England, Sunday Apr 18 (day 12 of our trip)

Sunday was Ben’s birthday. We had done some good celebrating with friends the night before, so it was more of a relaxing day. We all slept in—I got up a little bit earlier than Ben and wrote his card, placing it on the computer so he would see it first thing. I tried to convince myself to get up and get breakfast, but was still feeling a little hung over, and decided to catch a few more winks before he woke up. After he awoke, he was interested in finding out about hockey and researching the volcano information. Turns out, the worst eruptions so far had occurred the day before, and even though sources claimed that flights might resume on Wed or Thurs, it just didn’t seem very likely anymore. So, Ben and I looked at the map of the cloud, and realized that Spain was fairly nearby and unaffected. We looked up trains, and were disheartened to realize they were quite expensive—about $1500 to get from London to Madrid. Still, we were feeling a little desperate, and at that time, felt this might be the best option (especially if the cloud kept spreading!). But we had some emails out to people, including our friend who helped us get our tickets here, so decided to continue with our day before making any decisions.

I decided to try and save money by making breakfast instead of buying it, so I tripped down the street to the Tesco supermarket. I went around picking up eggs, bread, cheese, ham, and fizzy water, then went to pay. I just stood there while the lady rang up my order, and then suddenly realized I needed to bag my own groceries. Woops! So I hurredly threw my things in bags. The guy behind me was kind enough to help out, even double-bagging the fizzy water, then I headed home.

After a tasty breakfast (well it was actually lunchtime), we made plans to go ice skating: a small taste of the hockey Ben was missing. The rink didn’t have hockey skates, and all of our boots seemed to bother our feet in different ways, but we made do. I got on the ice and started taking pictures of people’s awkward first steps, and was told by an ‘ice steward’ that we couldn’t take pictures on the ice! The ice itself was really grooved and melty, so it wasn’t the best conditions...but we still had a great time. Ben and I took turns pushing the other one and ‘shooting’ them off. Me pushing him was pretty comical since he’s such a big guy. Cole and Alice had the announcer say 'Happy Birthday Ben, don't let the volcanic ash dampen your spirits.' In the end, we all got to be pretty expert skaters, and I pulled off a decent double toe loop. And by that I mean, I spun once around on the ice.

We walked home (getting pretty good at walking), stopping for some cupcakes to eat later in the day. Normally I wouldn't make the birthday boy purchase his own cake, but this had been a strange week. Then we walked home and checked for news updates yet again. We learned that, not only had there been several successful test flights, but there would be some meeting the next morning, to discuss airport closures. Airlines seemed to feel that the restrictions due to ash were too tight. Of course, they may just want to fly because of that $200 million they lose every day.

We decided to go out for some birthday dinner at Ben's "new favorite" bar (I asked him why favorite, and he said because it was around the corner). They do a special on Sunday with various roasts—we had beef and lamb. It was a pleasant meal, but we started feeling that pull to our computer again. We thought we'd do some research on the US Embassy website, and see if anyone had responded to our emails. The Embassy told us to check the airline websites, gave us European emergency phone numbers, and (I kid you not), told us to ask for money from family and friends. I wonder if it was difficult for them to hire Captain Obvious on such short notice to update their site?

To close out the night, Cole joined us to watch more Community, we had our cupcakes, and then called it a night. I promised Ben we would have a "real" birthday for him once we returned to the states, but he said it had still been nice.