The long road to London

Sept. 24, 2008

I don't know with the election and the banking crisis going on in the States if any of you there even heard that there was a big fire in the Channel Tunnel on Sept. 11. No one was killed by the fire, the cause of which has yet to be determined, but the incident has limited the amount of traffic in between France and England.

It also threw a big wrench into my plans to head to London.

Bus tickets doubled in price overnight. With limited access to the tunnel, the companies now have to ferry all the buses over the English Channel. The bus lines, trains and boats have all run into major snags and delay issues because of the need to reroute and rethink travel. This turned my six hour bus ride into a ten hour nightmare.

The worst was when I asked a clerk at the duty-free shop on the ferry how long the drive from Dover to London would take. She guessed an hour. In reality, with all the weekenders returning from the coast, it turned into a three hour, stop-and-go torture session that left me clawing at the windows. My iPod had long since died, I'd read The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing cover to cover, and I just wanted to get the hell off that bus.

When we finally arrived, my friend Rob who who had been waiting for me at the station for two hours found me in a zombie state. I had trouble forming full sentences or expressing rational thought. But after a stiff few drinks and a good night's sleep all felt better again in the world. London's been fun (photos to follow), but I'm off again tomorrow, this time to Rome.

Enough with buses and trains for a little while. I'm flying to Italy.