Landing in London

Saturday (I think!?!?)

We're in London, baby! Brian made it to our Chicago gate just in time (dead cow and fried potatoes in hand). We boarded the plane and immediately started cracking ourselves up! It started simply enough -- Brian was unpacking his backpack and pulled out a HUGE ziplock baggy, held it up to my face and said "Craisins?" That set us both off giggling, and set the tone for most of the trip.

We took some self-portraits (which became a ritual we started each day with), played with the buttons and features on the consoles, and settled in to watch movies on our little screens! I watched "Grown Ups" and "Toy Story 3" and Brian watched "Karate Kid" and "Toy Story 3". We tried to sleep, but were horribly unsuccessful.

The food was meh... airplane food.

It was a really long flight. I mean, REALLY long. Did I mention it was long? Luckily it was also uneventful, only very minor turbulence every once in a while.


We got to Heathrow and luckily did not have to deal with picking up luggage, since we both carried our suitcases on. It took a while to actually get off the plane -- we were close to the back of a REALLY big plane!

Once we got off the plane with our carry-ons we had to find Customs and then the train. Both took a long time to find -- there are a lot of long, winding tunnels under this city! We got our passports stamped (my first!!!) and headed to the Heathrow Express train. We took the train to Paddington Station, and found out that the train we needed to take us to Bayswater wasn't working, so that we had to take a bus. That was kind of a waste, though, since it ended up being fairly close by. It was kind of nice, though, to not have to negotiate sidewalks with suitcases.

We made it to our hotel, and to our room without any problem. Kensington Gardens Hotel -- cute! Not huge, but very cute. We changed shirts and "freshened up" (brushed teeth and washed face) and off we went! (Sleep-deprived and all!) First we had to find a Barclay's Bank to get some cash -- I got L100 (that's supposed to be pounds) to start with. The pound notes are interesting, but the pound coins are really cool! We debated lunch, and ended up at the Noodle Oodle, though we had no noodles, only rice :). After lunch we felt much better, and we headed out to get calling cards and to call our hubbies (most of the phone booths I went to in London, by the way, smelled of urine. Lovely).

Then we decided to wander around a bit. Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park were beautiful! The buildings surrounding them are really neat, too. At Hyde Park we started taking pictures with Phil Oakley, our squirrel companion and familiar. We even tried to get pictures of him with an actual squirrel, but it just knocked him off the fence and ran off!




We wandered to Piccadilly Circus (and no, there are no clowns!), which reminded me a lot of Times Square in NYC, and it was crazy full of people! Found a little shop to sit and eat a donut and have some coffee. Man, it felt good to sit after all of that walking! After consulting the map and guide book (something we did A LOT), we headed on foot (sore feet!) toward King James Park near the Household Cavalry Museum. Amazing buildings! We saw more squirrels, and Phil (and Brian and I) had to use the loo. (Previous to this point, actually, Phil was "Phyllis", but because he went to the Men's Loo, he clearly had completed his gender transformation and was now a boy.)


We took some great pictures of the London Eye in the distance, and even got some with a British Guard. He had a "JUST KILL ME" look, with all of the tourists around.

Trafalgar Square was so cool! We looked around a bit (well, I did, Brian's been to London before, and was pretty much leading me around), figured out where we were heading next, and took the trains back to our part of town. We found the Art Cafe' on Queensway for some fish and chips, and a phone booth for Brian to call Michael and check in. I'm not much of a "phone person", so I didn't make as many phone calls as Brian did. While Brian was on the phone, I tried to find a sewing kit to fix the velcro on my bag, and a Pashmina to "blend" with the Europeans. No luck today!

We headed toward our hotel -- actually went to the hotel next door to get the key to our room, and chilled. I made Phil a purple scarf, we took some pictures, and pretty much passed out.



(Okay, now that I've finished this, I can see it will be a bit time-consuming and frustrating to add a lot of pictures. Also, you can see that most of my pictures are of Brian, just as most of his are of me. So, to see more pics, feel free to go to Brian's Flickr page or my Facebook page)