probably not a hobbit – Crystal, Clearly

There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.
Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady

Before I was married, a friend and I attempted a road trip from L.A. County to New York City (and back). She and I had met in seventh-grade homeroom, a class we shared because our last names started with the letter T. Who knew that alphabetical order could be the basis for a lifelong friendship? Our road trip plan involved mapping out couches we could sleep on along the way. We also brought enough bedding to sleep in her Jeep on the nights we didn’t make it to a free couch. It was one of those nights with the back seat almost flat, and she and I and her very leggy dog nested together that I thought we were all about to die.

We’d pulled into a parking lot for the night, and it seemed a safe enough place to sleep until the dog started growling in the middle of the night. We woke up to see the Jeep flooded with a bright light getting brighter and closer and then the unmistakable sound of a train horn. I swear I did not remember any train tracks in the parking lot earlier, but there was a train headed straight for us. Frantically, we tried to make the driver’s seat accessible so she could get us out of harm’s way, and then the train turned. I knew I would have remembered if we’d parked on the train tracks. Well, we were definitely wide awake after that.

Sometimes, things don’t work out as planned. We made it as far as the Grand Canyon before heading to Seattle for a family matter on her end. Almost nothing went according to plan, but we had an adventure and made memorable stories, and really wasn’t that the point?

I’ve spent most of my life wanting to wander footloose and fancy-free, but at the end of the day, I love to have someone going through it all with me. Misadventures are so much better with someone to turn to and be all OMG, that just happened! Someday, when her kids are older, I hope that she and I can be travel buddies again.

That said, there is something very satisfying about invading England alone. I’m the Irish-American/Chicana middle-aged mom version of James Bond that absolutely nobody ever asked for. I like to think it would make my ancestors proud, aside from the part where I had just given a lot of money to British Airways and was really only on a quest for even more tea. I have been influenced by my grandmother, who was influenced by her grandmother, who was the daughter of Irish famine immigrants. I have strong feelings about the history between England and Ireland. When we wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, it is political. Our continued existence is our protest.

All the same, my mother loves classic British literature and contemporary British TV, and we both love a good cup of tea. In my defense, I was introduced to good tea by the owner of an Irish imports store on Laurel Canyon. One afternoon a red-haired friend and I slipped in out of the rain, a couple of soaking wet, freckle-faced junior high girls. My love of tea only deepened under the influence of my mother-in-law, who was born and raised in County Roscommon, Ireland. I take it with milk, no sugar, feel free to bring me a cup any time.

With a six-hour layover in Heathrow, which didn’t seem like quite enough time to really see the sights but was too much time to loiter about the terminal satisfactorily, and it being two in the afternoon, I was determined to have afternoon tea at the Sofitel.

I got the Classic Afternoon Tea ❤
Yummy treats

Getting out of the airport was unnervingly easy with an American passport. Getting out of the Victorville Walmart may be more difficult. Honestly, I sought security when I realized I was already landside just to ensure I hadn’t skipped a step. They looked at me like I was crazy. I was trying to leave the airport. I had successfully left the airport without hassle. They failed to see why I thought this might be a problem. I don’t think I’ll be taking any job opportunities from James Bond based on my polite uncertainty at this point.

There was a part of me that felt like I should make a run for it. I was set loose in a foreign country. I could do anything! Well, aside from gaining legal employment, which would be necessary to fund any prolonged doing of things. So I stuck with my original plan of afternoon tea. Despite hours of careful planning, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find my way there. The Sofitel is an easy walk from the international terminal. The international terminal is an overwhelming spectacle worthy of it’s own zip code, but walking from the exit to The Sofitel was easy-peasy.

I was nervous about the whole interaction with humans, part of going out for tea, but that’s normal for me. People who make their livings in hospitality are generally very nice, even to socially awkward, underslept Americans who feel like they just invaded the country. It was a little more awkward realizing that I was the only person having tea alone. There was definitely too much snacky stuff for one person (at least for one person, who had been incredibly sedentary for the last twelve or so hours on an airline that kept the food and beverages flowing). I ended up with even more food stashed in my purse. The tea (and the accompanying food) was really good, though.

In my youth, I used to have romantic imaginings of traveling alone. For whatever reason, these mostly involved me dressing like a girl reporter from the 1940s with a pencil behind my ear and a pocket-sized notebook at the ready. It never occurred to me that I would be a divorced forty-eight-year-old undergraduate or that, under those circumstances, I would deeply wish my mother and daughter were there with me. Afternoon tea at the Sofitel seems like a really perfect way for three generations of women to have a grand time together. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to take them there with me anytime soon.

When I finally set out on my solo world-traveling adventure, It turned out that I wanted someone there with me. I wanted someone to have a taste of the yummiest things and agree with me that it was amazing. I wanted someone to make eye contact with and wordlessly communicate volumes with. I wanted someone to make up unlikely stories about strangers in the airport with. I believed it wasn’t about the destination but the journey. Now I believe that it’s neither of those things. It’s about the connections you make and grow along the way.

Loving you the way I do
I know we’re gonna make it through
And I will go
To the ends of the earth
’cause darling,
to me that’s what you’re worth
Carole King
Where You Lead (Gilmore Girls Theme Song)

Where You Lead (full theme song from “Gilmore Girls”) lyrics

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step
Lao Tzu

I have the soul of a poet, but I was raised around a bunch of STEM types. So it is that I yearn for romance and adventure, but also approach it very practically with lots of contingency plans. Here is some of my practical planning and what worked and what didn’t.

Air Portugal has a size limit on its overhead baggage that is one inch smaller than most of the other airlines. Ryanair had the smallest of any airlines I looked at, which is to say, too small. I did the research to find a good rolling suitcase that fit within that eight-inch limit, and an uncle was kind enough to give it to me as a birthday present. Taking BART to SFO, I was pretty sure that I had overpacked. It wasn’t bad taking it downstairs to my Lyft, but then I had to take it all down the stairs at the BART station. I invested in an Osprey backpack nearly a decade ago when I traveled to Illinois for work-related training. I love this backpack but it was stuffed to its gills and teetered awkwardly on top of the smaller rolling case while my overfilled purse dug its strap deep into my shoulder. This was too much.

I got to the airport where I proved that I had a valid passport and my Covid-19 vaccinations. Then I checked the backpack and got through security, and moved my toiletries and electronics from my purse to the rolling case, and everything was just right again. Settled into my temporary home in Ponta Delgada, I began feeling under-packed as my roommates always had cuter outfits and more of them. This feeling quickly dissipated when I had to carry all my belongings up four flights of stairs to my new room in Lisbon.

Ultimately, I think I had packed just enough. I seemed to have more clothing than most of the men and less clothing than most of the women, in my cohort. I had to do laundry every week, but I could carry all my stuff reasonably well. This goes down as a win in my book.

Aside from carefully planning my luggage, I had also considered seating for the transatlantic flight. I deliberately picked a bad seat, the last row on the plane, right next to the galley. Though always on the north side of the plane to avoid aggressive sunlight through the window. I always prefer the window seat. My logic was that in a terrible seat, it was less likely that anyone would select the seat next to me. Also, the back row only has two seats, so if someone did sit next to me and I needed to get out, there would only be one person to squeeze past. Ideally, no one would sit next to me, and I could make myself a cozy little nest across both seats.

It worked in that no one sat next to me, but it failed because I couldn’t move the armrest between the seats, and the flight attendants were using the empty seat to store extra pillows and whatnot. Which is fair, since I did not pay for that seat. Also, even though British Airways has a larger measurement for luggage allowed in the overhead bins, the outside rows on the second floor of a double-decker plane have very small overhead bins, which is kinda compensated for by a neat little storage nook between the window seat and the window, but not really since my luggage was a solid and not a liquid, so there wasn’t anyway to divide it between two locations.

Fortunately, a nice gentleman who was far more comfortable rearranging everything than I was, saw me struggling and moved my bag to a center bin and someone else’s bag to an outside bin. Everything was secured tidily, and no one seemed to have any complaints.

As soon as everyone was settled in, they began distributing drinks. I picked a complimentary bottle of red wine because I could, and the flight attendant gave me two. Then there was another bottle of wine with dinner, which was more food than I was inclined to eat all at once, so I stashed the reasonably stashable parts in my purse for later. After dinner, they offered tea (and coffee and probably other stuff, but I picked British Airways largely because I like their tea).

I was positively stuffed by the time they were done giving us food and drinks and ready to settle in with my textbook. No sooner had I dived into the text than the whole cabin went dark for bedtime. I felt like a parakeet with a blanket thrown over my cage. Suddenly the generosity with the booze made a lot more sense. The crew was sedating us.

It was too dark to read a print book, and I was too excited to sleep, but the wifi cost extra, so I watched movies. Plural. I nodded off a bit here and there, but not a lot until they began to serve us breakfast, and again I added food and drinks to my purse and delighted in a nice cup of tea after my meal. A cup of hot tea with milk strikes me as the perfect way to start an adventure.

Fly the great big sky
See the great big sea
Kick through continents
Busting boundaries
Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss
The B-52s
Roam

The B-52’s – Roam (Official Music Video)

Tag: probably not a hobbit

Afternoon Tea

Planes, Trains & Automobiles