Traveling Confusion

Arriving and driving at a foreign place can be confusing. Then there is Heathrow which is in a mega-confusion category of its own..

I was hoping to drive the few miles to Datchet on a back road from the Heathrow rental car madness. On the dashboard screen, the rental folks progammed in some route on an M-XX. "Oh it's easy. I went to school there. It's a short, easy way on the motorway," assured our friendly young Sikh Europcar desk clerk.

I took a wrong turn just trying to get out of the parking lot, then ended up on the wrong side of the road after my U-turn. Stressed? You betcha.

Our Kia for the month behind our York pub inn,
the Old Grey Mare.

A couple more wrong turns, a couple more disastrous U-turns, a missed roundabout direction and a missed motorway exit trying to interpret the dashboard voice, and we find our hotel after driving by it twice. It took me about five minutes and three tries to squeeze the car into the teeny, tiny marked parking space in back.

But here's the confusion. I had assumed the Brits had converted to metric. Our first morning, we tackled the one and a half mile drive to Windsor.  I am mindful of speed limits and I notice the big numbers on the speedometer are mph and the teeny ones that I can't read without reading glasses are km. For about a day, I was thinking I need to complain to Europcar. How can they rent a Kia with right hand drive and mph on the speedometer?! I was getting indignant.

Full day two was the four-hour motorway drive to York. Brits have speed cameras on their freeways and tickets by mail. I got to make sure whether to use the tiny marks on the speedometer (i'm wondering, looking in the rear vision mirror, "Why are there so many cars tailgating me?") or the big ones. Then I just try to keep up with traffic. After about a half an hour on the motorway, I notice mileage signs list place name, a distance number, and an "m". Not a " km" anywhere.

Then there are electrical devices. Like the electric kettle in our Datchet room. Doesn't work. Fumble with it. Play with its switch. Nothing. Each wall plug in Britain has its own switch. We play with them. Nothing. We are about to complain to the front desk when it occurs to us to follow the cord from the kettle. It's not plugged in.

Our shower this morning in York depended upon an instant water heater mounted in the shower cubicle. Heck. We'd seen them in Thailand. We know how they work. We play with different combinations of the two dials and one switch. Nothing. Not even water, much less hot water. Shari is about to put on some clothes and ask for help from the folks downstairs.

There's this pull chain outside the shower stall. We assumed it was an emergency cord for when you fall down and break a hip. We had seen them before in nice hotels. Of course, our assumption was completely unwarranted. This was no nice hotel, no one frail could possibly climb the two narrow, steep staircases to get to our room, and it is impossible for anyone to fall down in that tiny shower cubicle about the size of a coffin.

I look at the small plastic box from which the pull cord dangles. In rough, faded, permanent ink lettering, someone had printed, "SHOWER".

A good pull, a click, and fumbling with the switch and two dials produce wonderful hot water.