Journey Embraced

My journey through France and England has given me a genuine opportunity to practice my motto, “Embrace your Journey”. It started last week. My meeting in southern France ended earlier than I planned. I was hoping to leave a day early and spend the night in Paris. On the day of my departure there was a national strike that shutdown all transportation. Since I needed to take an early train, I decided to walk to the train station the night before to buy my ticket. Of course the ticket office was closed and none of the ticket machines would take any of my credit cards.

I went off in search of dinner. Soon I found myself at Pain & Cie where Pam and I had a wonderful Valentine`s dinner the year before. Feeling a bit lonely, I looked for Pam on instant messenger where she joined me virtually for another wonderful dinner.

The trip to London was uneventful. The night before my meetings, the worst snow storm in 20 years shutdown all transportation. Since my meetings were canceled, I took advantage to get some much needed rest. My attempts to go out to dinner were also unsuccessful. I ended up having a very nice dinner on the 23rd floor in the Hilton where I was staying.

The flight to Dublin and back the next day was marked by long delays. The wait in the Dublin airport became a comedy of errors as we were moved from one gate to another and then back to the first. The bright spot was an Irish pub where I enjoyed several pints of Guinness.

The next day was to start with a train ride to Nottingham. Unfortunately I did not allow enough time for London traffic and missed my train by less than a minute. It turned out that my original train somehow snagged an electrical line and shut down the entire system. We were transferred to a bus in Leicester which gave me a chance to see more of the English country side than the high speed train allowed. We transferred back to a train in Loughborough and were off to Nottingham.

Tomorrow I’m headed back up north and Friday I’m off to Brussels, I think I may have more adventures ahead of me.

Bon Voyage, Jay