13 Months in a Year

I had big plans for a nice long blog in December to wrap everything up for the year and share my tidings of comfort and joy for a happy holiday season. As most of the 14 people who read this already know, all of that came crashing to a halt with a lengthy delay getting home for Christmas. So instead of my original plan for coming home at Christmas, signing a new apartment lease and unpacking my crock pot, I packed my bags once again and came back to the UK for one more month of British goodness and squeeze the last bit of time out of my visa.
Before the ink was dry on my passport stamp I was off to Barcelona for work last week. I started typing this while staring out the window of Barcelona airport at the shiny BA planes and city scape behind them in terminal D gate 10. Much like my other experiences many of the days were spent within the hotel and a refrigerated conference room, but a fantastic hotel in Barcelona is not a shabby place to be trapped.

I did get a chance to escape for a few hours before heading to the airport and see some of the sights. These precious hours have come to be some of my favorites for experiencing a city since you get to creatively find ways to see it all and still be back for your airport pick-up. If Rick Steves had a cliffs notes version I think he would be proud of me. After a busy work week I could not be bothered with reading a map so I caught one of those hop on/hop off buses. I have always been curious about them in every city I see them in but have never hopped on. It was the perfect way to spend the afternoon as we zoomed from sight to sight. The key for me was to never actually hop off so I got to cover two hours of the city center while happily munching on a ham and cheese sandwich. I did feel a little silly wearing the bright turquoise headphones for the audio guide but felt even sillier when I kept hitting the selection box with my knee and changing the language to Chinese. After a while I gave up and listened to tour for a few stops In Mandarin and tried to guess what the pre-recorded voice was telling me about.

I spent my final days in the office and am now faced with packing up once again. I have one last day tomorrow to tick off all the things I put off doing all year. No pressure at all leaving all the fun for the last minute. As excited as I am to come back home finally and reclaim my Philadelphia routine, the pressure is on to find and meet Jamie Oliver in 24 hours.

The most exciting part of wrapping up my year in England is that I can officially say I am leaving as royalty. My wonderful colleagues purchased me a small piece of land in Scotland (think the size of a tissue) but that is enough in the UK to grant you an official official royal title. So I hope you are all excited to see me in a few days because when you do you will be speaking to Lady Heather.