So I had this brilliant idea that we could take an overnight bus from Liverpool to London. The train was too expensive, and it seemed like the night would be safer and have less traffic. We purchased our tickets online in advance and when we got to the Liverpool bus station we were excited to hear there was a double decker coach coming. “What luxury” we thought. “How exciting”. It came and we lined up to board. We had to give our backpacks to someone who put all the luggage in the holding area under the back of the bus. Since it was stopping at lots of different places (including Oxford and Heathrow Airport) they had a letter code for each stop. Ours was “V” for “Victoria station” in London, so the lady wrote a big V on our backpacks with a white fabric pencil. We haven’t bothered to wash them off yet and you can still see the one on Dan’s! Anyway after that we boarded the bus and went to the upper deck. It wasn’t too crowded so there was lots of room and we could sit together. The seats didn’t recline too much, though, and there was an emergency window-breaking axe thing bolted to the wall near the window where Dan wanted to lean his head (but couldn’t).
We bought what we thought was the English equivalent of Perrier at the grocery store at the end of the street from my Aunt and Uncle’s place. We opened it for the trip and were very unpleasantly surprised to find to find it was a mixture of very bitter lime and aspartame – guaranteed to make one more thirsty, not less. Unfortunately it was all we had aside from about 400 mL of water in our water bottles, so we had no choice but to drink the horrible stuff.
On the way out of the city went through one of the tunnels under the Mersey which was cool. We were on the highway soon and everything seemed fine. We gave an attempt at sleeping which worked for a while, but a number of things started happening which made it very difficult to sleep. First of all, the entire Salvic population of northern England must have been on this bus because we were surrounded by people speaking in some Slavic toungue. We were essentially they only people who didn’t speak the laguage. That meant, unfortunately, that were several conversations going on at once, including the two ladies behind us who talked all the way to Heathrow, about 6 bloody hours. And then they would rustle things around in their bags and eat and talk some more, which was incredibly annoying. The other problem was that there were no cup holders anywyere on this bus and so when people finished drinking something, they would toss the empty bottles or cans on the floor of the bus. This wouldn’t have been too much of a problem in North America, but since the English minor highway system is based on traffic circles, it meant that the bottles and cans would skitter from one side of the bus to the other every time we went through a traffic circle (about every 20 minutes). That was so incredibly frustrating that I eventually started getting up and catching them and putting them in places where they couldn’t roll around. The stupid thing is that one would think that after the first time it happened these people would realise how annoying it was and try to put all their bottles somewhere (how about back on one’s bag???) and they kept adding more and more bottles over the course of the night. We couldn’t sleep and I guess they couldn’t either, but then again they were all still talking and it didn’t bother them so much.
Needless to say, we didn’t have a very good bus ride and even though it was an 8 hour ride I don’t think we managed more than 3 hours of sleep. Once we arrived, we desperately had to go to the washroom but when we went inside the bus terminal, one of the washrooms was closed. Well, what do they expect after an 8 hour bus ride? We managed to find another and were incensed that we each had to pay 20 pence just to get in to the washrooms. I later found out this is a long tradition in England (although it used to only be a penny, hence the term “spending a penny” to mean going to the washroom).
Now we had to get to Harlow, so we tried to get into Victoria tube station and had a very difficult time doing so. Finally we found the entrance and got inside. We had some garbage from the trip that we were trying to get rid of, but after the incidents on the underground that summer, they had removed all garbage bins and so we had to stick it back in our bags. I tried to get a tube map, but the information booth didn’t open until 8:30 and it was only 7:00 AM. We tried the automatic ticket things but I couldn’t figure out how to buy a ticket to Liverpool Street station and eventually just went to buy one from the wicket and I got the train tickets at the same time. Because it was rush hour on a week day it cost 20 pounds for the tickets – that’s over $40 for two one way tickets to a London suburb!
Anyway we got to the station and took our train without too much trouble and were able to relax a bit on the train ride. When we arrived in Harlow we called my cousin Steve who very kindly offered to give us a ride to my other cousin’s house where we were staying. We were so tired and disoriented that we were unable to do much more than say “thanks very much” and then we were off to sleep.
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