Sleepers

The plane ride over to London was somewhat significant if for no other reason than I'd obsessed over it for months. Nevermind my fear of flying, although that was part of it. Since it was a 7 p.m. flight that was six hours long and landed at 7 a.m., I knew I had to, had to sleep on the plane ride over or risk being sleep deprived, groggy and grumpy the whole trip. And no one wanted that.

But despite taking enough Lorazapem and dramamine to take down a small horse, our seats were so uncomfortable that neither Jeff or I slept a wink. We had a two-seat row, which normally would be great -- but for some reason the window seat was about a foot and a half away from the wall of the plane, meaning there was nothing for us to lean on but each other. I found momentary comfort by putting my legs on top of Jeff until my leg fell so fast asleep I limped around the plane for 15 minutes like Leapin' Larry.

The flight was otherwise uneventful and we landed on time at London's Heathrow airport. We managed to find the Tube and get an Oyster card with relative ease and settled in for an hour ride to the hotel. (I actually fell asleep on the train, which has to be a first.)

When we got to the hotel I was hoping and praying that we would be allowed to check in and we could get a few hours of sleep. No dice. They let us stow our bags but, being that it was about 10 a.m., we'd have to wander around London like zombies and come back at two. Which is basically what we did.

We found a place called Pret A Manger which is a chain along the lines of a Panera and was where we ate breakfast every day we were in London. The food I got was just OK, but Jeff found some tomato mozzarella croissant thing that he couldn't get enough of.

UK honeymoon discovery #1: In England, you only get charged VAT (value added tax) if you eat in at a restaurant. If you take it to go, you don't get charged. Thusly, on every item of food there were two prices listed. Took me until day 3 to figure it out though.

UK honeymoon discovery #2: The British are world's better for asking for your ID when you use a debit card with no signature than Americans. 

After breakfast, we sort of wandered around for a bit. For me, a trip to London was a chance to experience another culture (I know, vastly different). For Jeff, it was a chance to see a bunch of specific "sights." So the wandering wasn't working for him. In walking distance of our hotel wasn't much, but we walked down to Madame Tussaud's only to see a line about 3 blocks long. No thanks. 

Feeling frustrated, we jumped on the Tube and made our way down to Piccadilly Circus, which is sort of like the Times Square of London, but not as big as NY. Close to Piccadilly Circus is Trafalgar Square, which I recognized, so we wandered down there. It is, in fact, not a particularly interesting place to be. We walked down a little more, into a public garden, and determined we could PROBABLY walk down to Big Ben but at that point it was close to 2 and I had had enough. I couldn't walk anymore. 

Trafalgar square.

We still managed to smile cute on no sleep.

We got back to the hotel a little after 1 and thankfully they let us check in. We dropped dead from about 2 to 5 p.m. and I felt positively refreshed when I woke up, despite the lack of sleep. Bummed that we sort of wasted so much of our day, I suggested we hit up Harrod's, giving us a chance to hit a landmark that can be appreciated at night.

Jeff had never heard of Harrod's and me selling it as a "big department store" didn't really elicit excitement from my husband who hates to shop. But that's such a mellow way to describe it. It's absolutely amazing and completely overwhelming. It's five floors, each floor separated into wings or rooms selling one specific thing. For example, there's a fine china room, there's a room just for clothing for pets, there's a toy section and in it there's a soft toy room, a hard toy room, an electronics room, etc. etc. And it's all high end stuff that we could never afford but was fun to look at. 

Also inside they had a marketplace that was like the world's nicest foodcourt. They had a whole room for chocolates. They had several restaurants. We chose a tapas place on the ground floor. The food was OK. Definitely not our best meal.

After dinner we wandered around a little bit longer. We found a Bob Dylan art exhibit, which Jeff was pretty stoked about.

He was also pretty stoked about the giant gorilla in the soft toy room.

Harrod's is owned by the Fayed family, as in the Dodi Fayed who died with Princess Diana. We found this totally tasteful tribute to the fallen stars.

We got some gelato at the 'food court' and sat outside to eat it. It was a beautiful night, perfect temperature. The weather in London was not as bad as advertised. We headed back to the hotel to get a much needed night of sleep.

UK honeymoon discovery No. 3: Every single night in the UK, a new episode of Big Brother was on in primetime. They have news shows entirely dedicated to the show. It's sort of unreal how much primetime airtime is devoted to the show which is actually pretty boring. Jeff got sick of it pretty fast, but it was really the only thing on....