Kyle Taylor – gaytravel.com Blogger
In our epic quest to travel to the best gay and lesbian travel destination (London for those of you not paying attention) we’ve had breakfast in Dubai, lunch in Tunisia, and dinner in Spain. I’m feeling a bit goofy from non-stop travel fueled solely on adrenaline. Thankfully, a friend in London booked us into a great hostel on the outskirts of the city, which became “Ferocious Five” headquarters for the evening. Now that we had sorted out getting to Calais, the next step was crossing the Channel.
True to form, no websites would process our booking requests to get to our gay destination. Not Eurotunnel, no P&O, and not SeaFrance. It was all “critical errors” and “impossible operations,” much like our lives in general at the moment. As a result, we were up late into the night (or was it early into the morning?). Sleeping just 3 hours, it was once again time to move. Following a mesmerizing free breakfast of dry cereal and bizarre muffins, we loaded all five bags and all five people into a car the size of my thumb. Every iota of space was full of something. We had even emptied David’s bag so that we could fit shoes, socks, and shirts under seats, between headrests, and inside other bags.
The next 15 hours of non-stop driving is a real blur, full of inside jokes that probably aren’t funny, kind service station employees drawing maps on the back of receipts, and the same six songs played over and over again on the two radio stations we could tune into. At this point we are all so exhausted that we have invented the plumen-goggle-strassen (plume viewing goggles), which is the only piece of equipment that lets you actually see the volcanic plume cloud floating overhead in an otherwise pristine sky. New nicknames were issued (Swervy McSwerverson was a good one), Red Bulls were imbibed at alarming levels, and we even the use of toddler toilets at rest stops top avoid the line. We were well on our way to London, but I think we were taking a rest stop somewhere around ridiculous.
Despite the frantic nature of this marathon, there was also something particularly beautiful about it. Here we are, five total strangers thrust into an impossible situation, crammed into a tiny car packed to the brim and we were genuinely enjoying each other’s company. As we pulled into Calais minutes after midnight, the thought of it all ending seemed more sad than anything. Couldn’t the adventure of traveling to the number one gay and lesbian destination of London live on forever?