Home from My Thanksgiving Abroad

I’m back in Austin. Actually, I got home late Monday night but as soon as I got up on Tuesday morning, I’ve been running with work, a follow-up visit with the doctor, and a suddenly active social life…

Since I like to relive my travels, y’all are going to have to listen to me recount my week in London before I dive back into skin cancer stuff… skip it if you want, but it is my 200th post…

Anyway, Sunday was travel day. Thankfully, the first flight wasn’t until mid-afternoon because the night before we had dinner and then post-dinner drinks with a couple we hadn’t been able to connect with for a super long time. For whatever reason, I waited until Sunday morning to pack and as a consequence, ended up overpacking. That is really unlike me; so I’m blaming it on the late night before. But, since we were staying put for the entire week, I didn’t feel too badly about packing a suitcase that would need to be checked baggage either. I’m not gonna lie, it was nice not having to shove onto the plane as soon as I could to secure overhead space on the plane for my carry-on.

We first flew to Atlanta, and thanks to the fact that we were flying Delta and I have the right credit card, we were able to camp out in a nice Delta SkyClub lounge. They even were giving away champagne so I got to pretend I was classy for a brief moment. Then, we boarded our 767 on the way to Heathrow. Somehow, I managed to get us on either aisle of the middle row and no one sat in between us. The inflight entertainment center had two of my favorite movies (The Princess Bride and Clueless) so I ended up watching them back-to-back before trying to catch a bit of sleep. I had never flown internationally on Delta before and I have to say, for a domestic U.S. carrier, it was much better than I expected, especially back in economy.

We landed at Heathrow around 9:30 a.m. local time. Passport control took only 20 minutes and before I knew it, we were grabbing our suitcases and heading towards the tube station to take the train into town. Because we couldn’t get into our rental flat until 3 p.m., I wasn’t in any rush. But the hubby was moaning about needing to get somewhere for a drink and wifi so he could log into work. So, my first plan was to take the tube all the way to Kings Cross station so we could leave our suitcases at Left Luggage and then wander over to a pub I knew had wifi that didn’t require getting a text message password (being without an international phone plan for this trip meant that the irritating “get wifi once we text you a code” scheme wouldn’t work). Of course, there was a broken rail before Kensington on our line, so we had to get off and I had to improvise. I managed to still get us up to Kings Cross but it involved two train changes to get there. I should have received more props for getting us there and getting the baggage to Left Luggage but… Anyway, the first day we were there I got to sit in a pub and watch my hubby work for a few hours; then grab our bags and make our way to the flat I had rented in Soho; then listen to him complain that the shower hot water tank was broken (it wasn’t but that’s another story) as well as the wifi being slower than he liked; then going to a local grocery to pick up some food and drinks to stock the flat kitchen with; and then finally going to dinner at a very nice place right around the corner and then calling it a night.

Tuesday, after I woke up from sleeping 12 hours, I wasn’t quite ready to kill him any more. But we both spent most of the day working before I dragged him out to go for a walk around Soho. We wandered the streets, checking out the gorgeous Christmas decorations. London sure does something right when it comes to making the season festive.

London Christmas decorations, 2017

Wednesday, we both worked a bit in the morning. But I had purchased tickets to see Wicked for the matinée performance so I made him close the laptop. I suggested walking to the theater, since it was a lovely day in London – blue skies and relatively warm for that time of year (about 50 degrees F). The theater was all the way down near Victoria Station so we got to walk through Green Park and past Buckingham Palace. We happen to pass by right as they were pulling two horse-drawn carriages out of the Palace grounds. I have no idea what was going on, but it was really cool to see them sort of up close. Anyway, I secured seats in the first row of the balcony so we were able to see the entire stage without someone’s head in the way. At intermission, my hubby turned to me and said, “I didn’t know there was going to be this much singing.” I was dumbfounded. I told him it was a musical when I bought the tickets. Despite that, he ended up really enjoying the show (or so he said). I love the story and was very excited to be able to see it again.

Balcony Seat View for Wicked, Apollo Victoria Theater, London 2017

Thursday was Thanksgiving in the U.S. which meant he had no damn excuse to be on his laptop all day. We walked through Trafalger Square down to Waterloo Station, where we caught a train down to Guildford, a little town about a half hour south of London. Why would we go there, you ask. Well, my hubby has started playing guitar and now fancies himself a guitar player; so he wanted to go to a shop that posts lots of guitar videos on YouTube – Anderton’s. I humored him but tried to reset his expectations. He was under the impression that it was going to be some massive superstore for guitar gear. I explained that his idea was probably a bit far-fetched since, unlike the U.S., most countries don’t have massive superstores for anything, let alone guitars. But he didn’t listen and acted surprised when it was smaller in square footage than an average Guitar Center in the States. But he spent a few hours in there picking up guitars and randomly strumming them while I tried to stay out of the way of the other shoppers who might have been real guitar players by the way the staff interacted with them. (Side note, I have what I refer to as celebrity-blindness – meaning a celebrity could be right in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to recognize him or her. I think it has to do with the context of where I see a person. If they’re on stage or on TV, yeah of course I know who you are. But anywhere else, nope, I have no clue. Freaking Adam Ant himself could be out of his stage makeup and in street clothes sitting next to me at a bar and I probably would just think he looked familiar.)

After we returned from Anderton’s, we were right by the London Eye and it was a gorgeously clear day (for London) so I managed to cajole my husband into buying tickets to go on it. I actually had picked up a 2-for-1 booklet when we bought the train tickets and I found an offer for the London Eye in there. Score! We had two extremely annoying families in our car that took up room by the photo points with their massive strollers and bags of whatever the hell small and irritatingly rambunctious children need for a day out. But the views were amazing and it was right around sunset. And because it was Thanksgiving, we later splurged on a very nice dinner with an extremely expensive (to me) bottle of wine to go with it.

Sunset behind Parliament and the Thames, taken from the London Eye, November 2017

On Friday, the nice weather held and I decided the hubster needed to experience London’s parks. I loved strolling through Hyde and Green Parks when I was there in the spring and even though most of the trees has lost their leaves at this point, there were still a few colorful ones left. We soldiered down Oxford Street in the madness of Black Friday shopping before we hit the delicious seclusion of Hyde Park. We walked all the way down to Kensington Palace (hi Harry and Meghan) before turning around and walking back along Kensington High Street to the entrance of Green Park. We were crossing the street to enter Green Park when police told us to get back. I was a bit worried that there was something bad happening in the park; but then a motorcade drove past us and in the Bentley was Princess Anne. My first royal sighting! We walked back through Green Park back to Buckingham Palace. The sun was setting behind the Palace and we got some lovely photos.

Sunset behind Buckingham Palace, November 2017

I made us finish the circuit in St. James’ Park before heading back to our flat to get cleaned up to go to a concert by Samantha Fish, an amazing blues/rock/retro guitarist and singer. Her backing band is awesome. I had a blast dancing and singing right next to the stage in this tiny basement club in Soho.

Saturday, we had club level tickets for a Tottenham Spurs match at Wembley, a bucket list thing for my husband. We jumped on the Tube and rode the train up to the stadium. Since we had club seats, we needed to get there early to have the lunch that was part of the package. The club was very nice and the food was delicious. Sadly, they only had mediocre wine or beer but after I struggled through the first glass of Merlot, it got better 😉 Our seats for the match were practically on the center field line and while the Spurs played lackluster in the first half, they came alive in the second to finish with a 1-1 draw. We got to go back into the club for post-match drinks and we ended up chatting with two male superfans who have gone to every Tottenham match since the 1980s! That’s commitment… That evening we had dinner at a delicious Thai place down the street from our flat.

Wembley Stadium, Tottenham Spurs match, November 2017

Sunday was our last full day in London and miraculously we still had decent weather. Yes, it was colder and windier than we are used to in Austin; but there had only been rain the first day (when we were sitting in a pub) and one night while we slept. I consider that a complete success as far as British weather is concerned. Since it was clear (but cold), I recommended that we take the Thames Clipper boats down to Greenwich. Even though you could sit inside the toasty warm cabin, we stood at the back of the boat to gawk at the scenery. We were pretty protected from the wind back there too. At Greenwich, I “accidentally” walked us through the Royal Naval College grounds (my hubby: “I think you tricked me so you could look at old buildings”). At that point, he was whining about needing food and despite the fact that the very reason why I had wanted to go to Greenwich in the first place was to stand on the Prime Meridian, I sulkily followed him around for 20 minutes in the fading daylight while he read menus and deciding that he didn’t see anything he wanted. Finally, he turned to me and told me that we should just go do what I wanted to do and as we climbed the hill to the Observatory, I considered ways that I could tie his butt to the boat anchor… But at the top of the hill, the views were spectacular of the Naval College and Canary Wharf in the background. And despite my complaining that I didn’t want to spend $30 for the museum tickets just to stand on the line, my hubby bought us tickets. So I got to fulfill a bizarre childhood dream to stand in two hemispheres at once…

A foot in two hemispheres, Prime Meridian, Greenwich, UK November 2017

And then, our sojourn in London was over… Monday morning, we packed up and dragged our suitcases to the Tube station to take the train all the way back to Heathrow, where I watched the coverage of Prince Harry’s engagement sitting in the airport lounge. The flight back to the States was long, made longer by my hubby’s restless irritation with pretty much everything. I watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith (another personal fave) followed by Wonder Woman before playing trivia games on the entertainment system. In Minneapolis, I again got us access to the cushy Delta SkyClub where we waited for our flight home to Austin. Finally, we walked in the door of our condo to be greeted by the insistent meowing welcome of the kitty.

I’m going back to London again some day soon. That’s a promise to myself. I might not take a traveling companion the next time 😉 but I’m definitely not done with London yet.