Crossing the Pond for Florence
Kerri jumped at the opportunity to be free of the boat and immediately found a new adventure: a Florence & The Machine concert in Scotland. We’d both been obsessed with them for a couple years. It seemed like a big trip for a single-night show, but at first we thought, why not take a few days and enjoy it? We were finally free of Meriwether and all the weather-dependent scheduling that comes with boat life. This felt like the time to do something different with the money and time we usually spent on that venture. Before we even left New Zealand, tickets to Scotland were purchased without a return date set.
I’ve never been to Europe and never had the slightest urge to visit. I love the Americas, prefer the undeveloped over the developed world any day. Kerri had been out here years ago (ugh, I’m signaling our age with that comment) and had been trying to convince me to visit for a long while now. For Florence—the band, the obsession, the reason we were going.
The plan quickly evolved into a multi-week UK tour, but when we started seeing hotel costs we switched strategies again: house-sitting. Kerri took on the task of finding a gig so we could get free room and board, but more than that—time off the constant nomadic lifestyle we’d been doing nearly fifteen years. No boat jobs. No van jobs. No moving every few days. Hot water and showers. A couch and a TV. The easy life. We were new to international house-sitting, but she scored us three weeks on the Southern tip of Ireland in a house built in the 1700s. We’d be caring for a dog, two cats, two ducks, and a small flock of chickens. Sounds perfect. Until I saw that it was a multi-story house with a million stairs between the kitchen and or bedroom.
The flight to Scotland went easy enough, with a short layover in Iceland. We’d discussed staying a few days there but decided not to—a decision we were regretting just looking out from the airport. Another quick hop to Edinburgh, where our concert would play the following evening. About 24 hours to explore the city and sleep after the overnight flight which consisted of zero sleep for us both. Kerri wanted to take full advantage of the little time we had. We walked the extremely crowded city-center area that evening, would take a longer walk further out the next morning.
The hotel—Parliament House Hotel—was part historical, part modern by European standards. Portions of the building were built in the 1700s, the youngest sections in 1908. Extremely old by American standards, barely middle-aged by UK timelines. The same went for the entire city center. Nothing looked built after America’s independence. Stone was the material back then, and stone still stands today. In America, 200-300 years reads as ancient. Here, history is measured in 4 digits. It was crazy to consider.
We couldn’t sleep past 4am local time, so we started the morning walk by 7am hoping to dodge some crowds. That second walk was supposed to be a quick river walk through the old parts of Edinburgh—and I mean old, castles and shit, all of it—but it slowly turned into Kerri doing her usual thing to me. A short walk extends to “let’s just go see this while we’re out here.” Then another extension. Then another. Next thing I know, we’ve walked six miles and are now nowhere near the hotel. I still hadn’t fully recovered from the van repair, and now everything from the waist down was in old-age-pain (did I mention I’m 55 now?). We took a bus back where I crashed for a nap before she put me back in my shoes for lunch. After eating, another nap, waking just in time to lace up again for the concert.
The concert was a 45-minute bus ride back to the airport and another fair walk into the venue. We each grabbed a drink (mine to dull the pain) and pushed toward the stage an hour before showtime. I’m accustomed and willing to push through a crowd to get closer, but Kerri was happy to stop at the first wall of standing bodies. Here we stood for the next few hours, my feet practically throbbing.
The show kicked off on schedule. We enjoyed it in our own ways. Still pretty far back, but close enough to see and feel it properly. Kerri jumped, danced, sang along. I stood mostly still, trying to soak it in so I wouldn’t forget it entirely—as is my focus at any concert: memory. Only one time did my right arm rise, pumping to the beat, before I looked up and thought, “what are you doing up there?” and pulled it back down. Ninety minutes later it was over. I’d have liked another hour, even with my feet about to fall off.
Another bus back into town, pushing midnight. Kerri talked me into (it didn’t take much) a short stop at a bar just around the corner from our hotel. We stayed until final call, then slipped up to our room to call it a night. It was pushing 2:30 am—we’d woken at 4am the previous night—and our flight out of Scotland was only hours away. We had enough time for a 4-hour nap before we had to get ourselves ready to board a plane to the second part of this European adventure.
