day 11 - march 26, 2009

Well.
I'm not going to lie to you.
Our last day overseas was not a crazy, milk-it-for-all-its-worth, let's-make-the-most-of-it sort of day.
I just don't want you to be disappointed with an anti-climax.

Now that we're on the same page, here's what happened:

Kp and I woke up to fresh towels outside of our door, courtesy of Steve.
(Dear Steve and Martin's mums: thank you for raising such lovely, hospitable gentlemen.)
We had decided the night before not to bother going back into London and instead spent the afternoon with Martin, catching up. I don't know if it was because we were at the end of our trip, but I definitely preferred a low-key day of chat in good company as opposed to traipsing about London, trying frantically to see as much as possible in one day.

I don't have any pictures of the time we spent with Martin, so instead here's a picture of kp wearing plastic, patent gloves that don't fit:
It was taken in Dublin, but this is my blog, so I can do what I want.

After hanging out with Martin, kp and I decided to take ourselves in Camberley, the nearest town. Camberley has about two main streets, both of which we walked the length of. At the end of the second street it suddenly occurred to me that there was no way we could leave England without having CREAM TEA. The first cafe we saw didn't do cream tea, but they pointed us in the direction of the mall. In the mall was a little cafe that did what kp would call a "buck up" version. Which basically means there was tea, there was cream, there was scones and jam, but it wasn't really CREAM TEA.

But we ate it anyway and loved it.

The next logical step in our day was to find a pub and have our final pints of English beer. We went to a place called The Carpenter's Arms and I drank Speckled Hen. We decided, rather foolishly and mostly because kp made me, to enter the pub quiz for the night. Note to fellow travelers: don't join the pub quiz unless you have someone at your table from the country you are currently in because you will have ZERO frame of reference for 80% of the questions. Ie. you will not win. It was almost comical how poorly we were doing and apparently other people noticed. We were seated by a window, and a man who was standing outside, smoking, tried to give us the answer for #14... but he was outside, talking to us through a closed window, so we couldn't understand him. That didn't deter him, however, and he took it upon himself to come in and help us. Kp and I were feeling a bit like we didn't want the company of a stranger, but he was fairly insistent upon sitting with us. Here's the best part: he was from Liverpool and kp could barely understand a word he was saying. I sort of wish I could have heard the conversation she thought she was having with him. After a while it didn't matter that they were having a chat like two ships passing in the night because we kept on with the pints.

And then things like this happened.
I can't remember why, but this was REAL funny.
Trust me.

Our new friend didn't quite get our brand of humour (I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY) but he was still content to sit with us and marvel at our ridiculousness. And then he bought us these:
He wasn't looking to get laid or anything, I don't think. I think he was just a bit lonely, had come down to the pub on his own, and was happy to have found two nutso Canadian lassies to entertain him for the evening. I have no idea what his name was, but I did find out the following: he started work at 15 and now at 34 he has 3 sons, the eldest of which is 12 (we saw photos!). Growing up, he lived within 2 miles of almost all his relatives which means he could never get away with anything. It was completely interesting to talk to him about his life and ultimately I ended up not minding that he had crashed our kplv party. Thank you, random Liverpudlian whose name I don't know, for adding something unexpected to our night out in Camberley.

It wasn't too late when we were ready to leave, and we walked up to catch the bus back to Martin's. Just as we were reaching the street, the bus went by and my instincts kicked in, so I ran to catch it. I realised fairly quickly that kp wasn't behind me and to my "COME ON KP!!" she yelled "let's just get the next one!" Which would have been totally smart, if that hadn't been the last bus of the evening. We took a taxi home.

And that's it. We went to bed, kp snored, and I finally got some good sleep when she got up to drink grapefruit juice at 6:30am. These are the important details that I chose to record in my journal and which I am transcribing for you now.

One last night in a very comfortable bed and then wake up, pack up yer sh*t and fly back to Toronto.