Day 1 – Arriving in Londontown

We flew Air New Zealand out of LAX into LHR, a pleasant flight with spacious seating and friendly crew. During the flight we only had two negative experiences, none of which necessarily reflects poorly upon the airline itself. The first one were the screaming babies. We don’t have kids, after this experience I’m not sure if we will ever have them. The young families were seated so close to one another that the babies start a symphony of crying and screaming because they were feeding off of each other’s misery. The second negative experience we had was the slow pace of the flight attendants in collecting the used food trays after meal service. There’s usually a mad dash to the lavatories after meals, for a good reason. It’s kind of hard to get out of your seats when there are heaps of trash and food leftover in front of you. We waited…and we waited, finally I just stacked my tray on top of my partner’s and squeezed my way out of my seat before my bladder exploded. The pace picked up significantly on our flight back to the US from London, perhaps because the flight crews were mostly Americans? I hate to generalize things but we noticed that the pace of food service in London is considerably slower than in the US.

Fast forward 10 hours, we landed in Heathrow around 11:00 pm. We headed straight to immigration/passport control and stood in the queue. It didn’t take long at all for us to clear immigration, only 10 minutes. The officials were quite efficient, and apparently most of the visitors were prepared with correct documentation, so the line moved quickly. The two comments we got from the official were, “Your holiday is so short, only one week!” (followed by discussions on the differences between the US and UK in terms of paid holiday), and “Your country is so huge!” (we could only nod and mumble something about how it took us forever just to get out of Texas by car).

We took the tube (underground train) from Heathrow to Knightsbridge, which was so straightforward since both stops are on the Piccadilly Line. I noticed an interesting, unfamilar “smell” being wafted out of the Heathrow tube station as we approached the platform. It didn’t really bother me and the smell seemed to dissipate after awhile, maybe I got used to it eventually. The ride was a blur to me to tell you the truth, mainly because I kept nodding off. I remember thinking that the tube seemed smaller than the NYC sub, but I don’t know that for a fact. I did like the fact that the tube has a priority luggage area so they won’t block the other passengers. When we came out of the underground we were greeted by the shopping mammoth that is Harrods. Our apartment was 10 minutes away from the department store, and yet during our stay we only managed to visit the food halls once for an hour on our last day in London. Harrods just didn’t interest us that much. It’s packed with tourists and the prices were astronomical. I thought that at least the food halls merit a slot in our itinerary, but after having to pick up our jaws from the floor in palaces/museums/cathedrals Harrods failed to impress us.

After weaving in and out of the crowd, maneuvering our rolling luggages around the various bumps on the pavement we made it to our apartment. We immediately liked the space, quite spacious with a British king size bed (American queen size), dinner table, two leather sofas, and a well-appointed kitchen. The neighborhood is very nice, although a tad bit too bourgeois for our taste (it is Knightsbridge after all). I forgot when this incident occurred exactly but one day a speeding blue Ferrari almost ran us over, and I remember us being so dazzled by the car that we almost forgot to complete crossing the street. Also, one time we got lost and took a wrong turn into another street, we noticed a woman standing in the entrance of her flat talking to her husband. Feeling naughty and voyeuristic, we slowed down and caught a glimpse of their flat interior. All I can say is wow! How much are they making, and can we swap places with them for a day? Admittedly our rental flat sits on one of the most expensive addresses in London but the weekly rate was very reasonable (especially compared to most London hotels in the area), and the interior is far from luxurious. It’s clean, modern, and comfortable yes, but nothing like that flat we peered into.

I had planned a nice stroll in Hyde Park the day we arrived. Alas, the weather was dreadful and the husband was nursing a cough. Plus the jet lag was worse than we had anticipated. So we just focused on doing what we definitely needed to do…grocery shopping. So we took the 74 bus to South Kensington and shopped at the local Waitrose there. There were a Sainsbury and M&S Simply Food nearby but we couldn’t resist a chance to ride in a red double-decker bus. The shopping was uneventful, except for the instance when I couldn’t find the eggs. I thought that they’d be in the refrigerated section, but after a lengthy egg hunt and an exasperated, mumbled conversation with myself, a kind woman finally pointed me to the right direction. She basically just smiled and pointed, didn’t say a single word. I guess she took pity on the lost American girl who thought she could navigate the British grocery store easily. I noticed that the Brits were polite and helpful in an oh so subtle manner. We were standing around the tube station trying to find the correct “way out”, when a man simply gave us a “follow me” look and nodded towards the right direction. Either that or he simply had a nervous tick and we were dumb enough to follow a mute stranger…

Let’s talk about the food in the grocery stores. From what I observed the frozen foods in the UK are fancier and taste fresher than those in the US. We picked up meals like banger and mash, also steak, mushroom and red wine pie. Not your average Hungry Man TV dinner. The crisps (potato chips in the US) also came in a variety of tempting, gourmet flavors…Honey Roasted Wiltshire Ham anyone? I almost could have justified extending our trip just to sample all the crisps flavors.

At the end of the day we basically just crashed into our bed (no heroic attempts to see the sights or stay up past 8 pm) after a couple of sandwiches from Patisserie Valerie for lunch, and steak, mushroom, red wine pies from Waitrose for dinner.