As I came down from the plane I was nearly cut in half by the wind, it was a grey day and before long the the heavens would open. Welcome to England!
I got the bus driver to drop me outside the YHA where I would spend the night, and once there I quickly dropped off my pack and headed to the Baltic Fleet, the pub next door, for a good old fried-up brunch, a pint and a read of the Sunday football pullout. People are really friendly up north!
Come mid-afternoon it was tipping down and after a trip to the Tate, and watching Liverpool take Bolton apart 4-nil in a pub, accompanied by another few pints, I did little other than wander about and have a chinese for dinner, taking the opportunity to chat up the friendly waitress.
Next day I checked out the informative but rather aimless Maritime Museum and International Slavery Museum in a brutally dismal Albert Dock, and did some shopping. I arranged to meet a very surprised Dad in the Prince Albert that evening, and we had a nice reunion, more pints disappearing along the way. Mum was even more shocked to see me by the time we got home, and then the trip was all over.
A week shy of four months, four countries, god knows how many miles, a few stressful times, many great times, and all of it memorable for one reason or another. Pretty much everyone I met along the way was doing something which sounded way cooler than my journey home. Longer trips, with more countries, more danger and more crazy stories. So many people with so much to say about the world, whose knowledge of the countries and people of the world in many cases couldn't fill the back of a postage stamp. One thing that living in Japan for five years has taught me is that to know a place is to know its language, its people, its customs, to enjoy its good points and accept the bad ones, and ultimately to fit in and be another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that makes up life there. Living, and just passing through. Big difference.
Anyway, where to next?
