Muserology Cafe

A Week of Humble Pie (March 2010)

by Naomi Rafal, age 10, Massachusetts

That morning I woke up at 4:00 AM. My parents helped my sister and me get our suitcases downstairs. My dad called for a taxi to Logan Airport, and we waited on the porch until the taxi found our house. After the taxi dropped us off, we went through customs, waited for our flight, and boarded: finally, we were on our way to our houseboat in England.

We went to England because my aunt was in graduate school at Cambridge University and we wanted to make her feel at home by cooking her and her roommates a Thanksgiving dinner, something her British friends had never done before. My family likes to do things on our vacations that you could only ever really do in that place, and I think they thought, "Hey, where else could you stay on a houseboat for a week?" 

When we arrived at the airport in England we hopped on a train, and from there we took a taxi to the marina, which was full of houseboats. We went into the office and got the keys to our boat. The people there told us that we would be staying in Humble Pie. 

Humble Pie was a cute little red-and-blue boat that had its name written on the front in gold letters. For me, it was somewhat like love at first sight. It was the most adorable houseboat I had ever seen--not that I had actually seen any before. 

We got in and made ourselves comfortable. The houseboat had two bedrooms, one defective bathroom, a tiny kitchen, one couch, one TV, and one small, skinny hallway. My parents and grandparents used the two bedrooms, and my sister slept on the couch. Instead of sharing the living room with my sister, I decided to sleep on a couch in the porch area of the houseboat. It was closed in with glass, but the wind still came in a bit, and it was a whole lot chillier than the inner rooms. I had to sleep with blankets and a sweatshirt on, and I was still cold. That night I don't recall sleeping very well. 

At night you could feel the boat swaying a bit with the waves. But we were told that we couldn't drive the boat, and that policy was ensured by the fact that the engine was taken out.

We spent every day sightseeing or visiting distant family. On our first full day there, we took a taxi to the train station and rode 50 miles (80 kilometers) to London. From there we took the "tube" (which is what they call their subway trains) to Waterloo Underground Station. Once there, we got tickets to go on the London Eye, which is a giant Ferris wheel. Supposedly, you can see all of London from the top, but this is questionable as it is often raining and foggy. We could barely see any of London, except maybe a bit of Big Ben, the famous clock. They take a picture of everyone in their Ferris wheel "pod." But in our photo my face was cut off by a railing, which always happens to me. 

When we got off, we walked by a coffee shop or two to get a better view of Big Ben. It was beautiful. Everything about England was beautiful, except all the rain.

On another day, we went to see my grandmother's second cousin and her husband. They lived in a picturesque, quaint little town. It reminded me of fairy tales because the houses looked a bit like gingerbread houses. When we got to their house, they showed us their garden. It was spectacular. They showed us the inside of beets from their garden, which looked like red and white targets. Then they served us a feast. It was possibly the best meal I had ever had. 

There were a few flaws with Humble Pie, such as the fact that you couldn't flush the toilet if there was a little flashing red light next to it--which was the case most of the time. So we just resorted to using the bathroom in the marina office whenever we left the boat and whenever we came back. The houseboat wasn't like a hotel, in that there were no showers and it was not always heated. You had to turn on the little radiators whenever you got back. And my porch didn't have a radiator at all. 

We came back every night so I could freeze my buns off on that couch, but despite my sleeping arrangements, the week that we stayed in the houseboat was one of my favorites.

Humble Pie was just that lovable.