London part 1.

Look, every great getaway has that moment when you want to pack it all in and stay. That’s how I ended up with a time-share in Port Arthur, Texas.
-Jack Donaghy

Part of the reason I posted my old journalism article making fun of Ashley’s older journalism was because, well, after having been to London, I get it. London is, unsurprisingly, a fantastic city. The streets are cleaner and virtually bum free. The people are significantly more polite. The subways all have escalators. I didn’t see a single person scream at anyone else. It’s amazing. That being said, its easy to be impressed on a whorl wind tour of a foreign metropolis when your only company is the love of your life and all your problems are a solid ocean-ocean and a half away.

Ginny had insisted on going home for Thanksgiving, despite our needing to leave early Saturday morning she wouldn’t be arriving home until late Friday night. In fact I met her at Penn Station at around 2 am, took her home with me and then we had two hours before our car to the airport arrived. We thought we’d be able to get away with just two small carry on bags but Virgin Atlantic (who we flew out on) has this strange rule where it’s not the size of your bag but rather its weight. I sort of understand the logic but where it breaks down for me is that the same total amount of weight is going to be present on the airplane either way, right? So what, do they just have exceptionally weak bulkheads? Bah!

That complaint aside I was very impressed with VA. There was plenty of food and drinks and they gave you these little sleeper masks and slipper socks. Ours had adds for the Lord of the Rings stage play so they had, “May the hair on your toes never fallout,” printed on them. As much as a, what, six hour flight can be enjoyed I enjoyed it. We both slept a bit on the plane and had a mind to go out but when we arrived we were way too tired, so we just ate at the hotel bar/lounge and then passed out in our room.

But before we had fallen asleep we had already learned how expensive London is. Now, being from New York when we were told that London is pricey, our reaction was, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. What am I from Ohio? I live in the most expensive city in North America, you ain’t go show me anything new.” This is where we were wrong. We were shown new things. Like, for instance, my hamburger and fries at the bar. They cost thirty dollars. Ginny’s sandwich and fries? Twenty-five. The beers were reasonable (and fantastic- I think it’s the water used in the UK, all the UK and Irish beers were just wonderful) but the total on the meal after my Marriott discount was still over sixty bucks. The shuttle bus that runs from the airport to the hotel- that was eight dollars and forty cents each. Yeah. A freaking bus. The same distance in New York would have set you back a max of five/six bucks in a cab. Absurd.

The next morning we were having trouble with the machine to get tickets for the shuttle and the shuttle bus driver actually got out of his bus and came over to help us. That’s right, help us. Help us without being asked. And he did it without swearing. It was incredible. To contrast this, I once saw a guy on the subway who I thought was either dead or dying and when I told the station agent her response was, ‘the fuck you want me to do about it?!’ So this was a delightful change of pace. Score one for London’s mass transit.

We had to take a long-ass subway trip that was interrupted by some track construction and thus a double-decker bus ride. But having woken at the crack of dawn, we made it to Piccadilly Circus by, like, six thirty. It was, as far as I was concerned a statue-topped fountain. Yup. We got the cheapest thing we could find for breakfast, although a banana cost like two dollars and ten cents. Its outrageous. I complained about the price of bananas until Ginny told me stop.

Oof. Its been a busy night at work so I’ll continue this later…