Matisyahu's Blog

The thing I left out of first update was that I was sick after arriving in Paris – unfortunately it always happens when I go for a long trip, be it by via train, road, airplane, whether it is a short journey (Wellington to Auckland) or a long one (Wellington to Sydney then to Dubai etc). I’ve been fighting through it but it isn’t something you can fix up in a rush – the body will heal when it wants to heal, there is no fast forward button to speed up that process. I’m slowly getting there but them’s the breaks or brakes – the show must go on.

We took the Eurostar from Paris to London then from the St Pancras to where I was staying (it was a hop, skip and a jump) and lodged myself in for the night. The next day I organised a 2 day Tootbus explorer London pass which allowed me to jump on and jump off at all the major sites I wanted to see: Tate Modern, the new Shakespeare’s Globe, Battersea power station redevelopment, London Transport Museum (I was going to go to the British Museum but it was shut early due to an incident but I couldn’t find more details other than that). I had a lot of fun over those two days – if you are going to visit London – Apple Maps work great but remember to download an offline version if you’ve got roaming turn off or if you are roaming wanting to keep data use to a minimum. One thing to always remember is to make sure you leave plenty of slack in your schedule – not everything is going to go according to plan all the time so you always need to ensure that you take a seat followed deep breath then relax and just go with the flow.

On Sunday I joined the ‘formal tour’ that I signed up for which includes accommodation, food, guides etc. because I’d sooner let someone else sort out the details required than trying to do it myself and losing my cool in the process. So I jumped on the bus at London on the way we stopped off Oxford University, then Stratford-upon-Avon to visits Shakespeares home, drove pass Anne Hathaway’s Cottage then we popped up to York now through to Edinburgh where we visited many sites.

We then started going though the lowlands and highlands of Scotland – it is interesting learn about a distinct culture that exists. I took a tonne of photos but holy crap the accommodation was appallingly bad – when you’re a guy who is 188cm and trying to sleep in a single bed with your legs dangling off the edge of the bed, the experience overall is bad. I’m going to provide feedback to the tour operator – at the north of Scotland there is a limited range of accommodation so maybe the tour operators should team and up and establishment hotels with a decent minimum standard rather than dealing with hotel operators with a captured audience doing the least amount humanly possible. Tonight I am happy that I have a double bed all to myself so I can finally have a decent night sleep.

Going to head out tomorrow – the Irish leg of the tour is beginning which will be particularly interesting given half my family have Irish heritage. I’m going to have a shower, crawl into bed and chill out watching some YouTube videos – thank goodness for free wifi.