Across the pond again

It's been a very long day but we made it!

My friend D is turning 40 this week so to help her celebrate, A, C and I have flown across the pond to London to help D indulge her love of Sherlock Holmes. And, ok, maybe there's a bit of selfish indulgence too! A was here for a day back in May with her husband. D was last here about 5 years ago and for C it's been longer than that. It's my first trip so I'm very excited.

Our travel day started VERY early...as in, technically the night before. D, C and I had already made our air arrangements via Chicago. Without spending Sunday night in Chicago, there was no way A could get there in time to fly with us, so she left Sunday night from Florida and arrived in London early Monday morning. With her internal clock discombobulated, she took a nap, had some breakfast and scouted out the neighborhood while waiting for the rest of us to arrive.

Meanwhile D was supposed to leave SoCal shortly before midnight and be in Chicago well in advance of our 9:15 am flight. Once the shuttle had already picked her up, THEN AA decides to notify her that her flight would be delayed. And delayed. And delayed. Meanwhile I'm getting up at 3 am, expecting to see her flight's halfway across the country, only to realize she hasn't even taken off yet! Yikes! Fortunately, she did get off the ground before I left for the airport. (Many thanks to my wonderful neighbor M who left a bit over an hour early for work to give me a ride!)

I got to the airport in plenty of time for my 0600 flight and had no issues with the trip to Chicago - even arriving about 10 minutes before D. C was waiting for me in the terminal and we went over to D's gate to collect her. A quick bite to eat in the food court and we were boarding our plane for London!

This was a very cool flight option: fly all day, arrive in the late evening, and since you're tired from flying all day, go straight to bed! The flight was not crowded and the three of us had a 5-person row to ourselves so we could spread out. The flight was uneventful (yay!) though we arrived 10-15 minutes late, which really isn't a big deal.

After collecting our luggage and exchanging currency we managed, with a bit of help, to get one-way tube tickets towards Kensington. The escalator took us right down to the platform where we'd apparently just missed the train because it took a good 10-15 minutes for another one to come along.

We rode along for a number of stops and then the garbled announcement indicated we all had to get off the train as it was now out of service for the night. What?! So we stood on the above-ground platform (it was a little cool) and waited another 15 minutes or so for another train to come along. Finally it did and it carried us into London. We got off at our stop, South Kensington.

At least, we thought it was our stop. A had told us "you get off the tube and the hotel is *right there*". Um, maybe but we didn't see it. We wandered around, toting our luggage for probably half an hour before we got on the right track. It was then we realized we'd gone into town one stop too far and were backtracking. From then on, Gloucester Road station was imprinted on our brains!

Though A was already checked in, we still had to go through the check in process and get our room keys. We got inside the room and then we noticed there was virtually no drawer space. The top drawer of the desk had the hair dryer in it and the bottom drawer was only 2-3 inches deep! There were some shelves in the unit under the TV but it seemed weird storing clothes in there with the ice bucket & glasses. But without anywhere else to put my non-hanging clothes, I used it. They did give us one luggage stand that C used as her drawer.

We'd had folks tell us "oh, you won't need air conditioning in London!". DON'T BELIEVE IT! It's very humid there and while our thermostat didn't show actual temperatures (just a midpoint and +1, +2, +3, and -1, -2, -3) we kept ours at -3 all the time. It was cool but it sure helped us sleep well!

Our long day of travel finally through, we collapsed into bed and slept......