April 28th, 2011 – From one city to another

I left York at 5:21 PM. I spent the beginning of the day doing final tidying of my room. Sharon (our landlord) was supposed to inspect my room so I could get my deposit back (I planned to the money toward postage on the giant box I packed). She sent me a text message saying that she wouldn’t be coming at all, stating simply “life got in the way.” Now I just have to hope my room stays clean until she decides to show up.

I posted the box, it weighed 18.5 kilos and cost £130 to send, which I thought was pretty reasonable (I was expecting much worse). I had a lot more stuff that would fit in my suitcase and after many attempts at consolidation and a few trips to the charity shops, I simply could not leave anything else behind. Despite this, when I got to the post office and had to fill out a customs form I couldn’t for the life of me remember what was in that box! Two hours earlier they were the most important things in the world to me but in line at the post office all I could come up with was “shoes.”

Later in the afternoon, I finally made a visit to the Richard III museum in Monkbar. It was actually bigger than I imagined (many floors) but, surprisingly, had less content.

After the museum I met Becca and Richard for lunch at Lendal. It was a nice farewell meal at a pub that I will definitely miss. Ashley, Dan, and Jen saw me off at the train station and it was remarkably tear free on my end. I think because I wasn’t leaving the country right away it hadn’t hit me yet that I was really gone.

I got to London without much excitement and met Colin and Kathleen at King’s Cross, where Colin carried my suitcase the whole way back to their flat. (All 36 kilos of it!) He is the definition of a star.

I bought an Oyster card because I figured I’d be doing a lot of tubing while in the city. Instead of the regular blue cards they were giving away commemorative Royal Wedding cards with pictures of William and Kate on them. We spent the night in at Colin and Kathleen’s.