So let me set the scene. It's September 30 and I have not had a good nights sleep in several nights. My wedding is tomorrow. I need about 8 hours of sleep to function normally, and I'm averaging about 5-6/night. And my wedding is TOMORROW. The world's most hectic day involves setting up the venue for dinner, prepping my house for rehearsal dinner & caterers, holding rehearsal outdoors in sideways rain (it was that windy), hosting about 30 ppl at my house for food, drinks, speeches and presents, all the while trying to make sure I've remembered all the "little details" (and relaying them to my wedding coordinator while my mom simultaneously yells at me for not remembering if I gave our officiant proper directions to our house several weeks ago - thanks mom!). After a day like this you think I'd sleep like a baby - um not so much. The night before MY wedding I was on the phone with Jeff at 2 in the morning going "I am feeling nervous. No, not about YOU, of course not. There are too many PEOPLE involved in this, and something is going to go WRONG!!!" (My name's Kristyn, and I'm a Control Freak). I got up at 6 a.m. for my hair appt. (that's another whole separate story involving a crazy bridezilla - not me! I was pretty sane! - who got double booked at my hair salon), wondering if I can't function on a regular day on 4 hours of sleep, how the heck am I going to get through THIS day?! Jeff is tired from a night of dodging drinks (best husband ever as my only request was "please don't be hungover at our wedding") with his party animal groomsmen. However, adrenaline, love and excitement sure can carry you through a wedding day - it was a breeze! Not to mention the happiest day of my life. :) At about 5:30 p.m. I went "holy CRAP I'm tired", but didn't notice it again. Honestly. Not until about 3 a.m., when we went to bed (we may have opened our presents that night.. I can't confirm or deny.. ;)). When we happened to stir at 7 a.m. that morning, we kept trying to force ourselves back to sleep. However, faced with a day of post-wedding tasks (don't discount those, soon to be brides - there is an annoying lot to do the day after your wedding!!) including finishing packing and leaving for the honeymoon, we were not succesful. One crazy day later, our friend Viv came to take us to the airport around 4 p.m.. Once in TO we found out our flight to London had been delayed about an hour. Naturally concerned about making our connection to Dublin, I asked the lady at Pearson if we'd be ok. "Plenty of time!", she cheerfully replied. Heathrow was big, but we just had to get from Terminal 1 to 5 (or 5 to 1.. I think I've blocked it all out) in an hour. Armed with this knowledge, we grabbed a bite, and kept promising each other the best sleep of our lives on the sleeper flight over to London. HA. HAHAHAHAHA. No. I took a sleeping pill which actually made me have restless leg syndrome (WTF!) so I couldn't sleep for the first hour. Thank goodness we had an extra seat between us so I could put my feet on Jeff's lap, and maybe scored an hour or two of broken sleep. Let's just say when it was 4 a.m. our time after essentially a light nap, and it was bright and shiny over the British Isles, life was very very confusing.
Always a planner, I asked the flight attendant before we landed if we needed to fill out customs cards - nope, we were good. Ok then! So we get off the plane around 10:15 a.m. local time, with a flight leaving at 11:20 a.m.. Seems like we should be ok, right? The next part is a bit of a blur. There was the angry customs guy ("of course you need to fill out the customs card" "oh, sorry, we were told we didn't have to. we asked because we have a tight connection" "WELL YOU HAVE TO" <-- that's when I stopped speaking and just started writing); there was the train AND the bus to get from Terminal to Terminal (not like the 2 min ride at Pearson - this was a 15 minute journey); there was the fact that it was still 10:15 and we were making great time. Wait, what? How has no time passed? Ohhhh because Jeff's watch stopped. Excellent. Excellent time for that to happen. The clock on the bus read 10:45 and I thought "that isn't good". Oh well.. I'm sure the line at security will be moving efficiently at this gigantic airport which probably has lots of staff. Can we see where this is going?
So the 100 person line up at security is incredibly daunting. I am in line, heart racing, staring at Jeff's watch (still 10:15), peering at the watch of the guy in front of me in line (10:50), trying not to worst-case-scenario it (OMG OMG FIRST DAY OF HONEYMOON STUCK IN AN AIRPORT). This sleazy looking dude, many gold chains, and his skinny coiffed girlfriend start excusing themselves to the people in front of them, claiming they have a tight connection, can they please butt in front of everyone in line. I said to Jeff "that's rude. we're not doing that. Just because he's some rich dude he thinks he can be a jerk like that". 5 minutes of not moving later, I heard myself politely saying "excuse me, we have a tight connection, is there any chance we can go in front of you?". Shout out to anyone who was in line at Terminal whatever at Heathrow on the morning of Monday October 3 - you're all wonderful people. Squeezing awkwardly to the front of the line, with our four giant pieces of carry-on luggage bumping the heads of children, we triumphantly reach the front of the line. I fly through - ok - things are looking ok! Turn around and OF COURSE Jeff has been pulled aside for a random wanding. COME ON!!! I say to him "I'm going to check the board" and pull a hard left. Gate 81. Gate 81. Searching. Searching. GATE 81! "GATE CLOSING". WHAT THE !*#$!!!! I rush back to Jeff, who is, ironically, putting his watch back on (sigh) and yell "WE HAVE TO GO NOW!!!". The couple who was just behind us in line who'd followed our embarassing plight to the front of the line and were also on this flight to Dublin caught wind of this and the four of us took off!!!! I've never looked into the floor plan for Heathrow since, but I'm pretty sure the distance from that security terminal to Gate 81 was approximately 2 km (folks, I'm actually not exaggerating). So picture running a 2 km race. But you need to sprint, not jog. And you're loaded down with a duffel bag and laptop case (or backpack and shoulder bag - take your pick, we had them all!). And there are A LOT OF SLOW PEOPLE in your way (including more children whose heads are level with your gear). And you haven't slept properly in several nights including next to no sleep the night before. And it's 5 in the morning in your mind (but oddly bright, sunny and late-morning looking outside :P). And you have been drinking a LOT of champagne for about 3 days straight and haven't bothered to rehydrate because airplane washrooms scare the bejesus out of you. As I SPRINTED through Heathrow airport, I tried to swallow and found I couldn't - I'd now sweated out the last squeeze of liquid in my body doing this fantastic early morning race. The snafu came when there was a tricky sign about which way, indeed, Gate 81 was. Up the ramp! Wrong! Down the ramp! Go!!! The rather portly Irish fellow running with us was labouring. Jeff took the lead. The cottonballs in my mouth made it impossible to talk. With my last ounce of everything, I spat out "run Jeff RUN!!!!". And my little Forrest Gump was gone. This is why I love Jeff. The three of us staggered around the corner a few minutes later to find him standing triumphantly, smiling, with the attendant at the godforsaken Gate 81. We made the flight!! What a scene we all made getting on the plane, panting, sweating, apologizing. Ridiculously, a guy actually got on 2 minutes later, looking cool and collected (no it wasn't the gold chain guy - I would have had to kill him at that point!). People have since snarkily told me "of course you could have chilled out. it's only bad when they start calling your name". As someone who doesn't live in London, hasn't been to this airport, is trying to get to a different country entirely, and has no experience flying Aer Lingus, was that honestly a chance I was going to take?! No. When you see "GATE CLOSING", you go into full on caveman adrenaline-fuelled panic mode and your legs just MOVE. Within minutes the plane was in the air. 1 hour flight with no drink service.. are you kidding me? I didn't so much sleep as I did cool down and stare blankly into space thinking "wow, I'm thirsty". (these pics below are from the end of our Aer Lingus flight to Dublin - landed! could two people LOOK more tired? my cheeks are still pink from the sprint!!).
The luggage carousel was churning around merrily in the Dublin airport, people triumphantly claiming their bags as if they had won a prize (who doesn't feel that way, I totally get it), children yelling "mommy, there's ours!"; then the crowd began to peter out. Oddly enough, left standing there were four people - myself, Jeff and the Irish couple we'd run our race with. Interesting. The baggage carousel churned to a halt. Numbed with lack of sleep and a full 12 hour of flying and airport hijinx, I simply rose, and walked wordlessly to the service desk and began filling out forms to have our bags delivered to our hotel. Obviously they just hadn't tried as hard as we had to make the flight. Thinking to myself "this is quite the start to our honeymoon - what are the next 2 weeks going to have in store?", but staying positive, because hey I was married to Jeff, in Ireland, and off work for 2 weeks, I turned to see Jeff walking towards me. Weighed down with our crazy amount of carry-on luggage - AND OUR TWO SUITCASES! Overjoyed, I thanked the friendly Irish woman (almost redundant - there are no one friendlier than Irish people) and sprinted towards the nearest vending machine. Inserting a few euros, I received and drank the most rewarding bottle of water in my life. When we pulled away from the airport (driving on the left side of the road), it was like we drove away from any trouble, and proceeded to have the most amazing, peaceful, wonderful and joyful 2 weeks of our lives. Honestly, that is hands down the best time we've had in the whole time we've been together! Ireland was INCREDIBLE.
However... being me... I couldn't go the entire 2 weeks without getting into trouble. Below, a couple of other "incidents". I was just going about my day, when...
- On our first full day in Ireland, touring arund County Wicklow, Jeff was trying to make a right turn (they're the harder turn to make when driving on the left) up a hill, at a blind corner, still not used to shifting with his left hand, when a car pulled up super close behind him. Jeff, the most confident driver I know, said "I wish that guy would back up.. I'm going to slide backwards into him because I can't see who's coming around this bend to make my turn." Eager to be a good wife, I offered to go claim "stupid tourist" and ask the gentleman to back up until we had made our turn. I hopped out of the car and jogged back along the pavement to go ask the guy to roll down his window. Um, ya, he wasn't on the side of the car where he was supposed to be (or maybe that was my error, we'll never know ;)), so I had to make a quick 180 to run in FRONT of his car to get to the actual driver's window. On the newly paved road which was quite smooth, shiny, and slippery, I completely bailed and fell forward, taking the brunt of the attack on my knee. Already looking like a complete moron, I decided to power through and popped up like a jack in the box, grinning widely, and made it to the window and asked the guy could he move back as it was our first day driving here. He did. I got back into the car (honestly I tried to get in the North American passenger side first before realizing Jeff was there.. this whole thing took me a few days..), Jeff successfully made the turn. I had actually torn a giant hole in my jeans and my knee, and between the bruise and blood was feeling pretty sorry for myself and cried a few self pitying tears. Regardless of how it ended, I still think about that eager, maniacally smiling "pop up" from the ground in front of this guy's car, and what he must have thought (and what that must have all looked like to him!), and I burst out laughing at myself.
- Jeff and I REALLY didn't want to spend several hours of our honeymoon in a laundromat, so around the 7th day started looking for hotels with laundry facilities while we were booking our rooms on Expedia. Alas, we found one in Belfast! Clean clothes, here I come! We were so excited. We popped the first load in, and Jeff went down to take care of switching it to the dryer later. In hindsight, I should have overseen this step. One of the ladies who attended my bachelorette had given me a gift of purple underwear covered in little purple sequins. At home.. these would have been hung to dry. In the hotel in Belfast they were put in the dryer. When Jeff went to fetch things from the dryer later on, he was devestated to find that everything (all his clothes, all my clothes, the lint trap, the dryer) were covered in tiny purple sequins. The glue had melted in the dryer and the majority of sequins had detached, then reattached and glued themselves onto our clothes. I spent our first night in Belfast picking these tiny circles off all our clothes. They really seemed to like Jeff's boxers! We spent the rest of the trip strategically picking sequins off of each other, and to this day I still find the occassional sequin stuck in the sleeve of a sweatshirt.. and it makes me think fondly of Belfast.
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| Picking purple sequins off our clothes (see pile on table - maybe 2% of the problem) |
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