Josh and Rachel Take a Trip

The Church Street Hotel is located in Southeast London, below the Thames river. Taking advantage of its location meant learning the bus routes, which ended up being much easier than anticipated. The snazzy double deckers got us nearly everywhere we needed to go, and you could buy a day pass right at a machine at the bus stop.

We saw The London Eye, which is a 900 feet tall ferris wheel that gives a great view of the city.

Then we walked across the river to Big Ben.

…and showed a little support for our Big Ben back home!

A few blocks later was Buckingham palace, which is underwhelming (especially after the magnificence of France’s monuments).

Josh’s cold from Normandy hit me hard today, so I was happy to sit in the hotel’s lounge and chill for the rest of the evening.

The hotel is really very nice. You get a lot of room for London, even if there’s a catacomb of stairs to get to your room. It’s clean, it’s got great flavor and interior design, their lounge and breakfast were supreme and oh, what’s that? Honor bar? Awesome! An early bedtime for me and my clogged head, and Josh caught up on his drawing.

We went from Normandy to Paris to London today. I fully expected today to be pretty nasty because of all the traveling and boy, was it ever. We left the B&B later than anticipated, and rain on the highway slowed our return to Caen to drop off our rental and catch our train. We got lost in Caen (where the train station lives) and, with time running short, I had the return the car with very little gas. I apologized profusely and kept indicating “le train” — the rental woman kindly understood and sent us off in a hurry.

Our trip to Paris was uneventful, if loud…. the car full of old ladies were all best friends once the train started moving, and they clucked on and on for a couple hours. We got to St. Lazare in Paris and took the metro to Paris’s Gare du Nord. We had time to spare so I spent the last of my French at a cafe in the train station where a little boy at the next table poured coffee on me.

The train ride to London was nice and relaxing — no sighting of Chalk Horse this time, but nice just the same. Then my biggest planning downfall: I had no map for the location of our final hotel. It took a couple hours and at least 20 blocks of pulling our heavy luggage around. Once there, we were exhausted and starving so off to find food… and wouldn’t you know it, the place we found had a closed kitchen. Defeated, we each had a beer and then went to bed, thankful to be in one spot.

Our flight from Philly took off at 10:45 pm EST, and arrived at 10:45 am London Time. It was a long, sleepless night in the absolute tiniest of quarters, but we made the best of it:

From Heathrow airport we rode the Underground for an hour into the heart of London. I booked a hotel close to St. Pancras, so that our train ride to Paris tomorrow can be easily managed. After depositing our bags at the hotel, we wandered around in search of a meal. Josh tried a breakfast of fried eggs, sausage, bacon, toast, and beans, of which he ate everything but the beans(!). Color me impressed. I had a tasty lasagna with “chips”.

Invigorated by sustenance and coffee (so good!), we went exploring. We discovered a community garden that was founded in 1984 to save the space from city development. There were a dozen kids working on it when we were there, pulling weeds and wheelbarrowing things around, and sneering at the interested Americans.

And the light sprinkle didn’t spoil our mood at all.

In fact, I daresay we found a little magic when we wandered into King’s Cross Station…

There was some napping back at the hotel, along with some British “Deal or No Deal”, which is way more dramatic than the American version (although I don’t really care for either). When we emerged for dinner, we went to a place that we’d spied earlier. I had some Speckled Hen Beer, Josh had Guinness, and oh-my-whaddya-spy?

That’s right - a little Heinz ketchup. It’s like they knew we were coming.

Also, my current impression of “chips” is that they are the bomb. At least, we’re 2/2. Regular french fries may be lackluster to me from now on.

The time difference has got us all turned upside down. Josh was feeling neglected that he wasn’t in the know about a big Apple announcement today, but once we realized that we are 6 hours ahead, and that it was happening in accordance with all previous announcements, all was well. It’s like we’re existing a little bit in the future. I hope it doesn’t destroy the space-time continuum to mention that the economy doesn’t look that much better from this side of Time. Sorry, kids.

At the moment (in your near future), it’s 9pm British time and I’ve had maybe three hours of sleep in almost 36 hours. I am a bloody champion. Take that, jetlag. Boo-yow. And now: ZZZzzz…