Of Mice and Men and Europe

You know what they say, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Our vacation was set. Our two week Europe trip was finally happening. Everything was planned perfectly until about four hours before leaving for the airport when we found out about two major setbacks. First, we weren’t going to be able to ditch our second leg to London after landing in Frankfurt or the airlines would cancel our returning flight. This was a problem because we planned on dropping off our bags at Ben's sister's house in Germany and flying from Frankfurt to Rome the next day. Second, Ben’s passport was going to expire in 20 days and we heard there was a good chance that Germany would not let us in the country if the passport wasn’t valid for a minimum of thirty days after entering the country. We analyzed the situation and called around to see if cancelling was in the stars for us since Ben had a broken ankle anyway. We never would have considered this option if it weren't for the fact that we had foolishly given in to paying for travelers insurance. Despite our effort, we quickly realized that cancelling would be out of the question. So what were we going to do? Take the advice from Project Runway’s host, Tim Gunn, and “Make it work!” I went to work on booking new flights from London to Rome and Ben found a way to expedite his passport renewal. We ended up getting the passport fifteen minutes before the passport office closed and and just a few minutes before we were supposed to be on Bart heading to the airport. With the passport in hand, Ben and I took the half mile walk to Bart. I had all the bags strapped to me while Ben hobbled along with his crutches and backpack. We were quite the pair.

I couldn’t relax too much on the airplane. I kept feeling like something was going to fall through. Could we really be going to Europe? When we stopped to switch planes in Frankfurt (where we originally wanted to stay), we were really hoping for our flight would be delayed so we could miss our second leg to London. Once we landed, we left security and raced to a United desk to see if we could convince someone to cancel our second leg. We ungracefully raced through the airport to get to the desk where a strict German woman told us, “You can’t just come and go as you please. If you miss your flight, the rest of your flights will be cancelled.” We begged some more but she wasn’t having any of it. Great. We only had a a few minutes until boarding our next flight so back we rushed- hobbling and dragging the luggage across the airport. We made it in time for boarding but still had no idea where we would be sleeping that night.

I met my first KIND German on the flight to London who called her son-in-law when we landed to help us find a hotel. He told us about a phone where you could call hotels to find availability for FREE. We were quickly learning that nothing is free in Europe. After almost being tricked into staying in the expensive airport hotel, we found the information desk the kind German woman’s son-in-law was talking about. What a relief. I was starting to feel like I was in a British comedy!

It was when the concierge called the Southbourne Inn that I felt like I was starring as Bill Murray in The Man Who Knew Too Little. The concierge informed us that The Southbourne Inn happened to have one room left and it had free internet and free breakfast and best of all, a free ride to and from the airport. Ben and I took one look at each other and said, “We’ll take it!” We were exhausted and excited to have a place to crash from the long day.

Tony, the Bed and Breakfast owner, gave me precise instructions on how we were going to go about being picked up. In his Irish/English accent, he said, “Now go out the front doors of the South Terminal and proceed to the pickup area. Now, are you going to be going anywhere before this?” “No,” I answered. He continued, “Okay, very good Rachel. Now you are going to walk until you reach stop 8. There you will see a yellow phone. Next to the phone you will see a list of codes. Find the code for the Southbourne Inn and dial it. Okay?” “Okay,” I confirmed. I kept waiting for him to tell me that the message would self-destruct. “Okay Rachel, now go and I will see you soon.”

We didn’t want to fowl up our chance of a good nights rest so Ben and I followed his instructions precisely. We walked out the doors, found stop 8, found the yellow phone, dialed the code and the phone rang.

Who picked up? Well Tony of course! “Aahh Rachel! You’ve done well for yourself! Okay, now move on to stop 9 and I will arrive in five minutes. Click.” Success. We had Tony’s warm reassurance and already felt at home.

Standing in front of our lovely bed and breakfast

We soon arrived in our cozy room at the Southbourne Inn where Tony made us reservations for breakfast and we settled in. Since I didn’t eat the nasty cheese and mayo sandwich the airplane served, I was starving. I’m not usually a picky person but the sandwich bread looked like it was made up of all the uneaten sandwiches from the flight before. So, we followed Tony’s advice and stopped at the Six Bells for dinner. When our heads hit the pillow that night we had sweet dreams of Rome and Crete. 

In the morning we had our lovely continental breakfast served by Tony’s wife and Tony took us to the airport. 

Eating our continental breakfast (you can see Tony sweeping up behind he door)

Look out Rome!