Where do I begin… this was a very whirlwind part of our trip – family, rock concert, amazing street food, incredible sights and a terrorist attack…
Glasgow to Wellingborough
Early on a misty Friday morning in Glasgow we trekked from our apartment to Glasgow Central Station where we caught a train to London.
While we weren’t going to be staying in London as tourists until late Sunday evening, I had found an insane deal on round trip First Class train tickets we couldn’t pass up. First class service on these trains are akin to what the airlines call Premium Economy – not much nicer but a little more spacious with a few extra perks such as free food and drink.
Joanne’s aunt, uncle and cousin (Carol, Ian and Ruaridh) live in Wellingborough, a small town about 50 minutes north of London. We hopped a train from London St. Pancras at 2:01 on Friday afternoon and arrived at the Wellingborough train station by about 2:40.
Wellingborough
Ian was kind enough to pick us up and take us to our wonderful Airbnb that ended up being only about a 10 minute walk (if that) from the train station – LOL! Ian isn’t your run-of-the-mill uncle, he’s the vocalist in a pretty badass rock band that happened to be playing a show that evening for St. Patrick’s day. While Ian and Ruaridh went off to prep for the show, Carol took us to the most British restaurant in town… Pizza Hut. Now, being from Wichita, home to the original Pizza Hut, we thought this would be a hilarious way to try and get some culture shock going.
Let me start by saying that the Pizza itself was not that much different from any other pizza we have had. It was the little things that made it so different to us; small circular salad bar included for every guest with many kind of odd things on it (like plain tortilla chips), different things on the menu than you would find at home like racks of ribs and the menu referring to the well known Texas BBQ items. While Texas might have decent BBQ most people from the States, when asked to think of BBQ, would say Kansas City or the Carolinas are far more prolific in this subject. So, to us, it seemed strange that we kept finding mention of Texas BBQ everywhere we went.
Alright, pizza finished and we were off to a cricket club just outside of Wellingborough to celebrate St Patrick’s day in style. We arrived during sound check and while Joanne and Taylor (my sister) had some fruity cider drinks I had a Proper Job (this is beer – who knew?). While not too different from IPA’s back home, I would say it was more bitter/sour than what I was used to which held true for most of the beer I had while in England.
After a few drinks the show started and, as you could imagine, being in a tiny room with a hundred people it was crazy loud and super hard to move around. That being said the music more than made up for the close quarters – Ian’s band played through many recognizable songs, recognizable to Joanne at least. As the night wore on and the drinks kept flowing it started to get pretty rowdy – when the old drunk guy dressed as a sailor started dancing with every woman in sight we decided to call it a night.
Carol drove us back to our Airbnb where we put some laundry on and watched some strange British TV until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer. Off to bed we went to rest up for the days to come…
Quest In Progress 