First Impressions and a Leaky Faucet

Let me tell you about the drama that is jolly London. Let’s start from the beginning…

We took off an hour late last night from Newark. We were supposed to leave around 9 and ended up taking off around 10. I have to say the flight was just glorious. To get to our seats on board, we passed a bar, a lounge, stairs to a second level, two different sections of Upper Class and at least 8 bathrooms. It was basically the biggest plane that I had ever been on. Anyway! So we are on the plane, they dim the lights, the dinner trays come out, we eat, we watch free movies, it was great. After literally one movie, I looked at the screen and it said we had like an hour left on the flight. It went by SO quickly!

(This next part was my favorite) When we began to descend, it was like out of a movie. I, never having really been out of the country, slid the window of the plane open to see us coasting over the city of London. We past Parliament, Big Ben, we saw the giant London Eye ferris wheel, then we got lower and saw the Thames River snaking through the center of all the buildings and flew over the Tower Bridge. I don’t want to sound cliché, but it literally felt like I was in Peter Pan or something!! Just soaring over all these landmarks that I’ve seen a million times in pictures, it was surreal. Finally we landed and got our bags after Mel peed at LEAST four times between unloading and baggage claim…or Reclaim as they called it here!

The part of the trip I was dreading the most was next and I have to say, without exaggeration, it was 10 times worse than I anticipated. I knew that it was going to be hard physically getting from Heathrow to our flat, but nothing prepared me for public transportation with no less than 7.5 suitcases between the three of us. Holy God we wanted to just cry. Ok so from the airport, we had to take the Heathrow Express (which was a really fast train from the airport to Paddington Station.) From Paddington, it was the tube so imagine the three of us trying to lug all 8 pieces of luggage through the narrow ups and downs of the London Underground. It was ridiculous. Think NYC subway with all the pointless stairs going up and down… So that was us. When I asked an officer if there was a lift (elevator) that we could take to get down to the platform, he basically laughed and said no. So this is where I wanted to kill myself because we had 3 more flights of stairs going up just to come right back down on the other side. With 8 suitcases. Thankfully, there were enough kind people watching us struggle that made it bearable. Finally, we get down to the crowded platform and of course, its like rush hour packed. Of course, because why would life be any easier, right? The train pulls up, annnd its full, but this station was a big transfer point so a lot of people got off thank god. We managed to get everything and everyone on, but it was like all of our stuff in a subway car. We were only going one stop however so when the train stopped and the doors opened, we were the only ones getting off so no one budged. Awesome. Finally I just announced like “Passengers of the Tube, please haul ass, you can see how much stuff we have.” People moved and we got off and I just collapsed on the platform. We conveniently have another three flights of stairs to go up to get to street level. This was just not what I wanted as my first impression of the city.

From the tube stop, we walked a few blocks to the rented flat that my dad got us for the week before we move in to Metrogate.

We couldn’t check in until 2pm and it was only 11:30 in the morning so we dropped our bags and went to the pub across the street to grab some lunch and a brew. This is where exhaustion and jet lag just slapped me across the face. We stayed for a bit, ate, and peaced. We got to check into our room early because I begged the girl at the front desk to let us in so we could crash. The room was really weird. It was a split-level kind of thing with one bedroom and kitchen on the walk-in level and then stairs down to a second level with a second bedroom and a bathroom as well. After finding out that our internet, TV, and air conditioning where all not working, I just decided to deal with it after a power nap. Two hours later, I was woken up my Mel yelling for me. She got up to wash her hands and turned on the faucet in the bathroom only to find out that the pipe was not fully connected and was now flooding the bathroom floor…or so we thought. I’m still half asleep at this point and run downstairs to find that the water was going through the wall to the bedroom and soaking all of Mel and Rebs’ stuff that they left on the floor. Since our damn phones didn’t work as well, I ran down to the front desk and basically demanded a new room. They cooperated and we are now sitting in our cool beautiful new room that is not suffering from water damage =) Oh London, I’m not impressed so far. Mel wants to pop in Spice World later, HA! Hopefully we can sort shit out. MORE TO COME!!!!!