That's all, folks.

At Pearson! Home again!

I am home, again, and this will be my last blog post here.

I need to first of all catch you up on my last few days in London. I got back from my grand Scotland trip on Saturday. That gave me two full days in the city before my flight on Tuesday. London put its best face forward for me, giving me sunshine and comfortably warm temperatures. Perfection, really. It was glorious. I spent Sunday afternoon going from tea shop to tea shop, stocking up on some quality English brews to get me through the Canadian winter in my future. I also finally went to the Tower of London (not inside it, though) and Tower Bridge.

Yess...

Did you know that the East India Company still exists? I thought that Hudson's Bay was the only one. :(

Tower Bridge, as seen from the decidedly less pretty London Bridge.

Tower of London!

Tower Bridge again.

On Monday, my last real day in London, I went to visit the Queen. Buckingham Palace is a well-oiled tourist machine in the summertime. I bought a ticket a few days earlier for a set entry time, because it sells out pretty much every day in August and you pretty much have to book it ahead of time--as I had learned the hard way earlier on in the summer, as you may recall. So they give you this quite good audio guide to listen to and it takes you through the unbelievably ornate state rooms of the palace, each room somehow more gilded and luxurious than the one before. I really, really enjoyed it. The only downside about it is the café, which is shockingly disappointing. I mean, you've just finished walking through all these rooms that literally have gold on the walls and ceilings, and you end up under a tent with paper to-go cups and plastic cutlery. And, the worst offense of all: NO SCONES. How the hell could the Buckingham Palace café not have any scones?! I had been looking forward to having my last cream tea at the Buckingham Palace café, because doesn't that just seem to be so fitting? Alas, my hopes were dashed. Suffice it to say that the Queen will be hearing from me.

Buckingham Palace as seen from the back garden. The inner quadrangle of the palace was my favourite view of it, but of course pictures were not allowed within the palace itself.

A royal pond.

The rest of Monday I spent packing up all of my things. I was packed to the gills, but I managed to get everything in. Packing was the easy part of leaving. Saying goodbye to Tony and Sue, my wonderful hosts for the past two months, was much, much harder. I can't really say enough good things about them, or about their lovely family, my English cousins. It's a shame, a big shame, that there's a whole ocean separating us, but hopefully we'll be able to see each other as often as possible.

I also miss Bruno, their cat, whom I've gotten pretty attached to over the last couple of months. I never really thought of myself as a cat person, and I think my heart still belongs to dogs (and horses!), but Bruno is a great cat, and he opened my eyes to the joys of cat companionship. A good thing for my possible future as a crazy cat lady.

Bruno apparently got a bit attached to me, too. Tony and Sue now report to me that he is wandering around their house, looking for me. And while I was packing up on Monday, he tried his best to sneak into my suitcase.

Speaking of the future, I am trying not to slip into a panic about mine. I've spent most of yesterday and today walking around my house in a bit of a daze, not really knowing where the last four months have gone, part of me wondering if they even happened at all--it's just that I'm back home now, facing reality once again, as if nothing has changed. And that part kind of sucks. So I'm trudging through the lows that come after a trip like the kind of trip I've just had. Battling that, though, is my genuine happiness to be home, to be back in familiar Canada, back in sweltering Toronto. To see my family and friends again. There is even a small part of me that is excited about my upcoming job hunt, because the possibilities really are endless--and that is a ridiculous feeling that will certainly dwindle pretty quickly once I actually start the whole process, which I have been through before and which really, really sucks. I know that. But there is something exhilarating in not knowing what I'm going to be doing two or three or six months from now--and there is something terrifying in that, too. It's the terrifying part that I'm going to have to actively combat over the next indefinite period of time. I will try my best. Hopefully the memories of these last amazing four months will help to carry me through.

So, thanks for reading! This blog has been a great way to still feel connected to home and to all of you while I was over there on the other side of the pond, eating a lot of pretzels and scones and generally having a good time exploring Germany and the UK. Thank you to everyone who expressed to me how much they were enjoying reading my blog and seeing my photos--it was really good knowing that my efforts here were being appreciated!

So. Robin, out!

Oh, wait, I almost forgot this:

What would turn out to be my last cream tea, at a coffee shop in Covent Garden during my tea shopping expedition. At that point, I was still expecting to have a final cream tea at Buckingham Palace the next day. But you know, it's probably for the best--it's good that I only realised in retrospect that it was my last one, because otherwise it would have been hard to ever finish that last bite.

FINAL CREAM TEA COUNT: 15

That's about two a week for my time in the UK. Admirable restraint on my part, I think.