Miles got an opportunity through work to go present at a one day conference in London. After discussing it, we thought it would be awesome if I went with him and we extended the trip for a nice vacation. My mom was incredible enough to come stay at our place and watch Owen so we could go for a 10 DAY TRIP! So amazing! So here we go on the London recaps.
Our flight to London left at 2:30 PM. We flew to Dallas, Ft. Worth where we had a layover. We couldn't remember how long the layover was, but knew our flight was supposed to board around 6:55 PM. Both of us were starving, so we decided to grab some dinner before we left in case they didn't feed us dinner on the plane. We sat down at a nice restaurant and I told Miles we had about an hour before we needed to go. I grabbed his phone to see about doing FaceTime with Owen before we left. I looked at his phone and I said, "Your time changed! It says it's 6:45!" I jumped up and asked a waitress what time she had. She told me, and I realized that his phone was correct. We apologized and told them we had to run. Luckily we hadn't ordered anything yet. We ran downstairs and to the counter where they told us they would be boarding in about 10 min. We grabbed a small sandwhich to share since they wouldn't be feeding us for about 3 hours and made in on board in time. Thank goodness for smart phones! We would have been devastated if we had missed our flight! Whew!
While walking through the airport Miles noticed all the missionaries lined up talking on the phone. Not having been on a mission before, I didn't realize this is one of the last times they are able to call home before flying out to their destinations. Aw...such sweet little servants of the Lord.
This was just before we got in line to board the plane. We're on our way to London!
A note about the flight itself. It was miserable. First of all, we didn't have personal entertainment centers. They had a few TVs sporadically throughout the middle of the plane. We were sitting on the left-hand side with a TV only about 2 rows ahead of us in the middle. We had to crank our necks if we wanted to watch. Not to mention they said they would be showing two movies, but only showed one, and then a bunch of sitcoms through the night. It was super lame. I attempted to sleep as best I could, but couldn't. Our seats were way cramped (far moreso than I remember the last time I took an international flight 5 years ago) and very uncomfortable. I eventually found a side row (of two seats) that was open, so I attempted to squish my body into those two seats and sleep. Didn't happen. Just as I'd start to doze off, I would realize that my leg was losing all feeling from laying on it funny and blocking off my blood flow. It was a LOOOOOONG flight without anything to watch or being able to sleep.
Ok, back to the fun. We landed in London in the morning and decided to take the Express Tube to the center of London. We figured it would be far faster than doing as our hosts had suggested and taking the Picadilly line all the way to their stop. Yeah...we're stupid. In doing that, we had to change tubes three times, often going up and down stairs with all our luggage. In all reality, it might have saved us a few minutes, but nothing substantial or worth doing when we could have just sat down, slept for a bit, and ridden all the way to our stop. Lesson learned.
Here is our first time "minding the gap" and riding the tube:
We arrived at our stop, found our lodging and settled in. We ended up finding our place through Airbnb. It's a site where people can list their places (entire homes or just a room) for rent. It was far cheaper than any hotels, and we weren't that far from the center of London. It was awesome too because Miles's work had offered to pay up to 150 pounds per night for the first three nights he was there (conference related lodging). However, this place was so inexpensive we were able to pretty much cover the entire expense of our stay with that money. It was a small three bedroom flat with two bathrooms, a kitchen, and living room. It was also nice though because we were able to buy food from a grocery store and make most of our meals rather than eating out every meal, every day. Not to mention that the hosts were AMAZING. (More on that later).
After we got settled, we decided to use the rest of our day to explore London. I had read some good things about the Big Red Bus Tour, so we decided to do it. We thought it would be a good way to do a quick sight-seeing tour of London and get our bearings. Here's the thing though. For us, in our situation, it was a stupid idea. It's a 24-hour ticket that allows you to hop-on/hop-off at all the stops in the city. Which is great, if you want to jump around and hit certain spots. However, we only had a few hours left in the day, and the following day was Miles's conference. This meant that he wouldn't be able to use his ticket for the majority of the time for which we purchased it. It's supposed to be an audio tour, but the talking was pretty minimal and very quiet. And on top of it, I was SO exhausted after our long flight and no sleep, that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I kept nodding off and would try and slap myself awake. Overall, it was a big waste of money and we should have just wandered around and maybe checked out a couple specific places. I think we were too tired to think through all of that though.
On to the pictures...
This is a collage of our bus tour - including shots of the tower bridge, Big Ben, the countdown to the Olympics, among other buildings and sites.
After our tour, we grabbed some food. Both of us were dying to find a place that sold doner kebabs. Miles discovered them on his mission to Germany, and told my mom and I about them on our Europe trip in 2006. My mom and I ended up trying at least one in each country we were in. Most were good, some great, but the best was in Germany. After asking around a bit, we found a place across from King's Cross Station. It appeared to be what we were looking for, but was sadly disappointing. It was not really the same at all, and not nearly as good. Also, they were kind of pricey, and we should have just shared because they were huge.
Here is Miles eating his kebab while riding the tube on our way home:
And this is just a little view of what's to come. Don't worry, I won't actually post ALL 1000+ pictures. :)
1 comment:
enjoyed reading and looking at the pictures. My parents just left last week to London for their mission. They will be there for two years! We are hoping to go visit!!
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