Marylbone, London

Sherlock Holmes Museum

The gift shop is on the main floor—where you buy the tickets—and part of it is this longish room with a curved glass ceiling, I guess formerly a conservatory. Then after you buy tickets, you go back to the front room (also part of the shop) and to your right is a door toward the front, and you open the door into a narrow hallway, with many Victorian pictures on the walls, and a staircase—a narrow staircase with small steps leading up to a landing (and wrapping around, leading to several landings and floors).

The best part of the Sherlock Holmes Museum was the sitting room, of course, and I took a couple photos just in that room, and of the bathroom at the very top, the little attic, because I liked the blue and white porcelain toilet and sink. I didn’t take any pictures of Holmes’s bedroom, even though it also had a fireplace and a Persian shoe to match the one in the sitting room. (I was trying to use my film sparingly, since I didn’t have much.) This Persian shoe was on a little round table between the bed and the fireplace. There was also a suspicious-looking brown leather bag, open on the bed, and containing vials and handcuffs. Remembering Holmes’s opium addiction, I didn’t think I saw a stash of the stuff.

The first floor you reach is Sherlock Holmes’s bedroom and the sitting room; the next two flights have wax figures of characters acting out various scenes from the stories, along with more Victorian décor. At the top of the house, there’s a short flight leading up to the bathroom, which has a narrow window overlooking rooftops, and of course the blue porcelain. A short ramp, about four feet long, leads up to a very small attic space containing a bunch of Victorian clutter, such as a suitcase.

It’s a delightful house, in any case, much like I pictured Sherlock Holmes’s house (although I didn’t picture it with the wax dummies!). I didn’t mention the “V.R.” bullet hole pattern on the wall straight across from the fireplace in the sitting room. Throughout the house, including the hallways and while you go up the stairs, you can see plenty of framed Victorian pictures, prints, even framed newspaper clippings about sensational crimes. In the corner of one room is a glass cabinet contained a voodoo poppit thing—looking like a mummified baby (much as Doyle described it) and, like so many things in the house, was accompanied by a placard with the appropriate quote. The house was built in 1815, but it reminds me of what I’ve read about Victorian London architecture, how they built upwards. Each floor was small, but there were quite a few floors. Maids carried buckets of water up from the kitchen to the bathtub—what a pain.

Working at this museum was a young woman dressed as a Victorian maid, and she said we’re welcome to sit in any of the chairs (even though they were very old). Dr. Watson showed up while we were admiring the sitting room. He wore a bright green waistcoat with a black frockcoat and bowler. He chatted with us a bit, and he asked where we were from. Whenmy sister said, “The States,” he said, “That’s a big vague. Whereabouts in the States?”
She said, “Indiana.”
He said, “Indiana. That’s much better!” He also mentioned, “You can take as many pictures as you like, and I hope you enjoy the museum.”

When we came back down the stairs, I popped back into the sitting room to take another photo, and a couple of young Japanese tourists were taking a picture of Dr. Watson seated before the fireplace. When they were done with the picture, I slipped in and got a picture of the corner with the chemistry set. As I was leaving the room, the Japanese tourists were expressing concern about how tired Watson looked, and he explained that he walked an hour and twenty minutes this morning (no doubt thanks to the Tube strike), and the tourists said, “Aaaahhhh,” pityingly. I think one of them gave him a hug, because as I was leaving the room, I heard Watson say, “You can give me a kiss, too, if you like.” He got a laugh, anyway.

A couple doors down is The Beatles Store (rather fitting, since we’re going to Tussaud’s, back down the street, today). It’s a tiny shop with lots of Beatles memorabilia—Sally bought a George Harrison poster and I looked at nearly everything but didn’t buy anything. T-shirts, magnets, bookmarks, lunch boxes, LPs, CDs, etc. Also older stuff—Beatles figurines from the 1960s. The “counter” looked like the big “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” drum, with the clerk (he was plump, wore glasses, had a somewhat messy mop of dark hair, and wore a black t-shirt) sat behind that and the register perched on top of the drum.

I think wandering around and admiring architecture is entertainment enough in London—I could do that all day. While riding the subway train into London, I saw the brick houses with low brick walls dividing the front yards, along with their wonderful chimneys with little pots along them, and I thought of the film Billy Elliot. And we even saw row houses—only distinguishable from each other by the color of the bricks—that remind me of the Narnia book The Magician’s Nephew, in which the kids live next door in such row houses and use a door or tunnel in the attic that connects the two houses. It’s scarcely a separate building, really, when they’re built right up against each other and the same size. Lots of red tile roofs, too.

Pubs tend to have rows of red phone booths in front of them, and some table and chairs, and the building is brick above the ground floor, but the front of the pub tends to be dark carved wood with a big front window.

Cabs are all the same shape, boxy vehicles, generally black, but a lot of them are bright colors (such as chartreuse or hot pink) or have colorful ads on the sides. Really, just about all of them at least have an ad on the side, if not all over.

Yesterday we had lunch at the Tas Pide, a wonderful Turkish restaurant close to the Globe, on New Globe Avenue, and tonight we had an early dinner at Little Italy, on Baker Street, just a bit away from the Holmes Museum and on the other side of the street. We had bottled water at the pub last night—one way to economize is to have only two meals daily. I don’t know how long that will continue, or how often.

When you order water in restaurants, they ask if you want still or sparkling. Still is plain bottled water, as in natural spring water, or distilled.

I saw a Royal Mail (orange letters on side, accompanied by orange crown) that was bright red. And ambulances are white, with on the back diagonal orange and yellow stripes, and mostly chartreuse on the side—also, both of the vehicles are boxy-looking vans.

We did end up on the night bus last night, but it was just an ordinary red double decker, not a purple triple-decker with chandeliers and beds. But the driver drove something like the one in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban—at least, he used the horn often.

On the ground floor of this hostel, a resident’s door has a poster of the “Have You Seen This Wizard?” front page, and it’s even a hologram and it is the version from the movie, with Gary Oldman.

Madame Tussaud’s
I was much more at home at the Sherlock Holmes Museum than at Madame Tussaud’s. My interest in the wax works museum is mainly from its historic origin. During the French Revolution, Madame Tussaud made wax likenesses of the decapitated heads of famous people like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, escaped France, and used her wax working talent to open a museum in London. It’s something that comes up in novels, like maybe a Scarlet Pimpernel novel. I first read of her when I was a teenager, and back then I actually read some of my mom’s regency romance novels. My taste in fiction has evolved since then.

The present Madame Tussaud’s museum is, I think, geared more toward modern pop culture, since there are lots of figures of modern celebrities in the first couple rooms (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for instance). It gets more interesting when you get to the big room in which a figure of Madame Tussaud herself stands by the door, and throughout this big room are kings and queens and other dead famous people, such as Charles Dickens, sitting and looking melancholy behind a column. I almost missed him—Queen Victoria and Disraili are in front of the column. In this big room, there are also figures of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. That made me happy. I persuaded Sally to take my picture with His Holiness. The Dalai Lama and I conspire to take over the galaxy.

There was a section called the House of Horror or something like that, only for people over the age of 18 who are not faint of heart. It was a dark, spooky dungeon with strobe lights and scary crazy people leaping out at us. I apparently was labeled an easy target, and I screamed a great deal. I was shaking, too. At the end of this, we finally came to French Revolution scenes, and even, behind glass, the wax heads that Madame Tussaud had made of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and a couple other people who met their death at the Guillotine. Robespierre might have been one of them, perhaps Marat. That was pretty much what I really came for, and it was tacked on the end.

There’s also a planetarium up the stairs, and that was free with our tickets. It wasn’t much compared to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, though it had more wax figures, in spiffy costumes—Galileo was one of them.
Tacky day.

The New Globe, London

I see what my brother meant about black spots on his tissue, when he blew his nose back when he was in London seventeen years ago. Talk about pollution. In Topeka, that only happens to me when I’ve been doing some house cleaning, particularly the basement or garage. Of course, that also makes me really congested. Even changing kitty litter or lighting incense makes me choke—it’s best to burn incense by an open window.

I recall that an Amy I knew in St. Louis (she worked at Cloth World and the Shakespeare Company and was a Neopagan and a friend of Larry Hill’s—I ran into them at a really cool bead store, White Heart Trading Post, while it was going out of business) came back from England and spoke of “all the cute English boys.” Personally, I’ve seen a lot more cute Asian boys than cute English boys. Not to mention French boys with big eyes and big noses and Crazy Tim Burton Hair (that is my description of thick, curly hair that stands out in all directions, approximately shoulder length). Maybe Amy’s tastes are different from mine, or maybe she was in a less diverse city. [Since writing this paragraph, I noticed more cute English boys, but the Asians still come out ahead.]

London is like an international space station. I might not be exaggerating if I said that about ¼ of the people I’ve seen here are Indian, or at least of Indian descent. I’ve also heard the people speaking French and I think German, maybe Dutch or something like it. With British TV, you mostly see white people and sometimes black people—I guess the others just aren’t into acting. Or there aren’t roles that directors think appropriate for them. True, a lot of the people here are tourists, especially Japanese and German, but London does have a Chinatown.

Madam Tussaud’s and the Sherlock Holmes Museum are pretty close to the hostel—we can walk there, so I came to the conclusion that would be a good thing during the Tube strike Wednesday.

At about 5 pm yesterday, we stood by the stature of Eros in Piccadilly Circus, and lots of people just hung out on the steps leading up to the statue. Lots of people, all kinds of people, also walked past, but nobody wearing an orange denim jacket—we were watching for Sally’s Canadian friend, Lisa, and her husband Kevin. Sally and Lisa had met via the Internet—Dr. Who chat, that sort of thing, and she and her husband are both professors and doing research here in London. I saw a couple leaning against the wall of the C---------- Theatre, where the Reduced Shakespeare Company is performing, (maybe it’s called the Criterion Theatre—I forget) and the woman wore an orange jacket. I mentioned her to Sally, asking if that might be her, and we walked casually by to see if they noticed us. It worked.

The time we spent with them turned out to be great fun—they were really fun to hang out with (being academics and fantasy/sf fans) and Lisa treated us to dinner at this wonderful old pub, the Bunch of Grapes, built in 1777 and almost next door to Harrods. We had to pass Harrods to get to the pub, and I thought of Neverwhere. The pub has beautiful décor, lots of dark carved wood (including carvings of bunches of grapes indoor and out), and the second floor is entirely nonsmoking (not to mention it was practically empty—there were lots of people downstairs in the smoking section, and quite a lot of them were smoking, creating a haze). I choked before we got upstairs, up a staircase with a heavy wooden banister and one landing, and the air was much fresher upstairs.

THE NEW GLOBE

The New Globe Exhibit includes examples of Elizabethan/ Jacobean costumes made for various productions at the New Globe—like a Queen Elizabeth costume based on a painting, lots of pearls individually sewn, sleeves with rows of large buttons, round handmade buttons covered with fabric that matches the floral brocade gown. Lots of gold lace. I noticed her ruffles and cuff ruffs have a little band, with 2 handmade buttonholes at each end, and strings for lacing them up and tying the ends together. Oh my do I have some costuming ideas.

A display room was made up like a Tudor tailor’s shop, with some samples of partially complete garments, like a piece of quilted orange fabric, and samples of bobbin lace—mostly gold metallic bobbin lace on pieces of white card with prices like “6 p” written next to them. Three was also a partially done strip of metallic gold bobbin lace, with the bobbins hanging from it.

Then beyond that room were some more costume displays, including an Elizabethan gown made for a male actor, in white brocade and gold and red trim. There was at least one—actually, a couple—of men’s Elizabethan suits that were black with gold lace trim, such as a doublet that had the gold lace making vertical stripes in the skirt. ¾ round capes, porkpie hats trimmed with a feather and ribbon, and often a gold brooch. Bliss.

One display case had some antique pieces, such as the front of a 17th century corset (there was also such a corset in a photo, and an old-looking dark wooden dress form wore it—rather made me want to set something like that up at my house, although I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to carve wood—I could make a “dress form” perhaps of papier-mâché and make a detailed, dramatic costume (such as something Elizabethan). I have for some time had a similar idea, in the form of a papier-mâché bust, on which I would periodically change accessories such as hats, sunglasses, the Dr. Who scarf, etc. But anyway, the display case with the corset front also contained examples of very old embroidered linen, including this triangle of embroidered white linen (reminiscent of eyelet) that was worn over the forehead, underneath a woman’s cap. I wondered if perhaps the Globe’s gift shop has books on costume—like I don’t have enough of those.

TATE MODERN

Inside the Tate, one group of school kids wore plum-colored jackets with shield-like emblems embroidered on the pocket. And they even have the striped ties—I think those were purple and yellow. This time I didn’t make any remarks to my evil stepsister—but then, we split up inside. Fortunately for me, we split up inside the museums.

Jan Svankmajer—Czech artist—Punch and Judy: the Coffin Factory (1960 film). It has not only puppets, but also a real guinea pig. He also did the equally weird films Alice and Faust that I like so much. My taste can be a bit dark and twisted. Just a bit.

This big gallery has a room devoted to surrealist paintings including Salvador Dali’s take on Narcissus (a myth I’ve always found curiously appealing, and I’ve made more than one character who could be easily compared to Narcissus), and while looking at the surrealist art I rather got to wanting to work with surrealism myself, to make art that is based on some of my dreams. I could at least turn more dreams into fiction.

Actually, on the subject of dreams: at the Bank subway station, we were walking through a very long tunnel that was all white—white tile floor, white porcelain tile walls up to about four feet, holding up a semi-circular white ceiling (perhaps of fiberglass). Walking along this tunnel, I first joked about how much this looked like a near-death experience, but then I realized it was more like I was in one of my dreams, because I have in recent times had many dreams that involve long white corridors.

If you pick the right entrance into Tate Modern, you go up this long walkway, and there are big tall speakers on either side. The speakers are speaking. Some of them are laughing, or yelling, or screaming. It was all quite amusing and weird. Straight ahead are busts of many very different people, different mediums, different colors and styles, placed on identical dark grey pedestals that stand in numerous rows.

People are continually walking past us. A tall guy just walked by, wearing a bluish suit, and he had blonde hair, and he was talking on a cell phone in German—I understood the phrase “ein bischen.” He crossed in front of us walking toward the right about 30 seconds after a guy in a dark suit, speaking British English into a cell phone (or should I say mobile phone) passed us going to the left. I have heard a great many languages and accents since arriving here. And I have seen a great many cell phones.

We are currently sitting on cement steps leading down to the Bank walkway, which overlooks the Thames (which, by the way, isn’t nearly as wide as either of us pictured it, probably because we’re used to the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, or at least I am). I have no idea what that language was…. But anyway, it’s getting chilly and distractedly breezy, and we’re right underneath the Millennium Bridge, so we hear the metallic clang-clang-clang of people walking on the bridge over our heads.

Now we’re seated on the ground (actually, concrete) right in front of the stage at the New Globe Theatre. When we took the tour this morning, the guide explained that the thatched roof is made just like the original, except for the little black spikes. They are the water sprinkler system. On a tour the previous day, a little boy had said, “I know what those spikes are for! That’s where they put the heads of traitors!”

GLOBE PERFORMANCE—7:30 pm 6/29/04—Much Ado About Nothing –performed by an all-female cast with exquisitely detailed Elizabethan costumes (both male and female costume, and false beards). Excellent! There’s even same-sex kissing at the end of the play. I recall that Lisa, at dinner, had gotten a New Globe poster of two men kissing, one dressed as a woman, and she had added the caption: “Shakespeare: Slashing Since the Sixteenth Century” or something like that. It’s funny how many women I meet are into slash—it’s not unlike how I’m attracted to gay men and Buddhist monks. Any man who’s more butch than Oscar Wilde or the Dalai Lama just does not impress me. Machismo makes me want to hurl.

While walking toward the Globe in the morning, we passed a tall and skinny young man in a dark suit, talking on a mobile phone, and I thought he looked like Ben Wishaw, the actor pictured in an ad for Hamlet at the Old Vic. He had enormous dark eyes, high cheekbones, and black hair. I think he’d do better to dress like a Romantic poet or a Goth than like a businessman. If I were a popular fashion consultant, all the world would really look like a stage. But I digress. Lisa and Kevin had sung high praises for this production of Hamlet when we ate with them at the pub. I wondered if we passed Hamlet, particularly the actor they had spoken of, who really seemed like a gawky sixteen-year-old.

How Not to Arrive in London

When we came up the steps from the Piccadilly Underground station, my eyes were greeted with wall-to-wall traffic and old buildings—quite striking, really, even when you’re lugging a suitcase and had fewer than three hours sleep on a plane. I felt dizzy with those elaborate old buildings coming into view. Many streets intersect and go off in all directions at Piccadilly Circus, and that traffic was crazy, even at about seven am. I got out the London map and thought I had it figured out more or less which way to go for Sherwood Street, where the Piccadilly Backpackers Hotel is located. So we set off, with all this luggage, only to find we were going in the opposite direction we should have been going. We backtracked to Piccadilly Circus and eventually ended up at a street that connects with Sherwood—it’s Glasshouse Street. Oddly, I saw no street signs in the sense that I’m used to—placards were on the sides of buildings, rather than signs on poles. I don’t know, these are perhaps normal street signs elsewhere.

Brat’s grumbling accompanied all this wandering. I had noticed at the airports that many people had suitcases that they pulled along with a handle and wheels; I’m thinking I’d better get one before I go to Germany next summer.

Anyway, we went up Glasshouse Street, only to discover we were at the cross street of Air Street, not Sherwood, which meant we were a little too far over. We ended up, interestingly, --at this point with a woman who had a Brit accent but was also looking for the same hostel, but to buy tickets to an event.

So, along with her (and she was smart enough to ask people for directions), ultimately we stumbled upon the correct street, and the bright yellow door to the hostel. We entered the lobby, a minimalist hall-like room with no furniture except the counter, and the guy behind the counter could not find my name on his list, but sent us up to the reception desk on the fourth floor. It is a popular floor, and a plethera of young people from all kinds of countries were coming and going. The people behind the desk upstairs couldn’t find my registration either, even though I gave my name (and figured my name was enough), but they needed a confirmation number. Finally, they asked how I made the reservation, and I said I did it on the Internet, but I couldn’t remember the exact website and hadn’t brought the printout. I mentioned that it was not their website but a website that had numerous hostels on it. That’s when I really started wishing I’d made the reservations on their website instead.

They gave us fifteen minutes to use their Internet access. My foul-tempered evil stepsister checked her hotmail account to see the e-mail I’d sent about the hostel confirmation, an e-mail that she had never gotten around to reading. It turned out that, despite the alleged $96.95 deposit, there was a notice saying that this only confirms that you made a reservation with this website—it doesn’t confirm that it was arranged with the hostel itself. Either I didn’t read that part, or I didn’t take it seriously enough and promptly forgot about it—I think it was more like the latter: it didn’t register with me. It wasn’t until much later—about a week or two before the trip–that I finally thought to do a keyword search for Piccadilly Backpackers Hotel, getting details like what it looked like on the outside. That explained why they couldn’t find my reservation. I felt extremely stupid, and my obnoxious sister’s foul temper, impatience, and snide comments were not making me feel better—quite the opposite. I wanted to shove her down an elevator shaft.

I made a mistake, and I apologized to the Brat. She, in contrast, has been deliberately vicious and verbally abusive and contemptuous. Just what I need two months after two verbally abusive aunts gave me a mental breakdown; at the same time I finally stopped being in denial about my mother's side of the family. I must have been very confused as a child, since I was constantly being told one thing--that this family is so wonderful--while constantly witnessing a completely different story and being brought up to not believe my own eyes or my own emotions.

I returned to the reception desk and asked if they had anything for two people for the next eleven nights. They were all booked up. I asked if they knew of any other hostels nearby, and the guy behind the counter (I think he was French—he was quite young and had big eyes, a big nose, and Crazy Tim Burton Hair) gave me the names and addresses to two other hostels. He added, “Be nice to them.”

I don’t know whether I was giving off intense vibes because I was reacting to my sister, or whether she was the only one giving off bad vibes. I certainly hope that her inexcusable behavior wasn’t rubbing off on me. Perhaps he just assumed it was both of us rather than just her.

I didn’t know what to say: my evil stepsister was displaying her foul temper in public and embarrassing me with her inexcusable behavior, right there in front of people who didn’t mean us any harm, and I felt downright ashamed to be her sister. I also felt like it reflected on me—her attitude affected me, and I may not have been as patient and polite as I would have been without the brat. When you are in a foreign country, you are a diplomat, and you should be on your very best behavior. The impression you make is also an impression people get of your country, not just the individual standing in front of them.

I struggled with my first experience using a payphone in England, and one of the hostels was booked, located on Oxford Street, and the other one had a constantly busy line for reservations so that I was with the receptionist, put on hold, and the pay phone wasn’t helpful—I believe it cut me off. After the first attempt with them, I called the hostel on Oxford St and found out they were booked. So I called the other one again, the International Student Housing, and got the same receptionist, and under the circumstances (since the lines were still very busy) he said he could check if two beds were available, but he couldn’t reserve them, so I agreed to that. He put me on hold briefly, and he got back and said there were two beds available, and I asked where the Tube station was located—Great Portland Street.

I led the way exhausted and frustrated, not to mention utterly disgusted with my foul tempered sister, back to Piccadilly Station, where I went to a booth and said to the tall, blonde and very English-looking guy behind the counter, “We’re new in town. Can you tell us how to get to Great Portland Street?” He very politely recommended taking Regent’s Park Station, because it was more convenient and in almost the same spot. It was only two Tube stops away, and after we wandered up to a street corner and found Regent Street (with Sally grumbling because we had no idea where we were, and with me wishing she’d vanish in thin air), we only had to cross one narrow street (please tell me it was one-way—it was that narrow), and we turned, and it was Great Portland Street.

As we started walking along Great Portland Street, Brat said, “Whoa! That’s it!” and there it was—the International Student Hostel, right there on the corner, marked in big bold black letters over the glass doors. That was a welcome sight, I thought. So we got reservations with this hostel instead—we have a double up to July 7, and after that (for the final two nights) we’re in separate single rooms that cost a little more. But at least we have rooms. Well, hopefully—check in is at 12:30, and we have about fifteen minutes left, and then we’ll actually be staying at a building that’s a ten-minute walk away from this building, but this is the one with the Internet café and the cafeteria.

Through this whole thing, Brat was foul-tempered and biting my head off, just making me angry and stupid and nervous and flustered and resentful. No wonder my mother thinks she’s a bad traveler. I was going to ask her if she wanted to go with me to Germany next year, but not so much. I’m reluctant to tell her that her behavior is insufferable and unacceptable, since I want this trip to go as smoothly as possible and don’t want to make things ugly with confrontation and argument, especially argument in public for all to hear. Who am I kidding? The brat already has made things ugly. OK, I don’t want to make things uglier.

In any case, I’ve learned from my mistake: instead of ordering reservations from a general website on hostels, do a keyword search for the specific hostel and order the reservations directly through that website. The same of course goes for stuff like ordering tickets. I’ve also learned that choosing this brat for a traveling companion was a really bad idea, and I shall never do so again.

Now that we’ve been chilling out in the cafeteria for over an hour, I finally used the restroom after more than 24 hours without--I get that way while traveling sometimes. I remember that back when I went with a high school group to the continent, I never used the restroom during the flight, not till we got to the hotel, and that in spite of all the delays and whatnot.

Who is this insufferable brat and what has she done with my sister? After we got a room for sure, we got to the other building, following the little directions and map that the woman behind the counter gave us with our keys. The brat grumbled along the way, because we had some trouble finding our way to the hostel. Of course, keeping calm and trying to find the hostel wouldn’t be a better idea than having a temper tantrum like an unusually vocal two-year-old.

Finally, we got to the building, and we were supposed to speak with the receptionist there, but they were out for lunch, and we got impatient waiting and finally used our keys to get into the hallway and headed for our room, which is on the third floor. We got up to the third floor and didn’t know at which end the room was, and of course we were still carrying heavy luggage, and I was feeling exhausted and disgusted in the brat but glad we were there and had a room. Suddenly the brat dropped her suitcase and marched forward down the long hallway, and I had no idea what she was doing. I decided against leaving her suitcase there, so I tried to carry it while I struggled forward. The evil spawn came back and screamed at me--yes, screamed--for not staying behind and waiting. What an evil spawn. Do excuse me for not reading your horrid little evil mind. I hate this monster and I want her to fall down an elevator shaft. I was so shocked by her inexcusable, arrogant, and evil behavior, I did not know what to say—shocked into silence.

I can’t believe I’m going to spend the next two weeks with this monster. This was supposed to be a wonderful vacation.