Pub Crawling in London England - Day 1

London was my first international trip and is still pretty special for that reason.  That and I choose it as my first destination because of a promise to a friend.  I have traveled over seas quite a few times now, but can still remember how it felt to leave the country for the first time.  Leaving the US means scary to a lot of people in this country which is obviously not the case.  Especially as I live in NYC.  NYC is the best training ground for looking after yourself, if you can do it here you can do it anywhere.  On with the blog...

London!

I have a special place in my heart for London, England, so it was only fitting that it be my first international destination.  First off a person very dear to me while growing up was obsessed with England.  He knew all the history, made drawings of various sites there and planned on moving to London one day.  Unfortunately, this never came to pass as he passed away before he could make any of this happen. 

I had been planning this trip for years in my head, and even though I didn't have a lot of money in 2006, I knew the time to go to London was right.  I originally was going to go alone, but my best friend Angie asked if she could join me on this trip because she knew how important this experience was to me and wanted to share it with me.  Now that is a good friend!  Of course I said yes.  So she flew into NYC from the West Coast and we began our journey to the JFK.

I was so excited as we exited the taxi that I didn't even see the extra piece of luggage on the curbside.  What was going on?  I had only brought one piece of luggage, but now it had multiplied.  My roommate who was trying to help me had brought my luggage downstairs from our apartment to the cab while I was doing a last minute errand.  Though my suitcases had been in two separate rooms, he thought that I intended to bring both of them even though one was completely empty.  Hey, at least he was being nice, but now I was stuck with two pieces of luggage one empty.  Such is life!

The flight went pretty smoothly and wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  The crappy thing about flying to Europe is you have to fly across this little thing called the Atlantic, I am not a fan of water but because we were in the middle of the plane it wasn't that bad.  I just focused on the bad in flight movie and all was right with the world.

Let me just start by saying that Heathrow is a mad house!  Complete insanity!  I thought JFK was crazy, oh no, Heathrow takes it to a whole new level.  It took us a while to get our luggage and get through customs, but it eventually did happen; that which does not kill you makes you stronger.  

No trip is complete without the GPS system of Angie.  I have the worst sense of direction and can get lost in my own apartment.  Angie on the other hand is a beast!  She has the best instinct and can read a map with the best of them.  If I had to be lost in the wilderness with someone, I would want it to be her.  She shuttled us onto the train and we took a seat on the bright red and blue cushioned seats.  Very comfortable and stylish! 

A Splash of Red

After about 20 minutes on the comfy train, I turned to Angie and asked when we would be getting onto the Tube.  Angie turned to me and gave me the "What is wrong with you?" look before she explained that this was The Tube.  What?  I thought it was the airport shuttle?!?  It was clean and inviting.  If they put plush cushions on the trains in NYC they would be destroyed within five minutes after pulling out of their first stop.  This was madness, but the kind of madness I could get used to.

After a total of 40 minutes, Angie and I exited the Tube and headed out to find our hotel.  Let me just say that the grid system does not exist in London.  To this day, I do not understand the rhyme or reason of the street system in London.  It reminds me of Lower Manhattan; pure, confusing madness!  We asked two taxis to take us to it, but both of them gave us directions and said we were only two minutes away.  But that was 20 minutes ago.  I thought about leaving my extra suitcase behind at this point, as it was weighing me down. 

I am glad to say we finally did get to our hotel; otherwise this would have been one boring entry.  The hotel room was pretty tiny and my bed in the corner sagged a bit in the middle, but who sleeps on vacation?  It couldn't be that bad could it?  Ask me four days later!

Other interesting facts about the hotel room: the toilet flusher is on the opposite side from American toilets.  I thought that maybe it was just in our hotel, but no, it is everywhere.  After two days in London, I had it down.

Also, the shower was tiny; it was smaller than a US phone booth.  To make it even worse, the shower head was directly above you so anytime you lathered up you had to turn off the shower first otherwise the lathering process was not going to happen.  At least we saved on water.

The Ominous Eye of London

After we settled in, we realized that we were hungry and set off to have our first meal in London.  We hit the street at about 11PM on a Wednesday.  We were next to a fairly busy street and figured we would have all types of options; well we didn't.  Nothing was open!  I mean nothing.  We passed a few convenience stores but we didn't think there would be anything but chips and candy.  Though I will say that wouldn't have been a bad thing.  England has awesome chocolate!  The US can't compare and it was hard coming back to it after we returned.

After 45 minutes of searching, we finally gave up and ended up at a McDonald's.  Yes, a McDonald's.  We flew all the way from NYC to London to have McDonald's for dinner.  In case you didn't catch that; McDonald's!  I was hoping that since we were in London the fish burgers would taste better, nope, just like back home; greasy with a hint of freezer burn.  So, dejectedly Angie and I headed back to the hotel.  There was always tomorrow.