EuroTrip: Day 1

I didn’t get anymore sleep on the flight, although Mom seemed to. We’re both heavy sleepers in general and tend to require more sleep than average.. which made today entertaining. It was like we were both in a bit of a fog for the first half of the day.

When we got off the plane and went through immigration and customs, we were super disappointed that we didn’t get stamps on our passports.. hello! We want stamped proof we were here, not just memories, photos, and experiences.. hahaha

Figuring out the airport and following the signs to the train stations wasn’t difficult, even with spotty free airport WiFi. The express train to Paddington Station was more expensive than we expected. And originally the man helping me had us paying for round trip tickets. Hopefully it wasn’t a mistake to tell him we didn’t need that.

Our train ride was quick and before we knew it we were lugging our “light” suitcases through the downtown London streets towards our hotel. It was pretty entertaining-both of us exhausted, wheels not wanting to roll well over the sidewalks, forgetting that the cars would be coming from the opposite direction at crosswalks. We made it though! And relatively faster than I thought we would!

The hotel didn’t have our room ready yet, because it was 10am .. but they did let us leave our luggage with them as we left on foot in search of coffee and breakfast. The temperature was in the 50s, and we knew immediately we should have grabbed our bigger jackets. The walk to the cafe we chose didn’t take long, but man it was cold! Originally, Mom wanted to sit outside, within 5 minutes she asked the waitress if we could move it inside. Lol

We had our black Americano coffee and a pretty good breakfast (avocado toast topped with a poached egg for me, eggs and bacon for mom), and tried to warm up and wake up. After leaving I ended up getting an energy drink for some extra pep.. it didn’t help.. but I was dead set on us not taking a nap today so we’d offset the jet lag, sleep hard tonight, and wake up refreshed and ready to explore tomorrow.

We walked around to a few shops, looked at souvenirs and got the lay of the land for our little area near Hyde Park. We inevitably got too cold to continue exploring, so we made our way back to the hotel and sat in their lounge to find the feeling in our fingers again. Close to 12:30 I went to ask about our room, and they were able to let us check in. We were so grateful!

I quickly took back everything I said about not taking a nap. Once we settled into our room, we agreed to set an alarm for 4pm and take a nap.. then get up and go explore the park and find some dinner. I was a little worried we’d both ignore the alarm and wake up at 1am starving.. because we both fell asleep immediately, and when some random fire alarm went off at 2pm, we both woke up, looked around, and decided to ignore it completely and fell back asleep.

When our actual alarm did go off, we got up, dressed more warmly and headed out to see what this Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens were all about. It reminded me a lot of Central Park in Manhattan. It was beautiful, there were dogs running around chasing their throw toys, kids chasing birds, people strolling. There was a pond with a ton of pigeons, ducks, swans and geese. I did my mile run (I’m on a run streak to where I have to run at least one mile every day) around the pond and then Mom and I walked over to Kensington Palace. We had hopes of going inside the palace and the garden grounds outside, but we missed the cut off time to be let in. So, we’ll try to do that tomorrow.

We continued through the park and then down one of the main roads. We checked out a bookstore and got some British Pounds from an ATM.. took pictures of phone booths, funky taxis, and the double decker buses before finding a restaurant to eat dinner at. It was a nice pub with some damn good food. My fish and chips were top notch.. I’d say it’s been my favorite meal while traveling lately (Lauren and I ran half marathons in Maryland, New Jersey, and Oklahoma this month.. I wasn’t a fan of the food we had during our trips lol). The beer was quite good, too.. although it’s not really Mom’s thing.

We took our time walking back to the hotel, and now we’re laying in our beds watching tv with heavy eyes. I think we’ll both be back asleep before too long (it’s almost 9pm haha, how silly), and will be wide awake bright and early. We plan to go to the main touristy things tomorrow, like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Shakespeare’s Globe.

Fingers crossed that it’s a bit warmer tomorrow!