Pants, Pincurls, and Travel

A quick photo update of my travels this semester: I've managed to make it to Bath, Stonehenge, Isle of Man (for archery club!), and Belgium! A combination of planning ahead (so as to minimize paper-writing conflict, though there is always some), student rates, and overly optimistic organization forecasts are mostly responsible for this.

Of course, for the vintage side of this blog, these won't offer much, except for my comment (below) on the experience of trying to maintain pincurls whilst hostel hopping - my travel clothing is pretty unexciting. On my trip to Belgium, I actually got pants for the first time since high school!! It was freezing cold there, windy, and it hailed multiple times - tights simply were not doing it for me, so I somewhat reluctantly gave in and got some cheap pants on sale at H&M. To my surprise, I actually really enjoyed/am enjoying them! It was liberating to be able to move about without constant shivering, not to mention not having to worry about big gusts of wind revealing my underwear (knickers if I want to make myself chuckle) to the world. I've worn them a few times since getting back two weeks ago - the weather here has been atrocious, raining constantly and really high winds, and on late-night trips to coffee shops for studying or mid-day runs to the grocery, since I ride a bicycle it is so much easier! I've been getting really tired of the one-hand-keeping-skirt-out-of-gears-the-other-one-steering move.

One more thing about pants: this whole "pants" vs "trousers" thing is really throwing me off here. As my fellow New World-ers know, trousers are fancy-style-pants in American English, whereas here trousers simply means pants. And pants are knickers, underwear, "panties" (uuuurghhh what a horrendous word, but I've included it for the sake of clarity) over in Brit-land. Completely forgetting this, I was talking to a guy I had just met the other day (actually the night before leaving for Belgium), and it came up in conversation that I didn't own any pants and hadn't worn them in ages. He got this really weird look on his face, and I thought maybe he just really hated skirts, but then he was like "Oh, I had to translate that - you mean trousers." Oops. It was a bit awkward but it did give me a laugh, the idea of unintentionally telling strangers that I don't own any underwear.

Anyway, on to the pictures:

My wonderful friend Victoria in Bath.

Victoria at Isle of Man.

Fun jumping pictures with Victoria and bokeh, also at Peel Castle.

Victoria and my "appeltarte" in Bruges, Belgium. I may have had about 5 servings of this (apple pie) during the 2.5 days we were there....

Wearing PANTS for the first time in a few years in Bruges. 

Incredible selection of spreads at Le Pain Quotidienne in Bruges.. I am so glad we have this restaurant in England.

I gave in and asked a fellow tourist to take a picture of Victoria and I together...

Then I struck out alone and headed to Dinant, Belgium, all aloney while Victoria took off for south France with her parents.

Dinant in the evening.

iPhone picture of my pincurl set completely gone after a day of rain, hail, wind, and excessive humidity, and then a thorough brushing.

So, the pincurl experience: when I set out for Belgium, my hair hadn't been set, because I hadn't had time due to two papers finished the night before I left. The night I got there, I was feeling lazy but didn't want another day of straight/wavy hair, so I decided to try the ultimate lazy pincurl set: a dozen or so giant pincurls in total, not set with anything. Just totally dry and big pincurls. To my surprise, it worked, and quite well! The picture of me in the pants is halfway through the day of that setting. For the remainder of the trip I did the same thing every night, to similarly successful results! After the above image (totally straight haired), using the same giant dry pincurls process (which takes a total of about 8 minutes) I got this set:

Side view..

A bit puffy eyed from just waking up, but THE CURLS! 

I set out for my day in Dinant, and after a bit of walking it had drooped, seen below, but it was mostly holding up! So now I'm glad to have a go-to pincurl set for those super lazy or tired days. 

Now back in Oxford: my other two roommates (Victoria is the fourth) being studious at Worcester College!

- Emily