Friday, March 14, 2014

London Day 2

We have arrived! Let me start with the overnight flight to London. We left Chicago last night and endured a long, HOT flight to London arriving about lunchtime. I am pretty a sure that my husband and I didn't sleep at all. I shed every layer of clothing until I couldn't shed anything else and then still proceeded to sweat. The whole two inches that my seat reclined just wasn't quite enough to allow me to actually fall asleep and not end up jerking awake as my neck nearly snapped each time I actually started to fall asleep. How long has there been a restriction against smoking on planes? I had cigarette receptacles in my seat armrests and the bathroom and a disposal spot specifically for cigarettes. Hmmm.... The other dead give away that our plane was a bit aged would have to be the giant TV monitors that hung from the ceiling and took up a massive amount of space. But the important thing is that the airplane got us across the Atlantic safely. 

Upon exiting customs we were immediately approached by our travel rep who walked right up and asked if we were the Hunts. She took or info and sent us off to a shuttle that is taking us to our hotel. I am typing this as I ride through the streets of London. 

Several things jump out at me as differences from the US. First the streets are narrow and their billboards are huge and seem to be very close to the road. I am able to set my watch since most of the billboards have a digital clock on them. 

Yay! My first double decker bus sighting! The bus dropped us off and we braved crossing the street with luggage in tow. We got checked into the hotel early without any problems. We decided a 3-4 hour power nap was in our best interest. After our nap we met our Trafalgar rep in the lobby and got the skinny on our plan for tomorrow.

Our room is small but nice. The shower is  a tight squeeze and the bed is a little hard, but we no problems falling asleep quickly for our nap.

We decided to walk down the street for dinner. We stopped at The Castle. This place has a really meat vibe. We choose a little couch and table in a corner that is very interesting. We ordered a trio of appetizers: fish fingers, chorizo, edamame, and a meat plate for sharing: pickles and olives, beef brisket, cold meats salami and pepperoni, and scotched eggs. 

The eggs were kinda like hard boiled eggs wrapped in some sort of sausage and then deep fried. I may be way off in my description, but that was what it tasted like to me. The fish fingers were really good.


No dinner is complete without some gelato. We stopped off at a gelato shop on the way back to the hotel. Alan got caramel and I got coconut. Delicious!


We are settling in for a good night sleep. We have an early tour of London in the morning and we have a plan for our afternoon. Let's hope our plan works out!

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