Au revoir Paris, Hello England!

Across the water we go!

Eeeee, I was so excited this morning I couldn’t wait to get to England. We got up at 5am to pack everything up to catch a taxi at 6am. We were told it could take up to an hour to get there so we were prepared this time and went early. How ever it only took 23 minutes to get there, not enough time for a decent nap and he still charged us the full fair or 75 euros. I was gutted, felt like day time robbery.
We checked in and went to sit and enjoy a Starbucks fresh orange juice and a coffee. The first decent coffee i’d had in France so I was stoked. They had also put on the side of the cup ‘Nefan’ instead of Nathan, which I thought was great.
We boarded the plane quickly and the flight was over within 40 minutes. At one point I thought the pilot had sat down in the seat in front of us, I'm sure I was him come out of the cockpit and he was wearing a white shirt which looked just like a pilots shirt, he sat there for the rest of the flight including landing. So if he was the pilot that was incredibly talented.
We had to wait for everyone to get off the plane before I could grab my crutches, when we did the first person I saw was a police officer and he said:
“Good morning” and smiled. I was gobsmacked, I’d almost gotten used to the French culture and how rude they were that i’d not said anything back. How rude of me!
By the time we got round to check in the line was massive. A lovely English man came up to us and said,
“Now, you can’t stand very long on those crutches can you?” his accent was great, i’d missed it. Then he whispered, “Say no and I'll help you out”
“No. No, I can’t” I responded.
He led us straight to the front of the que, which felt great, saved us at least an hour of lining up!
The customs lady questioned us about our stay, who we were seeing what we were doing, I felt like I was being interrogated for visiting the country I was born in. She was scary, but we got through no drama, as we walked away she turned around and sweetly pointed out the lifts smiling.
We went to baggage claim & perfect timing because our bag was coming around the corner, Nathan picked it up and on we went.
Now to find the car rental place. It was a bit of a mission and when we got there the line was fairly big, unfortunately the two workers were also quite slow. Taking up to 15 minutes between each customer.
When we eventually got to the front she tried her best to upsell, but she did it so sneaky that we didn’t even notice at first. At the moment its costing us around $20 per day for the car hire, she tried to upgrade us to a convertible for 60 pounds a day, which was usually 200 pounds a day. Blimey! As exciting as that would be we quickly turned it down. Next she convinced us we needed insurance for the car which was 300 dollars all up, luckily I realized our insurance covered it just before she put it through. She tried to upgrade us to another car, and then another insurance plan. It was a bit of a joke. We walked away not fallen for it.

I was so excited to be home I hobbled quick as I could to get to the car, chucked our stuff in and jumped in ready to go. Until we realized we had no GPS, no map and no wifi for directions.
We slowly hobbled back into the airport and decided to buy some chocolate, and try to look for a map, with no luck Nathan came up with the idea to google maps the location of my uncle Steve’s house and screen shot each section.

Driving out of the car park we (Mostly I) were very nervous about doing any damage to the car and driving in a different country. (See picture above - hehe)
It worked for a while, but it was still a very confusing way of doing so. A 22 minute drive tuned into an hour and a half drive around Croyden and Sutton.
When we got on the right track the roads got a bit smaller, the hedges closed in on us and the two lanes became one and a half which was quite nerve wracking seeing as Nathan hadn’t driven for a while and had never seen or driven along the English lanes.
We made it in the end though, knocked on the door and my lovely cousin Amy jumped around the door! It was very exciting, I hadn’t been to this house for almost 3 years so it was nice to be back, so many memories growing up. It was also nice to be in an English speaking country again, and to be somewhere familiar. Plus, Nathan got to meet some of my Dad’s side of the family now. Which he got along with straight away.

Steve, Jen & Amy took us out for a short walk with Jens two adorable little puppies. Then we went to the local pub for a good old English feed. It was fantastic. Nathan got a roast beef with yorkshire pudding and I got a chicken pie, yorkshire puddings are one of my all time favorites so I somehow ended up eating two & a half. hehe.
Nathan had and Strawberry Eton Mess for desert, which again, was delicious. It was a mix up of crumbled meringue with cream, fresh strawberries and strawberry sauce. Even though I'm lactose intolerant its one of my favorites. Mum used to make the best meringue with berries and cream.
We sat, ate till our bellies were full and caught up on everything, it was such a great feeling to be here. One thing I absolutely love about England is that dogs are allowed inside & outside in a lot of the pubs! I can’t think of one pub in our local area in Australia where dogs are allowed.

After lunch Nathan & I were just about ready for our afternoon nap, so we headed home and Nathan passed out straight away. We left our phone charger adaptor and a few other things in our other bag which we couldn’t get to until the end of the week. So we had no alarm. Nathan slept for 4 hours, whilst I wrote my blog and did some drawings I didn’t want to sleep for too long now and not sleep later, eventually I passed out. We were both so exhausted.

We went for a walk after the 4 hour nap to check out Tesco’s down the road, we had to buy some deodorant as Nathan’s got thrown out when we went through customs. I was like a kid in a candy shop at Tesco’s, it was only a small one too so I’d hate to think how much money i’d spend on food at a large one! We brought lots of crisps, some quavers, wotsits and mini chedders, I got some scotch eggs, one of my favorite foods (Another one) and a few other unhealthy items. I was very excited. We got our change and Nathan turned to me and said the English money looked like pirate money! I swear someone had told me before I left that the one penny was being taken out of production but it’s still very much alive as the self service machine gave us quite a few in our change. Which will probably never get used now. Just as we were lining up I spotted an Australian to English plug adaptor! I was even more excited now I could charge my phone to go on Facebook (sad I know) and watch movies tonight. Yipee! We also brought a road map for 1 pound 99 pence. Seeing as we had no GPS or internet outside of my uncles house we needed something to be able to get places and this was the cheapest for now. We’re going to give it a go on Tuesday when we go to a friends for dinner see if my navigation skills are up to scratch or not. We’ll probably leave a few hours early to make sure we’re on time, I can put money on it that we will get lost!
We got home & I ran back in side (hobbled quickly) excited to charge all my technology and start pigging out on our food. Before we left we put a load of washing on - finally - all our clothes were filthy, so we had to sit in front of the machine whilst eating and wait for it to finish. Which it didn’t for another hour. We couldn’t figure out how to get it to go quicker than the two hour cycle.
We ended up watching a movie whilst we waited for it then zonked out.