to Gatwick Airport - as i didn't fancy hanging outside Victoria for 2.5 hours.
• 02:00 well thank God for Gatwick airport i guess! lots of people were sleeping on floors and chairs. I got a cup of tea and valiently attempted going over notes from the reading i'd done while being away, the fact that i have just over 6 weeks to write my dissertation an ever present fact in my mind! that worked for about an hour then i felt even more like death warmed up so spend the next hour sleeping on a cafe Nero bench.
• 05:00 finally on a train to Brighton, not before being chatted up by 'Don the Dealer', he must have been really bored or desperate because i wasn't exactly in my most attractive state ever!
• 05:30 Brighton station, where i managed to get locked on a train that wasn't going anywhere (skills!). thankfully was rescued ... that would have been a pretty sad end to my story otherwise! thinking... why didn't i just get a taxi?!
• 05:45 the 2 minute trip to London Road, which makes a significant difference to distance i have to walk
• 06:00 at last i arrive home having lugged the amazing case lent to me by a friend up and down one last hill. by now it's getting light and birds are singing.
• BED!!!

so all in all that's two buses, two walks, two trains, one plane, one coach, two pastries, one coffee and one tea. sigh.

now i'm off to the library. joy.