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I'm in England!!!
Oct. 5th, 2006 10:31 pmNo, I didn't shout that when we stepped off the plane in Heathrow, but I sure felt like doing it!
The flight wasn't bad, though neither of us got much sleep... I dozed a bit, but I had a hard time getting comfortable with my shoulders. At least it was pretty easy to get up and walk around from time to time. There was a little girl (about three years old) in the row in front of us who was a bit fussy, but with headsets on, she wasn't all that bad... and it turned out she was having a real problem with airsickness (at one point, just as we were coming in for the landing, I heard her say in a small, very pitiful, miserable voice "Can we go home now?" I hope she enjoys herself more as she gets feeling better.
I think we greatly amused our cabbie from the airport, because we're staying at a hotel outside of London and don't mind that it'll take us a bit longer every morning to get to the city centre. He seemed to find some of our plans quite strange -- apparently, not many people come to England for their first visit and plan to see things like Fenchurch Street Station, the Isle of Man or Lancashire. He was really nice though and gave us all sorts of pointers about driving in England, a quick rundown of roadsigns, some suggestions for places to visit, directions to Lanchashire for when we get our rental car and advice on how to avoid pickpockets in the city.
After we checked into the hotel, I very nearly did the thing I dreamt![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rackham would do... lie down for a minute and fall asleep. Okay, technically, I did fall asleep, but only for about 10 minutes and I think it actually helped quite a bit. We walked over to Brent Cross Shopping Centre and wandered around there for a bit, grabbed a late lunch Wagamama (they serve a whole slew of different types of asian noodle dishes) then walked back to the hotel where we tried not to fall asleep again.
We finally talked ourselves into getting up and walking back across to the mall to catch the bus down to the Ikea in Wembley (?). The point being, mostly, to try to stay awake just a little bit longer. Some fun, different stuff at this Ikea... and we had dinner at the restaurant there (with some different menu items from what we're used to). We also picked up two pillows, to help with the whole "sleeping in comfort" thing over the next two weeks.
Then we got to wait out in the rain for 40 minutes (after wandering around for half an hour trying to even find the right bus stop) for the bus to show up. Of the four lines that use that stop, two of them went back to Brent Cross, so we figured we'd be good... only it took forever for one of them to arrive at all (with one false alarm of a proper bus that was out of service), while one of the other bus lines showed up eight times in the same span. Very frustrating... but I'm still not upset about our decision to used buses for the first week. They're incredibly easy to use (we picked up 7-Day travel cards) and do seem to run nearly everywhere. Tomorrow we'll be taking the Underground for the first time.
Weirdly, it doesn't seem like we've left home... Northwest London, at least, reminds us a great deal of Seattle: Similar weather, similar humidity, similar mix of ethnicities, similar cars, similar types of people... the architecture is different, but a lot of the building materials are the same, and the roads are the same sort of narrow, windy and hilly. Aside from the fact that there are more people with British accents, people drive and walk on the other side of the road/walkway, and WAY more people smoke, there were moments we easily could have been in Downtown Seattle.
The freakiest thing we've seen so far? Double tall lorries. I guess it makes sense to use them in a city that was designed with double-decker buses in mind, but they are just a bit startling to see zooming down the road.
And now I'm going to lapse into unconsciousness... since it's been around 30 hours since I last had any real sleep. Hopefully more updating in a day or so.
The flight wasn't bad, though neither of us got much sleep... I dozed a bit, but I had a hard time getting comfortable with my shoulders. At least it was pretty easy to get up and walk around from time to time. There was a little girl (about three years old) in the row in front of us who was a bit fussy, but with headsets on, she wasn't all that bad... and it turned out she was having a real problem with airsickness (at one point, just as we were coming in for the landing, I heard her say in a small, very pitiful, miserable voice "Can we go home now?" I hope she enjoys herself more as she gets feeling better.
I think we greatly amused our cabbie from the airport, because we're staying at a hotel outside of London and don't mind that it'll take us a bit longer every morning to get to the city centre. He seemed to find some of our plans quite strange -- apparently, not many people come to England for their first visit and plan to see things like Fenchurch Street Station, the Isle of Man or Lancashire. He was really nice though and gave us all sorts of pointers about driving in England, a quick rundown of roadsigns, some suggestions for places to visit, directions to Lanchashire for when we get our rental car and advice on how to avoid pickpockets in the city.
After we checked into the hotel, I very nearly did the thing I dreamt
rackham would do... lie down for a minute and fall asleep. Okay, technically, I did fall asleep, but only for about 10 minutes and I think it actually helped quite a bit. We walked over to Brent Cross Shopping Centre and wandered around there for a bit, grabbed a late lunch Wagamama (they serve a whole slew of different types of asian noodle dishes) then walked back to the hotel where we tried not to fall asleep again.We finally talked ourselves into getting up and walking back across to the mall to catch the bus down to the Ikea in Wembley (?). The point being, mostly, to try to stay awake just a little bit longer. Some fun, different stuff at this Ikea... and we had dinner at the restaurant there (with some different menu items from what we're used to). We also picked up two pillows, to help with the whole "sleeping in comfort" thing over the next two weeks.
Then we got to wait out in the rain for 40 minutes (after wandering around for half an hour trying to even find the right bus stop) for the bus to show up. Of the four lines that use that stop, two of them went back to Brent Cross, so we figured we'd be good... only it took forever for one of them to arrive at all (with one false alarm of a proper bus that was out of service), while one of the other bus lines showed up eight times in the same span. Very frustrating... but I'm still not upset about our decision to used buses for the first week. They're incredibly easy to use (we picked up 7-Day travel cards) and do seem to run nearly everywhere. Tomorrow we'll be taking the Underground for the first time.
Weirdly, it doesn't seem like we've left home... Northwest London, at least, reminds us a great deal of Seattle: Similar weather, similar humidity, similar mix of ethnicities, similar cars, similar types of people... the architecture is different, but a lot of the building materials are the same, and the roads are the same sort of narrow, windy and hilly. Aside from the fact that there are more people with British accents, people drive and walk on the other side of the road/walkway, and WAY more people smoke, there were moments we easily could have been in Downtown Seattle.
The freakiest thing we've seen so far? Double tall lorries. I guess it makes sense to use them in a city that was designed with double-decker buses in mind, but they are just a bit startling to see zooming down the road.
And now I'm going to lapse into unconsciousness... since it's been around 30 hours since I last had any real sleep. Hopefully more updating in a day or so.
