&...of course a few misadvantures along the way.

I rented a car for the first week I was here. Travelocity reservation, easy enough. Advantage car rental. Yet I got to Heathrow and no signs for Advantage. I learned I could get there on the Hertz shuttle. Ok. Not bad.

Until I got to the trailer of a rental car place in the field behind the Hertz lot and they had no reservation for me.

And no cars.

And it started raining. Pouring. 

I called Travelocity and after some ridiculousness they got me a new reservation with Payless. (Thankfully, this time I read the microscopic note at the end of the confirmation email that Payless is Sixt in England. Ok, maybe it is microscopic because I read it on my iPhone.) After pushing my three bags across the rows of rental cars back to the shuttle stop in the downpour, I asked Hertz to just get a rental there. More than four times as much, no thank you. I asked the Hertz shuttle to take me back to the terminal to get on a Sixt shuttle. The nice Hertz man unloaded all my bags and my Sixt driver told me to get in the shuttle and get dry; he would get the bags. 


We drove over to the Sixt rental place a good fifteen minutes away. The driver helped me out and brought me two bags. 


Two.

No third bag.

He didn’t pick up my crammed full carry-on.

It was all by itself on the curb at Heathrow.

All of my books.

All of my jewelry.

Everything else I had jammed into that small bag to make it so very heavy.

I was sick.

The driver was about as freaked out as I was. We quite speedily and so very bumpily drove back. He called a friend of his, another shuttle driver, and miraculously the bag was still there. He picked it up and waited for us to arrive.

Tender mercies. 

Not long after I was driving on the wrong side of a car on the wrong side of the road headed north on the M1 to Leicester and my new adventure.

Until I realized I had no idea how to turn the car lights on...