Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life

After returning to Birmingham, I repacked my bags and headed to visit another friend, Victoria, currently living in Colchester (a small town about one hour east of London). This sounds like it would be easy, but let me tell you…hauling all the bags around via train, tube, and bus was not a fun task. At this point in time, I already couldn’t wait for the time when I’d be in my cabin on the ship and not have to haul everything around until we port in Fort Lauderdale, FL on December 16^th.

Luckily I arrived in Colchester as planned and Victoria was ready and waiting! We headed to her house (which is a nice size for one person) and decided to cook dinner that evening. It was nice to have a home-cooked meal (not to mention the glass of Pims) and just relax after traveling. We stayed in and played Ticket to Ride Europe (for any of my friends who enjoy board games…czech…no wait…check this one out. It was excellent!) and then spent the rest of the night catching up and discussing when to go to London and the plans for the rest of the visit.

The next day we decided to head into the city to see a musical. We both had wishful thoughts to get tickets to The Book of Mormon, but couldn’t get them (not surprisingly). Thus we decided on one neither of us had seen, Spamalot! After navigating the city and finding our hotel (which is much easier with a small backpack and nothing else), we headed out to the show. It was almost identical to the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and just as funny! One of the best parts of the show was when an actor on stage broke character and was just laughing during a scene. However, Kevin, who is finishing up his acting program in Birmingham informed me that sometimes actors actually PLAN to break character during a show. This is called corpsing. After talking to Kevin, it sounds as if the Spamalot actor was corpsing, but I’m just going to pretend it wasn’t on purpose…though either way, it was hilarious.

Kevin met Victoria and I in London the next day and we spent it just walking around different parts of the city. Kevin ran some errands, so we would followed him to where he needed to go and explored those areas. We were mainly around the River Thames (see picture of Victoria & I at the Tower Bridge…not the London Bridge) all evening before heading back to the hotel after closing down a bar at midnight. The next day we headed our separate ways (the next time I see Kevin, he may be a major actor somewhere…fingers crossed (or…break a leg) for your upcoming showcases in NY & LA!). 

After returning to Colchester, Victoria and I decided to eat out for the evening and follow it up with a quiet night in (after a few busy days of being a tourist). The next day was spent doing errands around town, figuring out a bus schedule to Southampton (where the SAS ship is docked), visiting museums, and finally making another home-cooked meal (figured I’d be having ship food or eating at the various ports for the next four months)!

My entire 11 days in the UK (and Prague) was quite a lovely time and I really enjoyed spending so much time with Victoria and Kevin! Hopefully I’ll see them both again sooner rather than later.

In the morning I was off to Southampton, where awaited the MV Explorer!


Take your love and your pleasure as you find it. Do not worry so much of the future that you let today pass you by. You are happy...need you know more than that?