6 September - Blame Paul McCartney

I was in seventh grade when the Beatles released the "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album. Vinyl. Yes, I'm old. One cut I loved was "When I'm 64". If you're as old as I am, or a die-hard Beatles fan, you may remember the line, "Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear." So in the back of my mind, I've always had the desire to go there. It's not too dear, by the way. (Dear being the British was of saying expensive.)

So after our flight and train and hovercraft, we finally made it to Ryde, on the northern coast of the Isle of Wight. NOT the Isle of White. Natives are quite sensitive about that. We had reservations at an AirBnB in Ventnor on the south coast. Our bus, though wasn't for 45 minutes or so. So we popped across the street from the Hovercraft to the Brasserie at the Royal Esplanade Hotel. Sounds grand, doesn't it? Yeah, no. Anyway, we ordered sandwiches. When they came out, they were lovely, All 4 of them. Two each. We were peckish, but not starving, so we popped the remainders into a plastic bag we brought (aren't we practical?) and headed to the bus. The #3 bus goes from Ryde to Ventnor. Very slowly. Very slowly, indeed. It seems even slower when there's a heatwave and the bus has no A/C. Yes, I'm a spoiled American. In my defense, the bus stops about every 10 feet, so you can't even get a bit of a breeze going between stops. Anyway after 3 days (okay, an hour and 15 minutes) we got to our stop in Ventnor. Down a long street to another, to another, down a steep set of stone stairs and we arrived at our flat. Hmmm... our flat.

We splurge on airfare. I cheap out on Airbnbs. And the result is that we end up with the tiniest place we've ever stayed. No drawer space. No closet. Living out of a suitcase is fine, except when the the suitcases take up all the floor space in your room. No kitchen space, not even a microwave. Yes, I should have noted that when I booked it. The space was exactly as advertised. It was my fault for looking for the cheapest place. anyway, we were here. The best part of the place (and probably what drew me to it on the AirBnb site was the fact that there's a kitty who likes to visit. And visit he did. His name is Gingey and he's a fabulous, friendly orange kitty.

So now we're operating on about 4 hours of sleep over 24 hours. Knowing that if we sleep now, we'll be up at 3:00am, we took a walk to the seaside. Lots of families on the beach. Cafes filled to overflowing. We walked down the esplanade and ended up at the Spyglass Inn. Ordered drinks and found a table by the seaside. At the table in front of us, as family sits: mum, dad, petulant teenage daughter and chonky pitbull named Bruno. He's fabulous! I keep thinking that my friend Steve Sample would be in love with this dog! One G&T and I was done. We walked up to town to the CoOp grocery store for basic provisions, then to the flat. And we passed out, but not before opening the only window to the flat. In the middle of the night, lovely Gingey jumped in the window and cuddled up.