A Jolly Good First Day

Have you ever taken a red eye flight? It seems like a good idea, traveling during your sleeping hours, very efficient really, unless you want to function the next day when you arrive at your destination. Shitty sleep upright in a tiny seat in a tube traveling through the air really isn’t the best way to get rest. But who cares, because you are going on a trip, or something like that.

We flew the red eye to London, which in addition to being a seven hour flight, is also five time zones ahead of us. I don’t much care for flying, which meant that in addition to a seven hour flight and a five time zone adjustment, I also was floating on a nice cloud of Xanax washed down with a bottle of cheap red wine. If you asked me what happened between our landing after eleven in the morning and dinner that night, I would have some significant difficulty piecing it all together. Let’s just see how much I can remember.

Here’s something that’s a little different: European time is a twenty-four hour clock. While we count to twelve and then repeat, those clever Europeans go from one to twenty-four. And yes, midnight is actually 00:00. For vacationing Americans, it adds a level of math to an otherwise fun vacation. I wonder if they have numbers on their watches with faces or if they went military digital.

If telling time wasn’t enough of a challenge, then why not throw in the whole money thing. We are fond of our dollars and cents here at home. In England, it’s pounds and pence, and the queen is on all of it. And coins, Lord, the coins. We never could figure out how much anything was worth, and my husband has a doctorate. Luckily, most everyone takes credit cards (with microchips, so plan accordingly) but there are times when cash was a necessity, and those times made us all feel like ignorant kindergarteners. I wanted a worksheet to color in or a play register or something just to practice.

We spent a crazy amount of time at the airport, just trying to orient ourselves.  We stood for what felt like an hour in the customs line and then stood in another line to exchange money at what had to be a pretty shitty rate. After that, we stopped at what looked like an independent coffee house, only to find out that it was a chain, before we lamented how much better the chains are anywhere but home.

My husband got in line to buy tube tickets and ask out how to get to Kensington while the girls and I protected our pile of luggage from potential pickpockets and thieves. All that took another hour before we figured out what the hell we were doing. Seriously, we spent almost as much time at the airport as we did flying there across the ocean.

We emerged from the tube station with our rolling suitcases in tow, orienting ourselves not only to the direction of our hotel but also the driving. You don’t look to the left before crossing, you look to the right. If you can’t remember, just look down, as it is written on every crosswalk. Is that just for non-British visitors, or do even the Londoners have trouble remembering which way to look before crossing the road?

While walking to our hotel, we passed the most amazing assortment of high end cars along the way. Bentleys, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Ferrari, Aston Martins. I might see one of those every now and again at home, but this was literally every car on the street. BMWs and Mercedes in London are like Hondas and Toyotas at home, practical and affordable. Is everyone in London this rich, or is it a Kensington thing? The parallel parking spaces lined both sides of the street and even had handicapped spaces, labeled clearly on the road as “disabled.” Those Brits don’t need some cute little blue wheelchair symbol; the word disabled is bloody fine for them.

After checking in and dragging our luggage upstairs, we freshened up and headed to the Museum of Natural History. Every step reminded me we weren’t in the US anymore. The sidewalks were old. The buildings were old, each older than the one next to it. Even the signature red phone booths were old. When was the last time you saw a pay phone in America? I didn’t step inside to see if they actually had functioning phones because I didn’t want also want to find out if the booth smelled like urine.

The Museum of Natural History was not like the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian is like it, really like every museum we went to in London and Paris, only with a much smaller collection. These buildings and their contents reek of history. They are positively infested with it.

We and a few other lollygaggers were forced from the museum promptly at 17:50. You do the math, and then stop trying to make sense of it. We staggered out to the street, trying to decide what to do next. The museums were closed, we weren’t hungry, and we didn’t know where to go, so we started walking over the uneven stones of the sidewalk. We had a few moments of feeling unsafe, but that was more due to our American paranoia than any actual threat. We walked and walked, and then we looked up at nirvana, only it’s called Harrods.

Have you ever been to Harrods? It’s a department store that dates back to the 1800’s and a must-see for anyone who likes shopping and eating and people watching and creating generalizations about other ethnic groups. I only say that because the only people there besides other American tourists were Saudi Arabian shoppers, and the Saudis were ready to throw down some serious poundage. We minced from department to department, trying to not touch anything worth more than our plane tickets or stumble and God forbid break something that would cost our daughters a year in college, while all around us, wealthy, swarthy Arabic men and their insanely gorgeous and overly covered ladies who walked several steps behind them were catered to in the watch and shoe and other designer sections. Both my feet and my overactive imagination just wanted to sit down and take it all in.

We took a detour to the Diana and Dodi Memorial on the lower level. I wanted to get a picture, but the pilgrimage line was too long for me to snap a quick one. Instead, I stood behind more Saudi shoppers and tried to explain to my teenage daughters who Diana and Dodi were and why they are remembered in a department store with a cheesy statue and glamour shots. It took just enough time before it was my time to capture the moment.

My children wanted to stop by the toy department, ogling over toys they would have wanted if they were younger or those like the ones they had, only with cooler, British names. We all were a little sad that we had no reason to buy anything, no more tank engines or woodland creature families dressed in gingham.

We consoled ourselves in the great food hall. We were too late for the true Harrods ice cream experience, but we improved our moods by walking past the displays of fruits and vegetables, pungent cheeses and smoky charcuterie, seafood and sushi and meat pies and oh, the pastries and breads. It was overwhelming, really, and we hadn’t had dinner, and in our heads it was either mid-afternoon or a day later. We were trying to make a decision about what to eat, which as a family is not our strong suit, when the bakers began condensing their display before closing time. We decided to get not quite but close to one of each, over twenty pounds’ worth of flaky pastry creations.

We limped back to our hotel room and ate them all standing over our bed, flakes raining down on the covers. Our first day of London was everything travel should be, confusing and delightful and informative and overwhelming and amusing and just, just amazing.

Up, Up, and Away

Remember when air travel used to be pleasant? Yeah, me neither.

My sisters and I flew quite a bit when we were kids because our parents were divorced and didn’t live within driving distance of each other. We were three bored and poorly supervised girls on a plane, and no amount of free playing cards and wing pins would keep us quiet. When the magic ink pen word search and connect-the-dot books lost their thrill, we would occupy ourselves with making sculptures out of our untouched microwaved “chicken” and “potatoes” or sticking sanitary napkins in the sick bags. It would kill an hour and a half, and then we would be either with our father or back at home, none worse for the wear.

Air travel today isn’t the Norman Rockwell painting that it was for us back in the 70’s and 80’s. Now, you have to get to the airport two hours early. You have to fret over your suitcase’s weight more than your own. You have to hope the over used and under serviced self-check-in kiosks function. You have to partially disrobe based on the whims of your jaded TSA agent. Sometimes it’s your shoes, sometimes your jacket, sometimes your belt, none of it consistent. You are subjected to the caste system implications of by-zone seating, after you have already experienced watching the wealthier and more frequent travelers taking advantage of the fast-pass system of security clearance.

If you are lucky enough to board and have room to stow your carry-on in the overhead bin and not under the seat in front of you, you then sit and wait. Is today the day the plane leaves on time? Is your flight lucky enough to not have mechanical difficulties?  Is there a storm brewing in the opposite corner of the country that somehow is causing delays in your faraway and poorly connected part of the continent? Did you flight crew show up? Are they rested and sober?

If all the stars are aligned and the gods are smiling on you, you might just take off on time, which is also not really a fair description of departure and arrivals. In case you never noticed, airlines pad their flight time to avoid costly fines due to too many delays. So your flight that looks like it’s two hours really only takes an hour and a half. Sometimes you arrive twenty minutes early, or so you think. Win-win, right?

We used to pay for the convenience of air travel, and it was a comfortable and pleasant experience. Now, it isn’t any of those.

When my family and I travelled to London and Paris, we got the best and worst of both worlds. We tried to save a buck or two on flying to London and back home from Paris, which meant we had two stops in each direction. It saved us almost a thousand dollars on airfare, but you get what you pay for, amiright?

We left our home town and flew to Washington, D.C., and luckily, it was uneventful. We checked in and passed security in plenty of time to sit and wait for our zone to board last. I popped half a Xanax and don’t really remember much of that flight.  After a quick connection and another half a Xanax for me, we landed in Ottawa, Canada. We were in another country. You might say it doesn’t count, but my passport stamp disagrees with you.

Immediately, we knew we weren’t in the U. S. The border agents were polite, and the rest of the airport staff was extremely friendly. Seriously, those airport Canadians could give us Southerners a run for our money.  In fact, one lady we spoke to at the information desk asked us where we were from, and when we told her South Carolina, she told us she always wanted to visit our state.

“Really?!?” we said in unison.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s warm there.”

We charged our electronic devices and tried to find dinner somewhere other than a Tim Horton’s, which seemed to me a Canadian Arby’s and thus still not anything I wanted to eat.  After waiting for a thunderstorm to pass (who knew they had lightning in Canada?), we boarded our first international flight to London.

I expected the plane to be bigger.  I also didn’t expect the sleeping pods of first class to be so amazing, but they sure looked like they were as we walked past them to get to our economy seats. We did have video screens in the back of the head rests, and each of us had a complimentary pillow and blanket waiting in our seats, so it wasn’t too shabby. We all settled in and waited for take-off, which I am pleased to report was uneventful.

Immediately, we were served a full dinner at almost eleven at night. My fifteen year old daughter was next to me and also high on Xanax, as she seems to have inherited my fear of flying. When the flight attendant stopped at our row, he offered us food trays and then a choice of red or white wine. My daughter didn’t know what to say, and started mumbling about how she was fifteen and didn’t know what she was supposed to do and didn’t think she was old enough to drink, you know, playing it cool, but he interrupted her again. “Red. Or. White.” It wasn’t so much a question as an order.

“White,” she meekly responded.

And thus my daughter was served her first alcohol, which is a fabulous way to wash down that Xanax she took, as she sat next to the Parent of the Year, also high, with a bottle of red wine on my tray.

I don’t really remember much after that. At some point, they collected the trays and dimmed the lights. At some later point, they turned up the lights and forced a moist package of banana bread on each of us. And then, there we were, Heathrow airport in London.  The return flight from Paris? Well, that, my friends, is a story for another day.

My point is, if you have to fly, fly first class or overseas or both. If not, take a Xanax. Don’t be scared to wash it down with a little bottle of wine. If a fifteen year old can do it, so can you.