Fleur d'hiver

Great!

Unlike you I AM a "Fleur d'hiver" (haha) and I also took a trip.

My parents left for the mountains on the 27th but I had to meet someone at the airport.  Since I had no automobile, I got up on the morning of the 28th at 3 and caught a series of buses to Oakdale CA.  By 10 o'clock I had hitched a ride from a cowboy and his girl in a pickup bigger than yer pop's!

I arrived in Sonora at 11 and took another bus to Twain Heart.  By 4 o'clock I had located my parents who drove me to the mountain so I could reserve some rentals to ski the next day.

For me New Years was three days of ski and snowfall.  Lovely!!

Kevin 

Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Adriana Hernandez <adriana.herz@gmail.com> wrote:

Kevin!

Nope, not stuck in London anymore. We get to London on Monday and it's chaos at Heathrow! Everything is cancelled and British airways (BA) are unreachable. At the airports they told people you were not able to rebook and that you would need to call in. We didn't have a phone or enough money for the long waiting times on the phone at any payphone. BA said they book a hotel for us but the lines were also so so long! We booked are own room and BA said they would reimburse us. Getting the hotel wasn't cake at all.... It took almost two hours to reach it by subway. Everything was delayed - it was fucking -13c or -19 c -so waiting was also fucking miserable. We got their and had to make new travel plans. We decided to travel by ferry and train on Tuesday. However we weren't the only ones with this clever idea. We when we got to the ferry port in Dover we waited for  3 hours and got tickets to Calais! The ferry arrived to Calais around 1:00 am on Wednesday. The train station was closed until 4am. Their was a bus coming to pick people from the ferry port to the train station at 4am. Everyone waiting at the ferry port was determined to get in that first bus. I'll be honest we tried. While I saved our spots in line for the bus, Richard chatted up and Swedish woman and her blind father we were also stranded and had no cash. I left the line because I knew most people would not fit in it and we walked with the Swedish people to the train station. We made it after a 30 min stroll in the coldest winter to hit northern Europe in a long time. Ok I think you can assume by now I'm no winter flower - I'm was a fucking mess. We got on the next train to Châteauroux. That was also a stressful journey because we hadn't slept in a long time and as we rode the train we fought sleep se we wouldn't miss any stops. It was about a 4 hour journey and we finally made it! We then had to call Richard’s dad to come and pick us up - and after  about 40 mins of searching for a phone and figuring out how to dial we called! Two hours later we were picked up and made it in time for dinner. I almost broke down in tears I didn't think we would make it. Everything along the way was uncertain - ugh.

We had a lovely Christmas in rural France - Hooray! Moral of the story don't connect through London in the winter they suck. By they way the Swedish father laughed at Heathrow because Sweden sees weather like this every winter and runs fine!

How are things with you? Great I hope.

Hugs,

Adriana & Richard

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:41 PM, Kevin Flaherty <kflahert@csulb.edu> wrote:

Tell me how yer travels turned out??

This is series chronicles my life at regular intervals. This Memo series is meant to be a retrospective of what I have written and experienced. In each of these posts I use my notes in conjunction with memory, mementos and souvenirs to create a snap shot of my life.