London, in two hours or less

Yesterday was a crazy transportation day, in which we spent the early morning hours in Spain and by late evening we were in Irish waters. You see, we were traveling to Ireland by super ferry from Wales. Adding a boat to all our other modes of transportation rounded out the already long list: train, bus, zipper train, metro, U-bahn, walking, hiking, biking, taxi, S-bahn, overnight train, plane, and now ferry.

Here is the jam-packed transportation schedule we followed:

6:30 Ryan Air Flight to Paris
13:04 Eurostar (Chunnel) ride to London
17:00 Eurail ride to Swansea
21:00 Swansea Super Ferry to Ireland

The ride through the Chunnel was interesting. First off, we rode on the Eurodisney train (Mickey and Minnie went with us across the English Channel!) Secondly, we got discounted passes based on our Eurail pass, which entitled us to ride in the noisy luggage car (what a rip-off!). This meant we had to sit on the flip down seats...we tried to get the 'good' seats, but the train was packed. Quite a contrast to the 1st class comfort we had gotten used to!

We took a brief break from this day of traveling to meet up with our friend Nick in London, who is working there now. We had slightly under 2 hours, so Nick gave us the lightning speed tour of London. We saw and photographed the major sights: Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and Parliament Square. It was great to see a friendly face in the midst of the backpacking trip; we had a lot of fun having lunch and hanging out with Nick.

We barely made our train to Swansea; the ticket guy had closed the door to the nearest car, which he thankfully opened up again when he saw us. We hopped on, and literally before we took our seats, the train started moving! Our trip to Ireland was almost postponed! A friendly London businessman David sat across from us, and gave us advise on how to get to our super ferry. He said we could walk, though it was raining cats and dogs when we got into Wales. So we hopped into a cool, spacious cab (lots of room for bodies and backpacks!) and made it to the ferry as boarding began. It was cool to travel to Ireland by boat, and the rain stopped just in time for us to see a beautiful sunset on deck.

Our intense travel day was exhausting; we slept well in our cabin last night. We were probably dreaming of Ireland, our final travel destination on this backpacking trip...