Every so often, it is good to yell.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
2008- Bath, England
-Bath-
This is one of my very own photos. I know you know this is already going to be a great place.
Oh the town of Bath, England! Also known as Bath Spa.
The guy at the bar tries to explain to us, and we finally figure out it's just a baked potato. Oh.We order two waters, and get the strangest and most amused look from this guy taking our order.
"Water?"
"Yep."
"Ha. Okay."
We should drink beer. Everyone drinks beer like it is water here. I wish I could if the smell didn't make me gag. Especially the smell of Guinness. That is a nasty one.
We could look out the window and see these cute colored houses across the street. (Also, my photo. If it's not my photo, it's from Google.)
We could look out the window and see these cute colored houses across the street. (Also, my photo. If it's not my photo, it's from Google.)
Our hostel was pretty central I think, and in the main part of the "downtown" sort of area. There was a hill, it was like, THE hill of the town. The most expensive houses were on this huge hill, and we needed to see them. The sun was also setting and we wanted to watch it go down from the top of the hill.
So we climb the streets. But we are having trouble finding a place to actually see the sunset. There are too many houses and trees everywhere. We don't argue...but Chelsie and I definitely each have our own suggestions on which turns to take as we go higher, that will show us this sunset.
We end up missing the sunset. At least the way we wanted to see it.
We do come across a very posh part of the hill where it looks almost like townhouses that sit at the top of a pasture of...sheep? When I tried to google image search this place, a lot of the images brought up Crescent Hotel. I am wondering if we stumbled upon this grand, and massive hotel, or a part of it, and didn't even know it.
We walk down a path along the pasture, sort of dazed and happy and in La La Land about how beautiful this town is. Here I am. I know pictures are more interesting if a person is in them, and if you know that person. That is my vintage bag I bought and used the whole trip. And this is me in a nutshell really, starting to feel the laid back vibe from these towns, and trying not to look so much like a tourist.
It's getting dark and we head back to the hostel (above). Tonight we are in a female-only dorm, but tomorrow night we will get moved to a mixed room. Not sure how we feel about that. Okay, yes we are, we hate it. The last thing we want is to share a dorm room with stinky traveller boys. Not kidding, they wreak from their unwashed hair to their unwashed clothes. We find all this out later in our travels, and it is not pretty.
We wake at 7:30am. I am on the top bunk, and Chels is below me. When in dorm style rooms, we tend to stick together, because at least if one of us is shaking the bunk bed, the other can tell her to quit it.
It was so hot in our room that night that I couldn't even sleep with pants on. Why do I tell you this...Well, as I sit up, thinking about making my way out to the bathroom and I see a person on the top bunk in the corner of the room. The person is "sleeping" in their own sleeping bag (this is a no-no in hostels, you have to use their bedding for hygienic reasons), and the person is essentially sleeping with their travel backpack.
The person is on the larger side, and I begin to realize that this might not be a female sharing our female dorm room. I see three other girls on the beds on our side of the room still sleeping. They must have come in during the night and we didn't hear them. I sleep with earplugs, so I can't hear a thing at night generally.
I have to go to the bathroom bad. But I have no pants on. What if this is a guy? What if he sees me getting out of the top of the bunk bed? The matter is urgent, and I have to get out regardless of the mystery person on the other side of the room. I carefully try to crawl out onto the ladder without shaking the bed around too much for Chelsie underneath. As I begin my descent, the person starts to move and peer out of their covers....crap! I go down faster, and as I am getting half of myself dressed, the person emerges out of it's bed, and down the bunk bed ladder, takes HIS bag, and walks out of the room. Yikes! It really is a he!
Chelsie is awake and I tell her of the dude in our room. We are super weirded out, but guess that maybe the guys dorm was full and he was allowed to come into ours? We also suspect he was trying to get out of the room before we all discovered him, became weirded out, and it all got super awkward.
We are now way less excited to go into the mixed dorm the next night. Yuck.
We are up, and on our way to have more adventures in Bath. We go take a look at the Abbey, and then pay some money to hang out in a beautiful park where a small waterfall under a bridge flows. We had stopped at a small bookstore before, and I bought a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Austen lived in the town of Bath for a portion of her life, so there was a lot of Jane Austen books in this store, and it felt almost like betrayal to buy a Bronte book, but I just have a craving to read Jane Eyre instead. By now I really needed some new reading material. One of the books I had brought with me was a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. Why?? It's not like I can understand any of them without sitting in a University english class. What is wrong with me.
The late morning is dedicated to taking it easy. With all of the time changes and travelling, my body is getting worn down, and I am getting a cold. We rest in the park, read among ducks, and watch the water rush by in the sunny weather.
As we become hungry, we leave the park to find lunch. We come across an East Indian restaurant. We order, and are soon disappointed with our appetizer. One tiny samosa each. Are they for real? The rest of the meal was good, but also small. We still aren't sure how tipping works here in England, and we leave a 10 cent tip...and because we felt ripped off. We find this immensely funny, and nearly pull the tablecloth off with us as we try to get out of there before our waiter gets back. Giggling hysterically, we are back out on the street, and try to decide what to do next.
The town is so small (or at least the area we care about with the shopping) that we can figure out our way around quite easily already. A decision is made to split up for the rest of the afternoon and meet back at the hostel for dinner.
I have a town map, and I want to explore more than what we have seen so far. I see that there are some cool antique stores on the map, and decide to try to find one of them. It's a beautiful sunny day, and I make my way to the first store. The first one is beautiful, full of very expensive items, and owned by an older woman who looks like she is an antique in there herself. I find a set of cloth napkins, and leave it at that.
I try to find the other one, but I am getting lost, and I am tired and hot after walking so far in a short amount of time, so I decide to make my way back the way I came. I am not really worried about being lost, this is the safest town I have ever seen. I have not heard one siren, or seen one police officer. The creepiest thing that has happened has been weirdo dude in our room.
It's all very exciting to be on my own, as Chelsie and I have not split up once so far. I come across a very old church that no one seems to use anymore. It's very small, and has a very overgrown graveyard that surrounds it.
It's incredibly beautiful and creepy all at the same time. I didn't really understand the graveyard- a lot of the graves had names on small signs, or on the headstones, but it seemed more like a historical burial place than one where normal townspeople were buried. I walk around, reading the names like I might come across one I recognize, and then I eventually move on.
I finally make it back unscathed from my afternoon alone, and Chelsie and I go try to see where Jane Austen lived.
We go to the number of the "flat" (that's what they call the apartment) and there is no indication that this is the one she lived in. We thought there might be a sign? Hence my expression in this photo.
There is a small museum for Jane Austen as well and we go in. The doorman is dressed from Austen's timeperiod, but I write in my journal about his "disgustingly cracked lips and bad teeth." And get this, I actually found a picture of him on Google!! Yeah I know, he really is a nice guy despite...oh nevermind.
We aren't overly impressed with any of it. There are just tons of different copies of her books with revised covers, and a lot of merchandise from A&E's 6 hour BBC version starring Colin Firth, including a painted portrait of him as Mr. Darcy? Who the heck would put that up in their home?
Disappointed, we go have dinner in the bar underneath our hostel. It's another St. Christopher's Inn hostel, and it looks kind of fun down there, in an english-bar-kind of way. We are too tired to find another interesting hole-in-the-wall place to eat tonight.
We order, and then sit and chat about our afternoons. Chelsie went back to the park with the bridge and waterfall to read and have her alone time. It was good for us to have a break from each other for a while, though we are both still too nervous to do much more of that. Some who have travelled more would probably find that amusing, but we are proud enough of ourselves just for making our way across the world with only each other!
As we talk, our meals come. Our waiter is a big, tall guy from behind the bar that had checked us in the night before. As he sets our plates down, I see a small piece of white paper folded and tucked in by my fries.
"Chelsie, look.."
"What...what is it??"
I open it and read to her, "Call me, my name is David! Ask for me @ the bar. 0789..."
I try really hard to not make any expression, and I realize he is probably watching me from across the restaurant as I read it. I can tell Chelsie is about to die, and I give her the eyes that say "Don't...."
We go back to our room which is the mixed dorm, totally laugh about my note from dinner (that I never responded to by the way), and get ready for bed. It's like 9pm. You see? I have always been going to bed early. Three other girls share the room with us, and no boys yet. The girls tell us that they have been travelling the world for at least a year if I remember right. Their bags are actually colossal sized suitcases filled with tons and tons of clothes. They are getting ready to go out and get wasted, basically, is what they tell us, and want us to join them. I still feel sick, and we are both exhausted. And getting wasted is probably not the smartest thing for us to do at this point. We just hope that no more mystery creeps crawl in our room again tonight...
Last morning in Bath. We plan to take a bus back to London, to then stay the night in the train station for our train in the morning to Paris. In hindsight, this was the dumbest plan ever (the part where we stay overnight in a station, and not a nice, warm, hostel bed).
I go have a shower in the big, communal bathroom. The showers are in stalls...really nasty, dirty, hairy, plugged drain stalls. I am going to barf. I hate this, I hate hostels, I want to go home and have a shower. Sick, gross, gross. And there are guys out there...EW. One smiles at me as I brush my teeth at the sink, and I give him a look, and leave. I am tired, sick, and just don't smile at me pal, I am in no mood.
We try to find internet access somewhere in the town, and have no luck. We stumble across a library, and somehow manage to log on and get 1 hour of free internet. You have to have a library number and password to do this, so we thought this nothing short of a miracle that we got on. We had to check out itinerary and book a hostel for Paris.
We did not plan out where we would be staying ahead of time on this trip, we just booked hostels a few days before, hoping that they were available for when we needed to be at our new destination.
Before our bus ride back to London, we go rest in the beautiful Henrietta Park. The trees in this park are huge and beautiful. One massive tree sort of has rose coloured leaves among the green. We sit and read and write while some knob drives his remote control car around the park like a 5 year old ruining the mood of the place.
We go catch our bus, and arrive at St. Pancras Eurorail Station. Like I said, we are staying here overnight to catch our morning train to Paris. I think our reasoning was that "it won't be that bad" and "it will save us a little money". Yeah I know, bad plan.
This is one of the statues in the station.
I won't go into detail about this night, it's not worth your time reading really. Let's just say it was long...SO LONG. And I was half crazy by the end because it was next to impossible to sleep on a bench there. Worst night ever. I manage to write in my journal at 4:20am- "Feel like I might die. Wanting to get on train so bad. One hour to go. Hope I don't get sicker because of this. And I really want a hot bath...and SLEEP. Chels is going crazy- laughing and silly. I am consistently blah."
It's true, Chels started to lose it by about this time in the morning. I shut down, she goes manic. We are a great team.
The train finally arrives, we get on, exhausted and with our eyes barely open. I don't remember a thing of that ride.
To Paris we go...
The person is on the larger side, and I begin to realize that this might not be a female sharing our female dorm room. I see three other girls on the beds on our side of the room still sleeping. They must have come in during the night and we didn't hear them. I sleep with earplugs, so I can't hear a thing at night generally.
I have to go to the bathroom bad. But I have no pants on. What if this is a guy? What if he sees me getting out of the top of the bunk bed? The matter is urgent, and I have to get out regardless of the mystery person on the other side of the room. I carefully try to crawl out onto the ladder without shaking the bed around too much for Chelsie underneath. As I begin my descent, the person starts to move and peer out of their covers....crap! I go down faster, and as I am getting half of myself dressed, the person emerges out of it's bed, and down the bunk bed ladder, takes HIS bag, and walks out of the room. Yikes! It really is a he!
Chelsie is awake and I tell her of the dude in our room. We are super weirded out, but guess that maybe the guys dorm was full and he was allowed to come into ours? We also suspect he was trying to get out of the room before we all discovered him, became weirded out, and it all got super awkward.
We are now way less excited to go into the mixed dorm the next night. Yuck.
We are up, and on our way to have more adventures in Bath. We go take a look at the Abbey, and then pay some money to hang out in a beautiful park where a small waterfall under a bridge flows. We had stopped at a small bookstore before, and I bought a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane Austen lived in the town of Bath for a portion of her life, so there was a lot of Jane Austen books in this store, and it felt almost like betrayal to buy a Bronte book, but I just have a craving to read Jane Eyre instead. By now I really needed some new reading material. One of the books I had brought with me was a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. Why?? It's not like I can understand any of them without sitting in a University english class. What is wrong with me.
The late morning is dedicated to taking it easy. With all of the time changes and travelling, my body is getting worn down, and I am getting a cold. We rest in the park, read among ducks, and watch the water rush by in the sunny weather.
As we become hungry, we leave the park to find lunch. We come across an East Indian restaurant. We order, and are soon disappointed with our appetizer. One tiny samosa each. Are they for real? The rest of the meal was good, but also small. We still aren't sure how tipping works here in England, and we leave a 10 cent tip...and because we felt ripped off. We find this immensely funny, and nearly pull the tablecloth off with us as we try to get out of there before our waiter gets back. Giggling hysterically, we are back out on the street, and try to decide what to do next.
The town is so small (or at least the area we care about with the shopping) that we can figure out our way around quite easily already. A decision is made to split up for the rest of the afternoon and meet back at the hostel for dinner.
I have a town map, and I want to explore more than what we have seen so far. I see that there are some cool antique stores on the map, and decide to try to find one of them. It's a beautiful sunny day, and I make my way to the first store. The first one is beautiful, full of very expensive items, and owned by an older woman who looks like she is an antique in there herself. I find a set of cloth napkins, and leave it at that.
I try to find the other one, but I am getting lost, and I am tired and hot after walking so far in a short amount of time, so I decide to make my way back the way I came. I am not really worried about being lost, this is the safest town I have ever seen. I have not heard one siren, or seen one police officer. The creepiest thing that has happened has been weirdo dude in our room.It's all very exciting to be on my own, as Chelsie and I have not split up once so far. I come across a very old church that no one seems to use anymore. It's very small, and has a very overgrown graveyard that surrounds it.
It's incredibly beautiful and creepy all at the same time. I didn't really understand the graveyard- a lot of the graves had names on small signs, or on the headstones, but it seemed more like a historical burial place than one where normal townspeople were buried. I walk around, reading the names like I might come across one I recognize, and then I eventually move on.
I finally make it back unscathed from my afternoon alone, and Chelsie and I go try to see where Jane Austen lived.
We go to the number of the "flat" (that's what they call the apartment) and there is no indication that this is the one she lived in. We thought there might be a sign? Hence my expression in this photo.
There is a small museum for Jane Austen as well and we go in. The doorman is dressed from Austen's timeperiod, but I write in my journal about his "disgustingly cracked lips and bad teeth." And get this, I actually found a picture of him on Google!! Yeah I know, he really is a nice guy despite...oh nevermind.
We aren't overly impressed with any of it. There are just tons of different copies of her books with revised covers, and a lot of merchandise from A&E's 6 hour BBC version starring Colin Firth, including a painted portrait of him as Mr. Darcy? Who the heck would put that up in their home?
Disappointed, we go have dinner in the bar underneath our hostel. It's another St. Christopher's Inn hostel, and it looks kind of fun down there, in an english-bar-kind of way. We are too tired to find another interesting hole-in-the-wall place to eat tonight.
We order, and then sit and chat about our afternoons. Chelsie went back to the park with the bridge and waterfall to read and have her alone time. It was good for us to have a break from each other for a while, though we are both still too nervous to do much more of that. Some who have travelled more would probably find that amusing, but we are proud enough of ourselves just for making our way across the world with only each other!
As we talk, our meals come. Our waiter is a big, tall guy from behind the bar that had checked us in the night before. As he sets our plates down, I see a small piece of white paper folded and tucked in by my fries.
"Chelsie, look.."
"What...what is it??"
I open it and read to her, "Call me, my name is David! Ask for me @ the bar. 0789..."
I try really hard to not make any expression, and I realize he is probably watching me from across the restaurant as I read it. I can tell Chelsie is about to die, and I give her the eyes that say "Don't...."
We go back to our room which is the mixed dorm, totally laugh about my note from dinner (that I never responded to by the way), and get ready for bed. It's like 9pm. You see? I have always been going to bed early. Three other girls share the room with us, and no boys yet. The girls tell us that they have been travelling the world for at least a year if I remember right. Their bags are actually colossal sized suitcases filled with tons and tons of clothes. They are getting ready to go out and get wasted, basically, is what they tell us, and want us to join them. I still feel sick, and we are both exhausted. And getting wasted is probably not the smartest thing for us to do at this point. We just hope that no more mystery creeps crawl in our room again tonight...
Last morning in Bath. We plan to take a bus back to London, to then stay the night in the train station for our train in the morning to Paris. In hindsight, this was the dumbest plan ever (the part where we stay overnight in a station, and not a nice, warm, hostel bed).
I go have a shower in the big, communal bathroom. The showers are in stalls...really nasty, dirty, hairy, plugged drain stalls. I am going to barf. I hate this, I hate hostels, I want to go home and have a shower. Sick, gross, gross. And there are guys out there...EW. One smiles at me as I brush my teeth at the sink, and I give him a look, and leave. I am tired, sick, and just don't smile at me pal, I am in no mood.
We try to find internet access somewhere in the town, and have no luck. We stumble across a library, and somehow manage to log on and get 1 hour of free internet. You have to have a library number and password to do this, so we thought this nothing short of a miracle that we got on. We had to check out itinerary and book a hostel for Paris.
We did not plan out where we would be staying ahead of time on this trip, we just booked hostels a few days before, hoping that they were available for when we needed to be at our new destination.
Before our bus ride back to London, we go rest in the beautiful Henrietta Park. The trees in this park are huge and beautiful. One massive tree sort of has rose coloured leaves among the green. We sit and read and write while some knob drives his remote control car around the park like a 5 year old ruining the mood of the place.
This is one of the statues in the station.
I won't go into detail about this night, it's not worth your time reading really. Let's just say it was long...SO LONG. And I was half crazy by the end because it was next to impossible to sleep on a bench there. Worst night ever. I manage to write in my journal at 4:20am- "Feel like I might die. Wanting to get on train so bad. One hour to go. Hope I don't get sicker because of this. And I really want a hot bath...and SLEEP. Chels is going crazy- laughing and silly. I am consistently blah."
It's true, Chels started to lose it by about this time in the morning. I shut down, she goes manic. We are a great team.
The train finally arrives, we get on, exhausted and with our eyes barely open. I don't remember a thing of that ride.
To Paris we go...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
2008- Brighton!
- Brighton-
I manage to dig up just 2 whole photos of my own from Brighton. Here is one from the boardwalk.
It's 6:30am, and we are awake and getting ready for our journey to the town of Brighton. You will notice that throughout our trip, we go to bed early, and get up early. It's just our thing. However, it really pisses fellow hostel roomates off that are out partying the night before and come in at 3am and then we wake them up by us getting ready...but then they piss us off when they come in and wake us up. I guess it's a trade off. (My mom hates the word...piss..sorry Mom, it's the best word for it though.)
Around 10am we are heading to a Starbucks (there are about a million in London) before catching our bus. We get really cheap tickets, and are amazed at how thrifty we are able to travel. Patting each other on the back for being so awesome, we get on our bus within an hour, and realize why our mode of transportation is so cheap.
I go to use the bathroom at the back of the bus before it's supposed to take off. Chelsie has to hold the door shut for me because it doesn't stay closed on it's own. Lovely. While I am in there, the bus decides it's a good time to leave, jolting me, and nearly sending me flying out the door of the bathroom that probably hasn't been cleaned in a few bus trips.
The ride was about an hour and a half long in total, and it was THE WORST. I am certain we don't encounter a worse mode of transportation for the rest of the trip, that one won the prize. It was a hot day, and the air conditioning wasn't working, and the driver was insane, he just ripped around the countryside. I don't get carsick easily, but I sure was by the time we arrived. My favourite part? How the hot bus smelled of dirty bathroom the entire ride. Someone pass the smelling salts.
The bus dropped us off at some random bus stop, not a station. We had no clue where we were, or how to find our hostel from there. As Chelsie and I stand there and scratch our heads on what to do next, a random girl asks us if we need help finding something. We tell her the name of the hostel, and she says, "Oh, that is just over here, I will take you to it!" Well, that is really nice of her. After she leaves us at the hostel, we both conclude that we are fairly certain that she is a lesbian. Just one of those things based on her apperance and her mannerism, you know, really judgemental stuff like that. Not like it bothered us, but we noted it. *I was searching on Wikipedia to be able to tell you what ocean Brighton sits next to, when I discovered something interesting about Brighton that I did not know until I wrote this post. Apparently Brighton is known for having a large homosexual community. They also have a nude beach. Not sorry that we didn't find it.*
It's not until we actually see the hostel that we realize that there is a bar on the main floor, and the rooms are on the floors above. Greeeeatt...that's going to be a nice quiet stay.This isn't the ideal situation for us and Chelsie informs me that she has booked a few of these hostels (same company) in a few of our next destinations. Perfect. Oh well, how would she have known?
We ditch our stuff in the room assigned to us, and head out to do what every person should in a new place that you have limited time in...shop!
The shopping in Brighton is amazing. They have these huge clothing stores all lumped together in one area with really cool stuff and very cheap. I want to buy at least 10 dresses, luckily for my bank account, it's hard to find my size. I do buy one very cute grey one in the end. It's a lot hotter here than we expected for May, and though we love to shop, we are finding that a few clothing necessities are needed for this nice weather. Fine by us! We also manage to find a really cool second hand/vintage boutique. I found a bag/purse that I still use to this day when I remember that I still have it. It becomes my constant companion carrying my essentials as we walk around endlessly everywhere we go.
We ar now hungry after much shopping, and want to find some dinner.
Now, Chelsie is a vegetarian, which is fine of course. However, we are in Brighton, a town on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. She doesn't eat fish normally. This place is famous for their fish and chips. You can't come here and not eat it, and she knows it. We go to the pier and pick up some fish and chips for ourselves, and they taste fantastic as expected. It's a beautiful evening, sunny, windy, very windy.
We hang out and walk around there for a while, and decide to call it a night. We go back to our room to rest and just read and relax.
This is when I come to the end of my first roll of film that has my initial pictures of London and our first day in Brighton. I have no idea what I am doing, and I wind the film improperly, pop it out of the back of the Pentax, and realize I did it all wrong. I have ruined my film. *$%@. &%@*. #$&!. Literally, I said that in my head. I remind myself that Chels has a camera too , and I still have my digital camera with me to take more reliable photos. Sigh.
Chelsie was ready for sleep at 7pm. This was a little too early for me, I mean, it wasn't even dark out yet!
Chelsie had borrowed a cell phone from our really kind travel agent for our trip, should we have an emergency or just want to simply call up home for a quick chat. I had been carrying the phone on me this evening just in case maybe Kenton would call. He never did, which was probably a good thing, because I still missed him a ton and would have been sad.
Instead of sitting in the room bored, I took my new bag and went to the beach which was just outside of our hostel's front door. It was a perfect night, and the sun was setting. It was still very windy, which I think it always is there. As nice as it was, it was lonely to be out there by myself, not to mention a little scary. (My parents are reading this and thinking, 'What were you thinking?!?'). I end up going back to the hostel after I walk around a bit, and the sun had set, and head to bed.
Here is a picture from that night.
Here is a picture from that night.
Our hostel is called St. Christopher's Inn, ( I just saw that now in my travel journal), for any of you looking for a fun hostel. No one ended up sharing our room the night before, and it wasn't noisy up there at all. I also have 468 pairs of earplugs for this entire trip, so I don't hear much anyways. We find that the hostel is actually kind of fun, and more "grown up" than Baden Powell House in London, that had nothing to do, except watch tv.
We get up and have breakfast in the bar...no beer for breakfast, just cereal...with milk. And we are very happy that we both finally slept through the night!
We do have some time to kill before we leave, so we find a really pretty park further into the street. It's an uphill walk, and I am dying under the weight of my bag as usual. I am like an old grandma needing to ask for rest breaks every 5 min. I am also wearing my slip on shoes, not my good, supportive, comfortable Nike's. Those will not see the light of day very much during this trip. Like...ew.
We find this super cool cafe called "Taste" and eat lunch there. England seems to be much farther along on the whole "organic" and "local food" kick than Canada, but leaps and bounds. We like it.
I get a call from Kenton and talk to him on the phone for a bit. We hop on a train at the station to head to our next destination, the quaint little town of Bath, England.
I am still in love with what I have seen so far of England and want to shop here always. I am also loving watching the English countryside whip by, and really happy that I am not on the same bus that we took to get to Brighton. Gag.
We get to the main station where we will take a really fast train to Bath. I don't know what it is called. If you know, you should tell me! :)
I am feeling very homesick again after talking to Kenton, and have a few tears at the station. I decide that it's probably better to not talk to him on the phone, and just stick to emails. We tend to check our emails every so often on the internet at the hostels. All this moving around from place to place is also quite jarring, and hard to get used to.
We get on the train, and on this train, you have to sit where your ticket tells you. Our tickets tell us that we are sitting on the seats facing backwards. Oh joy.
It's not long into the ride that we are feeling queasy...it's not a very pleasant ride going backwards on a very, very fast train. Yuck.
We can't wait to arrive in Bath...
-
Saturday, January 22, 2011
An Update on Wren's Sleep Training
The transformation that we have seen in Wren's sleep this week is worth sharing. In one week, we have seen a huge change in the way she goes to bed, and stays asleep. It's amazing, and we are nothing short of elated!
We now have a set routine, and it goes like this:
Bath, pyjamas, playtime, stories and bottle, sleep.
The stories happen in her room with only her lamp on, and she drinks her bottle while we read. After about 10-15 min, it's bedtime. We say 'night-night' and into the crib she goes with her soother.
Night 1- Cried herself to sleep for 1 hour. Checked for a throw up every 10 min. That was hard. Woke up in the night for a bottle. Gave her half of what we used to. Let cry for about 10min, back to sleep again until 7:30am.
Night 2- Cried for half an hour. Less stressful, still kind of hard. Woke up for a bottle again, didn't feed her, just let her cry. Not sure how long that went on, she sort of cry/whined off and on for over an hour but woke at 7:45am.
Night 3- Cried for only 15 min....starting to be very encouraged that this might be working. Slept until 3:30am, cried for over an hour. Finally gave her a bottle just to get her to sleep already since it was very early morning. Slept in until 7:30am.
Night 4- Cried for maybe 10 min. Woke again around 3am, cried for a while, finally fell back asleep, up at 7:30 again.
Night 5- Cried for 30 sec. Out like a light, AND slept through the night. 7pm-7am.
I never expected her to sleep through the night so quick. I just wanted to stop rocking her back to sleep whenever she woke up, which was a lot. And she is now waking at a normal hour of 7-7:30am, not 5:30 or 6am. She also seems happier during the day and not so tired all of the time, especially in the mornings when she would wake up crying and grouchy.
Hurray Wrennie! Just thought I would let those who were interested know, especially if you are considering the cry-it-out method for your baby. We are living proof that it can work even with the most stubborn baby who barfs to get out of things.
Now she has better things to do, like enjoy some more Sesame Street.
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