As you get older you find yourself thinking “I’m too old for this” more and more.  Well, I do.  I don’t like thinking that I’m getting older, but I also acknowledge that I’ve been an old soul since University, when I used to leave parties early so I wouldn’t be tired or hung over for work/class the next day. 

One thing I’m getting too old for is lay-overs.  When Kristen and I travelled to Europe in April we went with the cheap flight – the one that took us from Halifax to Philadelphia to London.  In case you don’t know, that meant that we first had to travel in the opposite direction.  It all seemed a bit counter-intuitive…

The layover in Philly wasn’t so bad on the trip to London (it was only 3 hours) but on the trip back it was a terrible 5 hour wait (it was terrible for other reasons, too).  If we’d taken a direct flight we wouldn’t have had to backtrack or spend time waiting for our next flight.  The journey was long enough without it.

See, we weren’t staying in London our first day, we were going straight to Bath.  This mean that once we arrived in London we then had hop on a train.  To get cheap train tickets we purchased them in advance online.  We didn’t know how long we’d be going through customs or if our flight would be delayed, so we booked a later time – just in case.  This meant more waiting.

The last thing you want to do on a super-exciting-Europe-Trip is wait.  You want to be there NOW! 

Since we couldn’t be there instantly, Kristen and I decided to split our journey into pieces.

• Part 1.1 – Drive from Halifax Downtown to Halifax Stanfield Airport
• Part 1.2 – Flight from Halifax Stanfield Airport to Philadelphia International Airport
• Part 1.3 – Bus/Walk from Terminal F to Terminal A (wait 3 hours)
• Part 1.4 – Flight from Philadelphia International Airport to London Heathrow Airport
• Part 1.5 – Tube from London Heathrow Airport to London Paddington Station (wait 2 hours)
• Part 1.6 – Train from London Paddington Station to Bath Station
• Part 1.7 – Walk from Bath Station to our Hotel

To some people this would look insane.  Why not just say “Travel from Halifax to Bath”?  Why make it so complicated?  Why include walking/driving?  Well, we did it this way to stop ourselves from going insane.  By this plan, we weren’t taking 1 super-long trip that would last over 14 hours – we were taking 7 mini-trips.  Yes, we weren’t in London yet, but we’d completed 3 legs of the journey!  Yay!  That constituted some kind of success!

I remember on the train to Bath one of us said “Part 1.6” and we both smiled, utterly exhausted.  Only 1 leg left to go.