Taken 4: Spring Break Bus - Winning London

Okay. Here we go. Blogging about Europe. This is gonna be a marathon, not a sprint. First stop...London. I gotta say. This trip really opened the eyes of my heart Lord. France was WAY better than I expected and London was...not. I'll spare you the details and skip to the funny parts. 

First, I want to explain that on the 8 hour flight from Charlotte to London, I got an aisle seat, Emily had the window seat, and there was a poor Irishman between us. Or a Scot? TBH, I do NOT understand the difference aside from Scottish names being...not even easy, but POSSIBLE to pronounce. 

(If you're new, I'm on the left looking like I have had no liquids but espresso for the past 24 hours and Emily is on the right.)

And this was intentional. I'm an aisle person. I sleep on my side on airplanes, and I like to have unfettered access to the tiny plane toilet that I avoid using at all costs. It also doesn't hurt to up my chances of being jostled awake by the snack cart should it make a round while I'm asleep. Emily is a window person. She likes being able to look out the window to make a time-lapse of take off for the 'gram.

Luckily, we are both board as late as we can people. I genuinely do not get why they call it "priority boarding" because a top priority for me is spending as little time on the actual plane as possible.

So for 8 hours we did our best to not torture the poor...Celt?... between us. I watched Dear Evan Hansen and Emily ignored my messages sent to her seat through American Airline's TV/map/radio/messaging service. Which was okay because most of them just said "are we there yet?" or "in the UK is it turd or terd?"

As we landed, Emily experienced some motion sickness. Lest the other passengers think she had packed COVID in her carry-on, I announced to those around us that she was pregnant and departed to wait for her in the terminal.

While we were in London we went to see a show at the West End, a thought that didn't occur to me until embarrassingly close to our departure. We walked from our hotel past the bus stop across the street that inexplicably smelled like chicken manure. Our own little patch of home, 3,000 miles away. We made our way to London's theatre district and skipped tea time in favor of Starbucks, Boston would have been so proud.

We sipped and strolled to Sondheim Theatre and as we climbed the stairs up to the cheap seats, it occurred to me that we had yet to pass a trashcan. I hadn't planned for my Frappuccino to meet Fantine, and I was shocked that I had to actually ask for a trash can. In America they would have made us dump the drinks before entering the doors, here it seemed feasible that we could have carried in a KFC bucket for dinner AND a show.

Les Mis was, of course, fantastic. And I dare say, made better by the ridiculous answers I gave when Emily asked me questions. She had never read or seen Les Miserables before so when she asked if Jean Valjean and Monsieur Madeleine were played by the same actor, I told her that he has split personalities. I also told her that Marius was his long lost son and Gavroche was a ghost the whole time. To this day she thinks Hugo's greatest work is a mix of the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Star Wars.

Now. Before this trip I didn't really have an opinion (slash an understanding) of Brexit. But after going through the UK's border control, I can confidently say that I am not a fan of Brexit. The final nail in the coffin was my time wasted scanning Heathrow for non-existent stroopwafel. No decent human being wants to bring black pudding home to their friends and family. I want some snacks from the continent! I want Belgian chocolates, Dutch licorice, French cwahsohns!

The British border control at the French end of the Chunnel was INSANE. Also, everyone there calls it the Channel Tunnel like they have all the time in the world for redundant syllables. As we left the United Kingdom, they were more than happy to see us go. Which was a...to quote Vivian Ward..."big mistake. big. huge." because they clearly haven't seen me souvenir shop. 

But a week later, as we returned from Belgium to catch our flight home, we were interrogated. They wanted to know the name of our hotel (Hotel Heathrow, thank you very much), the time of our flight, how long we were planning to stay. 

I recognize that I am incredibly blessed to not be a refugee, but THEY seemed to NOT recognize that I had handed them an American passport. This is a full house babes. Or to put it in terms y'all might understand...a royal flush. We consciously uncoupled CENTURIES ago. Ain't no American tryin' to stay here with your Mr. Bean merch and "chips" that ain't chips and "biscuits" that ain't biscuits.

And then we saw a woman almost get decapitated on the Tube. The end.