I’ve put our pictures from London in the gallery. Disappointingly there aren’t very many. Must have had something to do with the 48 hours give or take that we were there. Not to mention a faulty camera battery that was holding it’s charge for about 7.5 minutes, which is what is to blame for the crappy blurry quality of most of the photos. Oh well, better luck next time.

Cheers.

Look at all of the pictures here.

London’s not all that different from home, but there were a few things that seemed to stand out.

• Portion sizes in restaurants are manageable. I’m told even the largest fast food meal is only equivalent to a medium here.
• If you ask for water, you’re going to get a bottle of water. A glass bottle.
• You have to ask for the check. You could sit there all night if you wanted to, you still need to ask for it. Unlike Aruba, they actually bring it in a timely matter after you ask.
• All the restaurants have wireless hand held scanning devices for your credit card. They scan your card and print the receipt right at your table.
• When they ask you if you want cream in your coffee, they mean actual cream. Not coffee creamer, half & half or milk. It’s actually quite good, it makes the coffee all frothy.
• The converter they sell there only converts your electrical plug, not the voltage.
• People there aren’t fat. The country isn’t built for larger people. I’d imagine it would be difficult to travel there if you are of large stature.
• The Cinemas have assigned seating.
• Wear a scarf, you’ll fit in better.
• London is a very busy place. There are people on the streets at all hours. Except Sundays when the place is a ghost town. Most shops aren’t open either.
• There are bums in London, but I didn’t see them bothering any one like they do in the US. I only saw them at night too. They also looked normal, no missing body parts or deformities.
• Not only do they drive on the left and sit on the right, but they can park in either direction on the side of the road, and sometimes on the walk.
• The television commercial breaks are longer, but in a 30 minute show there is only one of them. In the hour long shows there are a two or three. You can see the spots where the commercial should be, just like watching a DVD. Awesome.

I’m sure there are more things that I’ll think of, and I’ll add them as I deem fit.

Nick and I left our hotel at 10:30 on Sunday morning, just shy of 48 hours from checking in. This time we arranged for a car to bring us to the airport. At $60 it was expensive, but not as expensive as the taxi*. It was a luxurious ride in a fancy BMW. Nick sat behind the driver and I sat next to Nick on the left side (get it? get it?).

Once at the airport we learned that we could only carry on one item. Not a carry-on and personal item like in the US. We reluctantly checked our suitcases and finished the security marathon. The flight seemed to go quicker than the first flight. Probably because we didn’t have to wait in the airport for 9 hours before hand. Getting back to Chicago was a bitch though. First we had to go through immigration. Then we had to pick up our checked luggage, go through customs and recheck our luggage. Not too big of a deal I guess, would have went smoother if we didn’t have to check anything in the first place. Then we had to go through security again. The whole long lines, no liquid, shoes off security experience. I guess I just assumed we’d stay in a secure area of the airport and that we’d be able to pass effortlessly through to the gate again. Somewhere along the lines there was this freaky guy with large breasts and wearing a helmet who asked me where the blue line was. I told him I didn’t know. Then he got behind Nick and me on the escalator and said “you have a tattoo.” Well that wasn’t awkward. We quickly fled from him when we got off.

It was quite obvious that we were back in the states. The wide aisles. The large people. The flight home was quick, but it was irritating knowing we were so close. We drove ourselves to the airport, so fortunately we got to leave quickly after getting our luggage.

I enjoyed my time in London, I think Nick did too. We agreed we’ll go back when it’s warmer (potential diving), the American dollar is doing better (1 GBP = 2.25 USD sucks) and when Christian Slater is in another play.

*The London Black Cab is the official taxi service of London. The drivers have to go through a rigamorrow of training, which means they actually know where they are going. They also have to buy the special black cab, which runs around 129,000. USD or GBP, I’m not sure. Either way, that’s friggin’ expensive. But they are their own boss and apparently are paid very well. I would believe it, considering what we paid to get to our hotel.

After we woke up on Friday we headed out for dinner and to walk around town. We ate at an Italian place, then walked to Leicester Square so Nick could check out the casinos. One only had slots and we didn’t end up going in the other. I was extremely fatigued but didn’t want to go back to the room. We ended up seeing the movie Rendition before we headed back to the hotel. When we got back we decided to power up some stuff. I had purchased a wall converter earlier that day. Unfortunately it only converted the outlet and not the power supply itself, so after Nick plugged in his power strip it blew a fuse and half of our room was without power. The maintenance guy explained to us that we needed an actual power converter to change our 110V to 240V. Woops. So much for charging anything. By 3:00am it was still hard to fall asleep. There was a game show on TV with a word find that lasted about 3 hours. We were too enthralled to turn it off without knowing the outcome.

By Saturday I had no idea what day it was. The only clock in the room was on the TV, so when the TV was off the time wasn’t visible. With the thick curtains the room was completely black, so we ended up sleeping until 3:00pm. So much for not sleeping the night before we left so I could get in tune with the 6 hour time difference. It kind of screwed me over.

With the laptop battery dwindling, we decided to try plugging Nick’s laptop directly into the wall (with converter of course). The black box on the cord said 110/240V, so we hoped it would work as he plugged it into the wall and I shielded my eyes. Phweew, it worked.

Nick and I decided to do some touristy things. We headed out in search of Big Ben. Of course, with it being overcast and the sun setting so early, once we had breakfast/lunch it was pretty much dark out. Big Ben lit up, but it didn’t make for a very good photo op. We headed back to the hotel to get ready for the main event of the trip, the play Swimming With Sharks starring Christian Slater!!

The play was great!! Christian was fantastic in it. The other actors were good too, despite their poor American accents which were almost distracting at times. The play was well worth the trip.

On Sunday we got up at 6:30am to do some more exploring. We wanted to get some pics of Big Ben in the daylight. Turns out Sunday is road construction day and the street we needed to take was blocked off. We ended up walking across to the channel and eventually found Big Ben and got some pictures before our camera died. (Couldn’t charge the batteries, remember?) We also found a dive shop, but it was closed. Nick was all disappointed that we could only window shop. We came to a little nature park also. There was this giant ass goose/duck/pelican thing, but it was too far to tell what it was. It was huge though. Then there was this fat little squirrel who took an interest in us. I thought it was going to attack me at one point. After we made our way to the other side of the park we realized Buckingham Palace was only a few blocks down. Nick managed to get one last picture before the camera was absolutely dead. We haven’t looked at it yet, hopefully it turned out ok.

About 24 hours after we left our house Thursday morning, we got into our room in London.

After sitting in the Chicago airport for what felt like an eternity, Nick and I heard an announcement for a last call to London. After he did some investigating, we found out there was another AA flight about to leave for London at 4:30. We speed walked to the gate and were on our way 1 1/2 hours earlier than anticipated. The flight was packed and the plane wasn’t as big, but it was pretty much a non issue at the time. There were only minor hold ups when getting to London. Since our luggage was no where near us on the plan, we kind of lost it. I say kind of because we got it, we were just the last ones off the plane. Actually there was one guy after us, but he couldn’t find his luggage at all. The passport checking line was long, but not terrible. We ended up taking a cab to the hotel. Big mistake. I don’t even want to say aloud how much money that cost us, but neither of us really felt like messing around with shuttles or whatever they have here.

When we got to our hotel our reservation had been canceled because we hadn’t checked in the day before. We waited about an hour or so and finally checked into our room around 11am. Then we slept until about 4:30. So much for not sleeping before the flight to get into the groove of the time change.

And addressing Kristen’s comment, tallying Nick’s complaints about connecting flights and getting up early would have been an excellent idea. 99.9% of his complaints were followed up with “…and being up this early sucks.”