Anecdotes: 2017: ¡Dos! Trip with Mom

Throughout her life, my mom has always wanted to visit Europe, or more specifically, London (funnily, she has been even further west, to the States and Canada, but not Europe). And now that I'm here, I constantly coaxed my mom to come to Europe. After many weeks of deliberating, she finally accepted, and here she comes!

She came for 2 weeks. The original plan was for her to visit Sweden, Denmark, the UK, and Finland. That idea was immediately shot down by everyone but my mom (more specifically, Finland). We all think that Helsinki is a bit too far (and troublesome) for a 2 weeks trip, if we still want to visit the rest of the places I just mentioned. So, the itinerary is: Stockholm > Copenhagen > Linköping > UK > Stockholm. I went to Stockholm and meet up with her at the central train station, and then off we go with our adventures!

We are only in Stockholm for 2-3 days. I believe the main point of this part of the trip is to let her settle in to the time zone, because she is probably jet-lagged. We didn't do much touring in this 2-3 days, just walking around the touristy area and eat. We get to our airbnb pretty early and sleep pretty early. I do know she sleeps around 7pm and wakes up around 4am in these days, so that kinda sucks. Anyway, after that, then off we go to Copenhagen (by train)!

Figure 18.1: Copenhagen!

We spent a few good days here (4 I think). We visited lots of the main attractions of the place. We even checked out the Carlsberg museum/factory, rode horses, took those hour long boat tours. I drank lots of beer in this city, because I like to experience all these new kinds of beers. My mom likes to drink too, but she controlled herself and only take a few sips from my pints. She says she's no longer in that age to drink like I can anymore (all the more reason to skip Helsinki!). This trip was mostly walking around and faffing about, nothing much too. We then take the train back to Linköping, introduced the Giantess to my mom, stayed there for just a night I believe, and then off we go to the airport!

Apparently, we came in the hottest summer in the recent history of London. It was floating around 36-40 degrees Celsius everyday. Our little "hotel" has 1 power plug, extremely poor wifi, and a bathroom with no vents I believe, but hey, it's cheap! For the first time in awhile, I get to eat some proper Chinese food! The Chinatown here has some really delicious Chinese food (and I believe ALL of our meals in London was at Chinatown). I missed that part of town very much already. Anyway, we did some mini excursions to some other cities while we're at London. We went to Oxford and Bath. Bath was my personal recommendation, I believe my mom wanted to go somewhere else but I insisted we got to Bath instead. No regrets for me! We went to Oxford but we didn't really visited the university grounds (ex: that Harry Potter place), because we didn't want to pay for the entrance ticket. We decided to go to the Oxford botanical gardens instead. My mom really loves to look at flowers, so we spent lots of time there.

Figure 18.2: I think this is the botanical garden

Some other day, we visited Bath. We checked out the Roman Baths, the Royal Cresent, and just simply walking around the place. In the evening, I attended Bath's Comedy Walk. Boy oh boy was it funny.

When in London, of course we did the tourist thing such as visiting the museums, checking out a Broadway show (Wicked). Funny thing about Wicked, my mom didn't want to go. She said that her English is not good enough to enjoy all these things. While arguing, I kinda led us to the place where they sell tickets. And since we're there, we might as well just ask about it. Tickets was extremely expensive, but there was this last minute ticket, right at the front row, for like £10 each? Really cheap! We got it and the show was that night itself. Turns out, my mom has no idea what the hell is happening, but she enjoyed it very much. She said she was just enjoying the choreography, music, and the costumes. If she likes it, she likes it.

I also recommended the Camden Market (or at least, the Giantess recommended it to me). I figured, "hey, if she likes this place so much, it must be cool!". Camden Market is not a place for a conservative Eastern mom to visit. She felt extremely uncomfortable during our entire stay there. I think we were only there for a few hours before she wanted to bounce. A funny thing happened though: there's this really techno-rave thing in the market. It has a giant robot decoration outside and all the things. I honestly thought it was an arcade, I was so psyched that I could finally play some arcade games. The place where you go in has like people dancing in cages or something up there (oh yeah, my mom did not follow me in), and they were selling lots and lots of accessories, like, hardstyle shuffling accessories those kind of things. I'm like ok, where's the arcade? So I kept on going down and down, and it gets more and more fluorescent/TRON-y, until I reached the most bottom floor, still looking for the arcade. It seems like I have entered the area where they sell some BDSM, kinky stuff. I did a 180 and basically speedwalk back out.

After the London trip, we went back to Stockholm, stayed for awhile, and then I send my mom off. And thus, the trip with my mom ends. Here are some pictures: