Bristol and Snow Storm

Our stay in Bristol was mostly pleasant. Christof, the German Rotary Scholar we stayed with, made us breakfast consisting of fried eggs, bread, and yogurt. It was a very yummy and pleasant surprise. During breakfast, he explained to us how to get back to the train station, which he said was about a 30 minute walk from his flat. 

We set out around 8:00 AM, giving ourselves a little over an hour to make the trek. Though it was quite a long way (Christof's estimate proved to be quite ambitious), it was a lovely walk which allowed us to see Bristol's harbour and the S.S. GReat Britain. Since we had never been to Bristol before, we stopped briefly to admire them and take pictures.  

We probably would not have stopped if we had realized how far we still were from the train station. We ended up getting there around 9:03, about 10 minutes before our train was scheduled to leave. As it turns out though, we were nowhere close to missing our train. The snow storm that had begun while we were in London worsened overnight, causing massive public transit delays. We sat in the train station shivering and being pelted with snow flurries as the video screens keep changing to show the increasing delay of our train. Finally, at around 10:00, our train appeared, and we were able to make our way to Exeter. 

The delay, however, was quite problematic, because Will was supposed to meet a Rotarian from Tiverton at 11:15 at a location several miles from the train station in order to ride with him to give a presentation at the club's lunchtime meeting. Fortunately, Will was able to get in touch with the Rotarian and ask him to instead meet him at the train station. Our train continued to get further delayed on its way to Exeter due to have to stop at a lot of red lights. We finally arrived around 11:30.

Since Will had to go straight to the Rotary meeting, I got the job of carrying all of our luggage- about 120 pounds of it! - home. I carried about 30 pounds of it on my back and dragged the other 90 in two wheeled bags. It took me around an hour to make the one-a-half-mile trek from the train station to our flat, since I had to stop occasionally and rest my arms. By the time I got home, I was totally exhausted. 

As a result, I didn't notice that it had started to snow until Will came home and informed me. Though Exeter very rarely gets any snow at all, we got a good deal of it today, as more is falling even as I write.