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MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: JUNE 22, 2008
PLACE: CARREFOUR, ZGORZELEC, POLAND
Finding a Guinness in Poland proved to be the greatest challenge thus far.
We rented a car in Germany for the weekend and had only two days to hit both Czech Republic and Poland, so we chose a Polish town closer to the Czech border, Jelenia Gora.
We didn’t ask it to, but our Garmin (navigation system) chose an absolutely gorgeous route through the Polish countryside and through a number of small towns that stood as grim reminders of what Eastern Europe has suffered. The drive was both breathtaking and sobering — and I say that as a left-brained person who usually can’t be bothered to look out the window. However, had it taken us that route during the winter, there is no way we could have made it, so proceed with extreme caution should you find yourself trusting a Garmin in rural Poland in the winter.
Just as in Prague, the Garmin got us to our destination city flawlessly, but seemed to find the absolute craziest route within Jelenia Gora to our actual destination, Palac Paulinum.
Palac Paulinum is a restored palace nestled in the woods, but not an unreasonable distance to walk to/from city center. The grounds were expansive, and the staff very friendly. Oddly, there were hardly any guests, so we practically had the palace to ourselves. (There are worse things.)
After unsuccessfully trying to ask the concierge how to exchange our Euro for Polish zloty (she didn’t know what “ATM” or “Geldautomat” [German for ATM] was, and my miming using an ATM with my debit card didn’t help), we meandered into town for dinner and hoped there would be a magical money exchanging stand somewhere. We actually saw one such stand, but they had just closed and tried helpfully to communicate (in Polish) how to get to another one. Lo and behold, once we turned onto the next street, there was an ATM about every ten feet. With English translations! Score.
There were plenty of shops and a few sundresses in the windows that I wanted to buy, except all the stores were open from 10am-1pm on Saturdays and closed on Sundays, so it was not to be. (Memo to Jelenia Gora: you could enjoy more financial success if your stores were open when people were out of work and could shop in them!) Nevertheless, this seems to be a common theme throughout Europe where Sundays are reserved as family days and families spend time together taking walks or relaxing at the local Eis Cafe (ice cream shop).
Google informed us that Belfast Irish Pub was in Jelenia Gora, so we headed there expecting the usual young Irish ex-pat and Guinness on tap. Fail. The pub was about ten square feet, with two patrons and a lone, local bartendress. Our request for a Guinness was met with confusion, and she asked the other people in the bar if they spoke English. We’re pretty sure she was mocking us as she looked at the other two patrons with a confused expression on her face and said “hallo, Guinnenski?”. Giggling ensued from both the bartendress and the patrons.
One guy did speak a little (”klein”) German, although at that point we were really confused because “Guinness” never needed a translation before. No one there seemed to have any idea what a Guinness was, so we left in search of dinner and figured we’d find a Guinness at one of the many beer gardens in the square.
Fail again. Plenty of beer, nary a Guinness in sight.
We sat down for dinner at the Retro Restaurant and enjoyed a salmon and halibut, respectively, entree heaping with colorful salad and french fries, and a beer — for 55 zloty ($25 USD) total. Crazily cheap and delicious. Our very nice waitress spoke no English but fluent German, so we we navigated the meal just fine. I asked her if there was any Guinness anywhere, and she laughed (clearly recognizing what Guinness was) and said no.
Hmmm.
We wandered back to the palace (stopping at every bar to check for Guinness, just in case) and ordered some pinot noir and a cheese platter to drown our Guinness sorrows. We then settled in for some Family Guy courtesy of Hulu (what else do you do in a Polish palace?) and promptly fell asleep within 30 seconds, at 8pm, wine and cheese untouched. Waking up hungry only to stare at a beautiful but dried-out cheese platter you can no longer eat safely may be a first-world sorrow, but it is a sorrow nonetheless.
In the morning we set about Googling Irish pubs in Poland to see if we could make a detour. We found one, about 90 minutes (one way) out of the way, but given that it was 8am, the prospect of hanging around the (by then boring) palace until it was late enough for this Irish pub to conceivably be open wasn’t very appealing. We also had a six-hour drive back to Germany ahead of us and wanted to stop in Dresden on the way, which would be more difficult if we started wandering Poland in the opposite direction in search of an Irish pub that conceivably didn’t serve Guinness (its population was a good 10,000 less than the already-small Jelenia Gora) and even more conceivably didn’t exist.
I started to accept the fact that a Guinness in Poland was not to be and headed to breakfast, where we were the only two guests. The view from the patio was spectacular, but breakfast was limited to bad coffee, cornflakes (note: the Polish apparently drink cream, not milk, with their cereal), and a tomato/cucumber/mozzarella salad that was actually tomato/zucchini/mozzarella salad.
The brochure for the palace highlighted a salt cave, so we wandered the grounds in search of a little spelunking. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find it, so we asked at reception. She asked us to return in fifteen minutes because the cave was “on-off.” (??) Intrigued by a cave with a power switch, we Googled “salt cave” and learned it’s a popular Eastern European spa experience where you sit in a room and breathe salty air. The English translations assured us that spending 45 minutes a day in a salt cave (which charges by the minute) would cure every disease known to man, including neurosis.
Eager to cure our neuroses, we returned and followed her down some stairs, through the sauna, and to a door which opened onto … a three-by-six room with two lawn chairs and some positively garish blue and red lights glued onto a wall of salt.
After we stopped laughing, we plunked down to breathe some salty air (which was really piped in from who-knows-where) for a bit. Sad to discover I was still neurotic, we snapped some photos and wandered, still laughing, back to our room and then headed back to Germany.
After we’d been driving for awhile, we passed a supermarket and ran inside to see if they sold Guinness. (Perhaps Guinness had once offended Jelenia Gora?) They had an entire beer aisle, and Miller Genuine Draft, but no Guinness.
Now we were obsessed. If we drove by what even looked like a bar, we slowed to look for Guinness signs. As we approached the German border, we had pretty much given up hope, and decided to buy a Guinness in Germany near the border and drive back to Poland to drink it. (This is not cheating, because many countries do not have any sort of Guinness distribution, so if I’m to meet my goal, I have to bring my own. Still, it’s more fun if you get the Guinness in the country where possible, since the adventure of finding one is the whole point.)
Immediately before the highway onramp that would take us into Germany, we passed the Polish equivalent of what appeared to be Home Depot and Wal-Mart, called Carrefour. Willing to give it one last try, we went in and discovered it was actually a mall with, among other things, a grocery store.
There were security guards (or police? We couldn’t tell.) patrolling every inch of the place, and they wouldn’t let Damon go into the grocery area with his backpack.
I went in to take a peek, figuring they didn’t sell beer at all. I walked past a limited-access aisle full of hard alcohol, hoping that the beer wasn’t similarly off-limits as I wasn’t quite sure how to gain entry.
Luckily, the next aisle was freely accessible, full of beer, and most importantly, HAD GUINNESS!
I walked to the line, beaming, bought my Guinness, and took a photo in the parking lot:
Eastern Europe has a strict 0.0 alcohol limit for drivers, and we weren’t quite sure what the policy on passengers and alcohol. It seemed bad form to drink beer in the mall parking lot, so we found a back road on a farm where I enjoyed my Guinness out of sight.
The moral of this story: if at first you don’t find Guinness, try, try again!
(Massive thanks to Damon for photographing the trip!)
MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: JUNE 21, 2008
PLACE: O’CHE’S BAR, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
Since we were already in Germany, we decided to rent a car and knock Czech Republic and Poland off the list.
Eastern European countries have a high rate of vehicle theft, so you cannot rent a German car in Germany if you are going to countries on the prohibited list (like, say, Czech Republic or Poland). We ended up with an Opel Zafira minivan which we discovered all too late had no air conditioning. Whoops. (More on that during the drive back from Poland.) By American standards it was still a nice, new car, although since I didn’t do any of the driving (haven’t learned to drive stick yet) I can’t speak as to how it handled.
We also rented a Garmin nuvi (navigation system), which we were told had strong coverage of Eastern Europe (moreso than other brands). It took us to Prague with no problem — that is, until we were inside the city and making our way to the hotel, at which point it had us drive down pedestrian streets (double-whoops) and then suggested we turn left into a wall (a direction which we ignored, unlike some people). The location of the hotel may have had some part in confusing the GPS as it was 50m from the Charles Bridge and situated right in the middle of the tourist district, where the streets are frequently overrun by wandering pedestrians. In the end we parked and decided to walk the last bit of the route to avoid killing any innocent Czechs.
We spent Friday night at the U Zlatého Stromu, which is quite literally at one end of the Charles Bridge.
Couldn’t have asked for a better location. The view from the room was fantastic, if you didn’t mind leaning out the window for it:
The man at reception was very nice and spoke English well. (Hey, I’m busy learning German, so my capacity for Czech vocabulary is limited.) We chatted a bit about his feelings on globalization and Czech Republic’s impending adoption of the Euro. (Czech currently uses the koruna; at the time of this visit, 1 koruna = $0.06 USD.) He thought it was a positive step because if larger countries like Germany were adopting the Euro, it must be a better choice. (Selfishly, I prefer pre-Euro European countries because their currencies tend to fare better against the declining U.S. dollar.)
The hotel has a popular bar (there was loud partying outside our window until at least 4am, even though nothing else on the street was open much past midnight) and a 24/7 restaurant (the only one around from what we could tell during our 1am wandering). Somehow between 4am and 7am the restaurant transformed from a crazy party to a demure, formal dining room which served a delicious complimentary breakfast that included ample warm croissants (my second-favorite food, after Guinness), fresh fruit, and a brimming cheese platter, not to mention poached eggs and bacon. Om nom.
During our Garmin-inspired “tour” of the nearby area the night before, we saw a Guinness sign in front of a bar, so we headed there for a lunchtime drink. After sitting down and ordering our beer, we realized that the place, O’ Che’s, was a socialist bar named after Che Guevera. I couldn’t be less of a socialist if I tried, so drinking my Czech Guinness at O’Che’s was especially amusing. (We didn’t try the food, but they did have free wi-fi, which scores points.)
Prague was once the up-and-coming Eastern European city, until it was eclipsed by Budapest, which is prime to be eclipsed by [Split? Vilnius?]. (If the initial transition at all interests you, I can’t recommend reading Prague by Arthur K. Phillips highly enough.) I expected it to be more expensive than it was, but we were struggling somewhat to spend our last 500 koruna. We ended up purchasing two matted photographs and a cute WC sign from vendors on the Charles Bridge for around 100 koruna apiece.
We wandered for an hour, had some ice cream, and then headed off to end our Saturday in Poland.
(Many thanks to Damon for photographing the trip!)
MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
PLACE: NARITA AIRPORT, TOKYO, JAPAN
I was hanging out in Santa Cruz, California chatting with my friend Kristen (my co-blogger over at Ethiopian Eats) about her impending move to Japan when I decided to pop out there and check out her new digs.
Contrary to popular opinion, last-minute flights are not always exorbitant - I flew San Jose to Tokyo (Narita) round-trip for $650USD, buying my ticket at the airport just prior to departure. My little sister lives in Tokyo, so the plan was to visit her for a week, then hop the Shinkansen (high-speed bullet train) down to Osaka to see Kristen for another week. I exchanged $100USD for yen at the San Jose Airport just in case (which turned out to be an excellent idea).
I took three years of Japanese in elementary school, but somehow they never covered how to order alcoholic drinks. (Tip: I later learned that Guinness is [effectively] “Guinness-oo beer-oo” — easy enough!)
Japan is hereby the easiest country ever to find a Guinness, as I found a beer stand selling (warm) Guinness right next to baggage claim. Goal accomplished.
But if you want to read about the rest of my adventure (which includes lots more Guinness), keep going.
There are basic English translations to navigate the (huge, clean, white) airport, but getting *from* the airport *to* your destination is another matter entirely. My sister told me which bus to take, so I just repeated the name to an official-looking woman behind a counter that appeared transportation-related, handed her money, and she handed me a ticket and pointed outside. I matched the number on my ticket to the number of a bus that pulled up, and off I went. If you don’t have such a sister, there is a subway train connected to the airport - find that, and use the map to find your approximate destination. If at all possible, figure this out before you leave for Japan.
Do not expect that the Japanese will speak English. In my two weeks there, I had to use my (very, very rudimentary) Japanese or my hands. I prefer it this way - no Japanese person comes to America and finds *any* translations, after all - but if you’ve never traveled outside the country before, I suggest getting your feet wet in Europe (where at least you can recognize the alphabet and match it phonetically) and then heading to Asia.
A sidenote: many restaurants and shops take credit cards, but almost no ATM machine will work with your American debit card. You need to go to a post office ATM machine, which are only open during regular business hours.
Look for this sign to find a post office: 
You’ll need to get a (pre-paid) Suica card to ride the trains around Tokyo. They look like this:
To buy one, go to an automated ticketing machine (there are English translations) and buy one. You can add fare in denominations of 1,000 yen. (At some stations you can buy one from a human, but they probably won’t speak English. Say “Suica,” hand them some yen, and smile, and you might get one.) You’ll then wave your card at the turnstile to enter and leave the station. It will show you how much is left on the card when you swipe it, and you can add more at any automated machine.
Somehow, I messed this process up twice and had to jump over the turnstile because I couldn’t read the error message. Oops.
On my second day I went to an all-day sumo wrestling match. Before attending, this sounded like the most boring thing in the entire world… but I actually had a really fun time. Each match is *so* short (like, one minute long) that it kept my attention. Plus, I could drink beer while I watched. Beer makes everything more interesting.
Don’t pay for the Tokyo City View. You can’t really see much.
Prior to arriving in Japan I had been a vegan for well over a decade. How I was going to maintain a vegan diet once presented with a menu of incomprehensible squiggles was another matter entirely.
So, I took a deep breath and decided that, in the spirit of my adventuresome nature, I would simply point at an attractive squiggle and hope for the best.
Squiggle #1 was *drumroll* …. raw horse!
When I fall off the wagon, I fall off the wagon.
(Incidentally, raw horse tastes a lot like roast beef, one of the only meat memories I had from childhood.)
I honestly couldn’t recognize 90% of the things I ate for the remainder of my trip. Particularly the authentic Chinese food (not the take-out you get in America), which to my eyes (and stomach) was a bunch of small plates of chicken feet. It very well may have been.
* Strawberry crepes. OM NOM NOM. They’re available everywhere, and they’re delicious. I bet I ate 10 of them. (They usually sell them in carts on the street, and you can just point to the image of the one you want.)
* While Starbucks employees may not speak English, they have a full English menu on the counter, so you can point to your order. Convenient. (Shame me all you like for going to Starbucks in Tokyo, but it was right next to the place I was staying and I needed my caffeine.)
* My most enjoyable alcohol experience was at Whales of August (Udagawa-cho, Shibuya-ku, 28-13). It’s a very small, very dark martini bar where all the drinks are named after movies (i.e. Shawshank Redemption, Silence of the Lambs). The best part: the waiters are *serious* about their drink mixing. We kept ordering more drinks just to watch them shake them - it’s like they’re possessed by evil spirits. Awesome. Go there.
* Blood-Type Condoms
I enjoyed Tokyo, but I really loved Osaka.
On my ride down to Osaka on the bullet train, I learned how to use the restroom (which are only holes in the floor) while wearing a skirt and moving at 130mph. I also decided I needed a new challenge since finding a Guinness had been ridiculously simple.
The new challenge: an egg salad sandwich.
After checking in at the Ramada Hotel (”Ramada hotel-oo” - I’m beginning to think there’s some truth to the idea that I can just add “oo” on to the end of English words and make it around okay), I walked around the neighborhood and found a 7-11. Curious what a Japanese 7-11 was like (although I had never actually been to an American 7-11 to compare), I went in and was immediately in heaven - lots of onigiri (a stuffed rice ball - sort of a sushi Hot Pocket), inari, and mochi!
I should probably mention here that sushi rolls are not particularly popular or prevalent in Japan - at least nowhere I saw. The only rolls I came across were in Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, a tourist trap. Go figure.
They also have cups pre-filled with ice, so you just have to add your beverage. Clever.
On my way out of 7-11, I saw an egg salad sandwich in the fridge. Japan, you are just too easy.
Blowing my cultural stereotypes to smithereens, there are five curry places on every block and absolutely no sushi. Hrm.
This sucked because I really don’t like curry, and since all I could do was point at random squiggles, I ended up with pork, and I learned that I really dislike pork.
Deciding nothing could be worse than more pork curry, I went exploring and found the Best Thing Ever.
A restaurant run via vending machine.
How it works: You go up to the vending machine, push the button(s) for the food you want (beer, too!), and insert enough coins to pay. It spits out a ticket. You hand the ticket to the cooks, who give you the food you ordered.
Why isn’t McDonald’s run like this?
It also meant I had a very filling meal of tofu udon with a large Sapporo for about 400 yen (about $4USD). Hard to beat that!
At one point I wandered to Osaka Castle (”Osaka-jo”). The castle itself didn’t interest me - I don’t care for military history - but the grounds were huge and gorgeous (I wanted so badly to curl up with a book and stretch out on the lawn), and there were CATS and you could PET THE CATS.
KITTEH!
The most important part!
Pig & Whistle - Lots of Guinness, and lots of young Japanese girls hitting on much-older Western men. (UPDATE: Sadly, the Pig & Whistle closed in July of 2008. You missed it. You’ll never be able to go. What are you waiting for, again?)
(David & Me at Pig & Whistle)
The Blarneystone - Lots of Guinness, and lots of young Japanese girls hitting on much-older Western men.
Murphy’s - Lots of Guinness, and lots of young Japanese girls hitting on much-older Western men. (Noticing a pattern here? I did.) However, Murphy’s also had fun bartenders who really know their Irish dances. It was hard not to smile and clap along. My favorite.
The Japanese train system is extremely affordable and easy to navigate - I took day trips to Kyoto (where I visited the very pretty Higashi Honganji, a buddhist temple) and Sekigahara (where my sandal fell down a sewer grate and I had to trek back four hours with one shoe!). There are big, clear English translations of station names, and maps inside the train to figure out how many more stops until your stop. If you can handle Manhattan subways, you’ll have *no* problem in Japan.
(View from Sekigahara)
MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: MARCH 19, 2005
PLACE: UNKNOWN CAFE, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
On our way from London to Athens, we had a four-hour layover in Brussels, Belgium, which was the perfect amount of time to find a Guinness.
I will always love Brussels because their airport has storage lockers, and those storage lockers meant I didn’t have to drag my sopping wet clothes all over the country and could instead seek out a Guinness in peace.
Kristen speaks French, and I do not, so she gets 100% of the credit for getting us on a train that went into [what I believe to be] city center.
Do you remember The Gates in Central Park?
(Photo from Mike Rollinger on Flickr)
Brussels seemed to have its own really messed up version going on:
We lovingly dubbed this “Sketch Park,” partially because it was half children’s playground equipment and half seriously deep and dangerous holes that were not even roped off. I respect any place that respects Darwinism like that.
We found a restaurant and ordered a Guinness and mozzarella salad. Nom. Sadly I did not anticipate becoming the Guinness Globetrotter and therefore neglected to note the name of the place. Fail, I know. A place someplace near Sketch Park? I believe it had a spiral staircase inside. (Do you know?)
After our drinks (I also had my first Chimay Blue in Brussels) we wandered around a bit, hopped a train back to the airport, and made our flight to Athens in plenty of time.
MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: MARCH 17, 2005
PLACE: IRISH CAT CLUB, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
Ever since reading Prague by Arthur K. Phillips (which is actually about Budapest) and seeing Adoption by Marta Meszaros (which happened in the same week), I have been somewhat obsessed with Budapest. It has a haunting familiarity that I cannot explain, but have simply come to accept and enjoy. That said, there was no way I was not going to spend time in Budapest during my first trip to Europe — and no way I wasn’t going to have a Guinness in the process!
Hungary is the first (and last) country I ever owned a guidebook for. Traveling is much (much, much, much) better if you leave the guidebook on the bookshelf and just try to figure it out on your own, as I learned within 20 minutes of landing at Ferihegy Airport.
The travel guide said to arrange a ride to my hostel at the travel counter, which I did. They said it would take at least an hour for my ride to arrive, so I paid (after withdrawing forints from the airport ATM) and leaned up against a wall to people watch.
A few minutes later a couple cute guys came up to me and asked if I spoke English. (They were British.) They were with a big group taking a long weekend and invited me to ride to Budapest in their coach bus.
What could possibly go wrong?
They were a very entertaining bunch and I was glad I went with them instead of sitting around forever at the airport. We stopped at their hotel (Hotel Eben - it looked nice and had a very clean lobby) and I accompanied them to dinner at a local place across the street. We then parted ways, but they invited me to meet them that night at the Irish Cat Club — seeing as it was St. Patrick’s Day and all. I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or where the Irish Cat Club was, but I said I’d be there and then started wandering.
It was early in the day yet, but I’ll admit to being slightly worried about not knowing a lick of Magyar and needing to find my way to the Catarina Hostel from Wherever I Was. At some point I wandered past a train station and attempted to ask the kiosk man for a subway pass. He spoke no English and I spoke no Magyar and yet, a moment later I had exact change and a three-day unlimited subway pass. Woot.
The subway in Budapest is on the honor system, with police occasionally checking for tickets either on the train or as you exit the station. Contrary to other honor systems (like Salt Lake City’s TRAX or most of Germany), in Budapest they seemed to check all the time. Don’t try to cheat.
There are three metro lines (red, blue, and yellow) and it was dirt simple to get from one place to the next. I easily found my hostel off the Oktagon stop and checked in.
Despite the rather icky-looking stairs leading up to the hostel,
it’s actually very nice inside, and the caretakers are incredibly kind (and speak damn near every language on earth fluently). I highly recommend staying here. It was dirt cheap and it comes with breakfast - and there’s no curfew.
Prague the book is, as I mentioned, actually about Budapest. Arthur K. Phillips lived as an American ex-pat in Budapest as it was becoming more westernized in the early 1990s (just as Prague had westernized prior, hence the title), so he knew Budapest intimately and used real places and landmarks in the novel.
I loved sipping a cappuccino at the Gerbeaud:
But I could have done without riding the Funicular Railway (an outdoor elevator, basically).
Before heading to the Irish Cat Club I wandered around Budapest more, tracing the Danube and walking across the Chain Bridge. This could very well be me over-romanticizing the situation, but it was really peaceful and really beautiful.
(Yes, I suck at photography. I know.)
I found the Irish Cat Club on a map the night before, so I hopped on the metro and made my way over. The whole group of guys from earlier was there with a green hat and a Guinness for me. (Goal achieved!)
After taking a sip or two of Guinness, Main Guy asked, “Would you fancy a group poke?” (Yes, those were his words exactly.)
Why, YES, Guy Whose Name I Don’t Know, now that you mention it, I would love to have sex with an entire bus of men I met a few hours earlier.
Heh. I said I’d love to, but I really needed a shower first. He asked if I stunk. I repeated that I needed a shower, but “my hostel is right down the street” and “I’ll be right back.”
In case this needs saying: I never did go back.
I woke up at 6am sharp to enjoy as much Budapest as I could before flying back to London in the afternoon.
(Tip: waking up early at a hostel means you get the shower to yourself and ample hot water)
I skipped breakfast, much to my host’s horror, but I did agree to some peach tea, which was delicious.
By 7am I was out the door and ready to see the world. Except, the whole world was asleep.
I walked around and around and the only thing that was open was McDonald’s. Fail. (Although, in Budapest, the McDonald’s has waiters and tablecloths. Somehow this made me feel a little better.)
So I sat in McDonald’s reading and journaling and sipping coffee until 10am when other people finally appeared and I could check out more of the city.
I bought some postcards, found the post office, and attempted to mail them. (Visiting a post office is something I like to do in foreign cities - it’s not typically prepared for tourists, so I have to figure out how to communicate what I need without using English. The postal workers may not appreciate my little exercise, but I enjoy it.) [Update: The postcards indeed arrived, so I must have mailed them correctly.]
I also went to the grocery store and hunted around for some peach tea bags. Score. As I was checking out, I tried to use a large (relative to the cost of the tea) bill, and the cashier very helpfully asked if I had any “little time.” She meant “coins” (little money - I’m assuming she confused time/money) — I don’t know why this struck me as particularly amusing, but it did. Laugh, damn you.
Finally, I had - of all things - some really delicious gnocchi at an Italian restaurant, Oliva. (I intended to go to a vegetarian restaurant mentioned in the guidebook, but the address it listed was for a steep set of dark stairs leading into a basement. No thanks.)
At this point, I made my way to the last metro stop, where I connected with the airport bus (which conveniently has an image of an airplane on its sign - and a crowd of people holding luggage standing around it!), and I boarded a flight back to London.