I’m taking a lot longer to recuperate from our 17-day long UK trip than I had with previous trips.

Au and I got back late afternoon of Friday 24 June. She came down with a sore throat while I’ve been having body aches from carrying my luggage. As far as transportation goes, we were on our own and relied a lot on public transport. It’s not a very long walk to the London Tube but when you have to carry bags… urgh. We travelled from place to place to meet DS contacts. The Tube doesn’t have lifts or escalators in many of the older stations — so you have to carry your things up and down long flights of steps and on to the trains. I wonder how the elderly survive?

Other than that, London is a great place to be — full of history, most museums are free, everything is so compact. As much as it was possible, we explored the places we visited. The London 24-hour hop-on-hop-off bus includes a river cruise along the Thames. The commentaries were excellent. I enjoyed the diversity (talk about Singapore being multi-cultural).

We stayed at a variety of places ranging from

• a youth hostel in London Central — I didn’t realise when I booked it that we were going to have four other strangers sharing our room. People come in and out at odd hours.
• to a designer hotel in Farnborough when I went to visit with four of my cousin whom I hadn’t seen since they migrated to the UK more than ten years ago.
• to Barrie’s very cosy home  in York (we each had our own room) and better than first class hotel-standard meals prepared by Joan his wife.
• to our own dormitory room at the Aberystwyth campus — someone said it looked like a room in a monastery (very bare but with our own bathroom attached). It was comfortable, clean, and, internet connection!

If I had known the things I now know, I would have planned our trip a lot better — cutting down on our train trips, carrying less luggage (I didn’t know exactly what to expect with the weather). We actually travelled twice to Wales from London and once half-way to Wales. Overall, it was a great trip. We made some good friends along the way — people of kindred hearts for DS.

Now I am taking time to consolidate what we learned and trying to get my system back to Singapore time. I’ve come back with many new Digital Storytelling friends and also ideas that we could adapt here.