Ruminations upon Tuesday August 6, 2024 in transit from London, England - Transit to Kingston Upon Thames, England
When Chaim and I first decided to book a houseboat for accommodation we thought it would be fun and exciting. A mini adventure perhaps. Or at the very least, something different and off the beaten path. A mini adventure, it certainly was. It all started at just before 7am as we were finishing our overnight Megabus drive into London. I had asked our Airbnb host if we could arrive a bit earlier. He was happy to work with us, which seemed like a good sign. However, when we arrived at Victoria Station I learned that the boat was moored at Kingston-Upon-Thames and not Walton-On-Thames as had been written on Airbnb. Apparently, our host was working out some issues with his mechanic, which is why the boat was in a different location. Okay, no problem. I had only spent the last month fretting over what I was going to do with the boys in Walton-On-Thames and spent hours trying to learn the area. It was the location I felt a need to be overly prepared for in Europe because it wasn’t a typical city center. Additionally, the boat was not ready for us. Okay, no problem. Exhausted as we were, we were committed to remaining flexible and modeling for our children the ability to roll with the punches.
We looked up locker storages online, which sent us to a luggage store a few blocks away. That’s right. You can store your prized possessions at random stores all over Europe when the train stations don’t have their own locker storage. It’s a European thing, so that’s what we did. After reducing all of our immediate need items to one of the kid’s backpacks we stored the rest of our luggage and immediately headed for a park. Luckily, St. James’s Royal Park was a fifteen minute walk past Buckingham Palace and other major tourist attractions. Our children had no interest in these sideshows. They were eager for a park where they could climb and run around.
Finally, we arrived at St. James’s park. All of the features were made from wood or rocks and designed to blend in nicely with the surroundings. There was a sandy area in the middle with a fun pulley system that could lift the sand about 8 feet high and then drop it. Most of the features in the park were geared to kids ten and under. Amichai was crestfallen. In his lovely prepubescent state, he harumphed over to a bench and sullenly sat watching as his brothers played. After a few minutes of discussing the importance of making our own fun (which is a nice way of describing our conversation which went: A: “I’m bored!”, Me: “It’s up to you to make your own fun.”), Amichai grew bored enough and joined his brothers. At the park, our boys were the feral looking ones. No socks and shoes, running around like they had been caged for hours (which to be fair, they had been on an overnight bus). All four of the boys were having the time of their lives.
At some point I needed to find a bathroom. My stomach was feeling off after a terrible night of no sleep. The ones available at the park are for children only. Per the sign, I had to walk five minutes to get to an adult toilet. What the sign did not say is that there would be a very long line and an entrance fee. Along my run walk to said toilet, a fellow American woman joined me because she, too, was searching for a loo. It might just be a female thing, but somehow within the span of our ten-minute jaunt and wait in line, we covered everything from pregnancy experiences to raising children and never shared our names.
As I returned to the park, it began pouring. Of course, our ponchos and sweaters were locked up in the luggage store with our stuff. No matter. Our boys were having a field day playing in the rain. After two hours at the park, we started to make our way back toward our luggage. Along the way, we stopped to watch the changing of the guards, which delighted me because it meant I got to check it off our list of possible things to see. Then we found a gelateria that was absolutely delicious. It was still pouring when we gathered our belongings and walked back to Victoria Station.
Two trains, a short bus ride, and a ten-minute walk through a very quaint part of town, we arrived in Kingston-Upon-Thames to where our houseboat was located. Our host was stuck in traffic, so he sent someone from his mechanic, who worked two boats over, to open the boat for us. Little did I know we would end up spending more time with his mechanic than I could have ever imagined.
