Lug-Age

Back from vacation! Just got home in the early hours today (more like last night!). Poor hubby had to drive the 3 hours from the airport to our house in a wind and torrential rain storm while the rest of us slumbered (or in my case tried to, the waves made by those eighteen wheelers going by can be pretty noisy).

We got home to total darkness at 1 am. The storm had caused a power outage. The only benefit of this was that because we couldn't see a thing, I felt justified in declaring that the luggage (0r lug-age as I like to call it) should just remain in the car until morning unless we wanted to do a clumsy impression of Helen Keller hauling her bags into the house.

The luggage was heavier on the way back because of what I like to call forced merchandising. You see, once again, I did not pack the right wardrobe for the climate. You would think that after living in the UK for three years, I would remember what the weather was like there in the summer, but I goofed, or had retail-induced amnesia. After about 45 seconds of waiting outside of Heathrow for the rental car shuttle bus in my sandals, it became immediately apparent that I had packed the wrong things. I knew immediately that the sandals weren't going to cut the blustery weather. Nor the capri pants I was wearing.

Unfortunatley, the only other warm options in my luggage were my hiking boots and hiking pants. An okay look out on the trail, but around London? At parties? In Paris? Mon dieu, absolutment impossible! Day 1, arrival day, I grinned and bore it hoping it was an unseasonal cold snap, despite what my friend told me: that the entire summer had been like that thus far. Day 2, I did what I had to do, what any self respecting, indeed, self preserving woman would do in my shoes (yes, literally, except swap that to sandals), I went shopping.

I know, I know, clothes shopping in the UK? In the land of "pay twice what you would in the US?" But, I am happy to report, that ever resourceful, I found a trendy Danish label being sold at an antiques center (hubby says only I could find such a thing). The best news, the prices were affordable by US standards. Add to this that not only was I helping myself out in a pinch, but probably single handedly curing the sluggish world economic condition, and I felt pretty proud.

This feeling of euphoria was only further enhanced the next day when I found a pair of closed toe Clark's shoes for only twenty pounds. I think forty US dollars for a pair of sensible and stylish shoes is more than reasonable under the circumstances. In fact, even if I had packed the right shoes, I would still have been sorely tempted to buy these shoes and probably would not have passed them up.

Speaking of "sorely", unfortunately there is a downside in instant shoe buying in a moment of extreme need. There is no "breaking in" time for the shoes. Thus, the sore blisters when one is forced to walk around Paris in the cute, stylish, bargain Clark's in an effort to find a cute, stylish bistro in which to dine. C'est la vie as they say there.