Day 1 ~ A plot twist before the story begins

I’m writing at the end of Friday, but the time change makes it feel like two full days have passed since my last post Thursday afternoon. Boy, what a long two days it has been!

Soon after yesterday’s post, I heard a text arrive but I was too busy passing through airport security to read it. When we did get a chance, it was mildly bad news: the second leg of our flight (London to Brussels) was rescheduled about an hour later. Not too bad, really, but it meant we’d waste more time waiting in Heathrow in our layover, and also we’d arrive even later in Brussels, like after midnight at the hotel. We accepted this (literally pressing Accept on a web page) and tried to check into the new flight and move on. Then, the reality of our situation set it: our second leg wasn’t moved to be 1 hour later, it was moved 1 day and one hour later!

We spent a good half hour exploring our options (take the Chunnel to Brussels? Buy a ticket on another airline?) before we finally embraced the situation: we had to spend a night and half a day in London. We scrambled to book a hotel and make other practical arrangements. We barely finished all of that before our Portland to London flight departed. We had time for our last Mexican-American meal (Cha cha cha taqueria!) and to photo our shoes on the beloved PDX air carpet, seen at the top of this post.
And then, we had nothing to do but try to sleep on the long long flight. Boyo, sleeping on planes gets harder every year, whether that’s my age or the shifting, shrinking designs of the seats… but in the end, we slept well enough as we flew 5,000 miles across the globe.

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And so we found ourselves in London! We were pretty flat footed, unprepared and without enough time and space to plot our moves. And without British pounds. And without British electrical adapters. One bit of probably bright news is that the airline may reimburse us for the hotel and food here.

To narrow our focus, we tried to centered around our hastily chosen hotel, something downtown in roughly the right location and price point. The hotel is this place, the cheerily named King’s Wardrobe. We took an hour ride on the Underground a range of through stations and tunnels, from suburban stations overflowing with brugmancia to closer-in stations overflowing with electrical conduit to urban stations deep under the historical city. Finally, we ascended a stairway, escaping the hot windy dark underground and found ourselves in the clean, cool city of London. We walked past St Paul’s Cathedral…

…and found our hotel office in this charming little courtyard.

Like we said, we had hastily picked out this hotel. It looked like an interesting and centrally located neighborhood and the price was right – particularly since the airline is paying for it. Our expectations were low. A bed of some size and a toilet, that was the most we were hoping for. Instead we got this:

A gorgeous little studio apartment – with a whole kitchen including dishwasher and a full oven! It even had a washing machine! It was comfy and quiet, and we could not believe our luck. We turned out to love the location too. The immediate streets were a happening pub scene, with more bike traffic than car traffic and lots of classy spots with hanging flower pots. It was a couple of blocks off the Thames and walking distance to many things we were excited to see.

We walked to the Millennium Bridge, which Daniel had remembered from movies and events. It was a really pretty day with sun streaming through the clouds as we looked across the wide expanse of the river and the city.

I accidentally used Google’s new “erase people” mode on the picture above, but in reality it was swarming with hundreds of people. It felt good to be part of this river of humanity, off doing our individual human goals but united by the draw of this city. There were plenty of seeming locals leaving work on this Friday and also plenty of tourists from around the world (though mostly from France).

That’s looking back toward the neighborhood of our hotel and St. Paul. We saw the reconstructed Globe Theater, a half-timbered, wattled-roofed round building on the far side of the bridge. We were very tired, so then it was dinner at Indian City, an elegant linen-napkin Indian restaurant – thanks British Airways – where the food was exceptional.

A friendly couple we met from Coeur d’Alene, ID shared their Norway experiences – and their vegetable dish. They had ordered too much food, and with the addition of this free dish, I suppose we had too much food too. It was a wonderful dinner.
We were slightly delayed leaving the restaurant by an unexpected downpour. When it briefly let up, we dashed home through the little alleys, even getting slightly lost in the short 5 minute block.
The whole evening, it was remarkably quiet for such a huge city, without loud car engines or car horns. Overnight when we slept or when we walked alongside larger roads, London was delightfully quiet, and I think that’s because of the scarcity of cars. I loved the quiet and the feeling of safety and belonging without cars implicitly threatening me everywhere I go.

Finally, to bed. We collapsed into our exceedingly comfy hotel bed, and were so grateful to be in London after all.