Just to shake things up, I decided to make a huge miscalculation at the beginning of the trip this year. You see, the plan was to meet our friends in London (since that‘s where our flight ended, see previous log entry), have some fun in the UK for a few days, and then fly to Germany together. We only had 6 days before M had to be back in Germany for work, so we planned it out to make the most of our time there. The first step was for me and Mc to go straight from the airport to Canterbury, hang out there for the afternoon, stay overnight, and then still have the morning before having to jet back to London to meet our friends at 4pm. Which sounded completely doable. We researched how to get from the airport to Canterbury (subway from Heathrow to Victoria Station and then train to Canterbury) and how to get to our hotel (walk). We were prepared. What I didn’t do was take into consideration the time change, a rookie mistake.
We left Thursday, 7/7 at 11:30am and arrived in London Friday, 7/8 at noon (an hour late). However, that was 3am PST. Neither of us had slept much on the plane (as per usual for me) and by planning on going straight to Canterbury we had essentially planned to do an all-nighter. “So?” I hear many of you asking, as you crush another Red Bull can on your 20-year-old forehead. Well, even if you are not the sort of adult who, when faced with the possibility of staying up all night and then going to work the next day seriously contemplates suicide, it is still not a good idea to skip sleeping when traveling.
*SuperNova Travel Tip: Plan for sleep. It won't help with jet lag (nothing does), but it will help keep you from passing out on various trains, buses, strangers, etc.
It’s important to remember that simply traveling from your home to your destination is exhausting, despite the argument that all you are doing is sitting (which isn’t true, you are also running through airports, stressing about flights and connections, carrying luggage, harassing airport employees, loudly criticizing the in-flight movie selection, rethinking the benefits of having children; you are doing SO much more than sitting). And chances are, once you’ve arrived at your destination you hit the ground running, trying to make as much as you can of your hard-earned vacation. So it is a very good idea to plan at least half a day to crash when you first arrive anywhere that requires longer than a 6 hour flight. You also don’t know exactly how your vacation is going to go and if you end up missing some sleep later, you won’t be drawing from low reserves. And I haven't even mentioned jet lag yet. If you scoff at this and shout, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” as you sprint from sight to sight, then there’s a good chance you’ll end up like me; sitting in beautiful Germany with a nasty head cold. Because I got very little sleep in the UK, my immune system eventually got fed up, headed to a pub, and left me on my own. Of course, your crash will manifest itself in it’s own way, but I can guarantee that it will manifest itself. Of course, I knew all this, but there were a few occurrences beyond my control, but I’ll get to that later.
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