Jolly Olde England-The Dream

This blog started up the air. I’m in the air over the Atlantic for the first time. I can’t sleep. That will make the next day a long day, but it will be a good day. I am with the love of my life, my best friend. We’re on a trip of a lifetime, and God is good.

Having never been in a country overseas, I’m not sure what to expect. The British and Americans are very similar, but also very different, I’ll want to see everything, taste everything (anything edible, of course). There will be times I won’t understand what’s being said, and times I won’t be understood. That’s ok. I’ll learn and adapt, along with my gorgeous, smoking hot wife.

We’ll have some time to look around, see some sights before checking in. It’ll be fun. And I get to be my wife’s arm candy!

But in the REAL World…

Meanwhile, on the actual ground…Robin and I ended up in a fight for our lives. Figuratively, not literally. We de-planed in London’s Heathrow Airport, and immediately faced our first challenge. How would our hero and heroine get from Heathrow Airport to our Hotel in Kensington? If you thought that there would be sufficient signage to point weary travelers the correct way, you would be mistaken. Between the two of us, the smoking hot babe and the ugly grunt, we had three college degrees and a qualifying IQ for MENSA, and we didn’t have a clue. Nor did the erstwhile signage provide any.

After stopping to ask for directions from people who wore the uniform but clearly thought that speaking English in a country named…wait for it…ENGLAND, was optional, we ended up at a kiosk area to order our tickets. One of the train lines we thought we’d use was closed due to a train not working(Who thought you needed a working train to have a working train line?), so we were left trying to figure out a Plan B. The way things were going, Plan A wouldn’t have worked anyway. Perhaps we should have offered up a sacrificial plan, and Plan B would have been the one we wanted to do.

We’ll stick a pin in that.

We decided on taking the Heathrow Express to a station called Paddington, where a cute bear in a raincoat would hand us the tickets for the rest of the trans we’d need. After a gentle discussion between us that caused three SAS troopers to faint, Robin and I decided that we would wait until we got to the bear’s station to determine what to do next.

So the easiest part of the day came, the purchase of the tickets. With those clutched in our sweaty mitts we walked down enough tunnels to have us come out in Paris, but actually ended up being at the station where we would board the train. Don’t block the doors and mind the gap.

Paddington Station

We made it to Paddington Station and had a pow wow with a cute bear in a raincoat. We went to a kiosk to buy our next tickets, and couldn’t get the kiosk to recognize our next destination. Now we’re back to our academic qualifications, which the computer ignored and calmly waited for us to make sense. Robin, holder of said MENSA credential, figured out what we were doing wrong, and we were able to purchase our next tickets on the Direct Line (An absolute lie!) to Kensington Olympia, near our hotel in the London Hilton Olympia. The Direct Line had a couple of branches, and you could be above ground to below ground, so of course it’s a direct line.

As we walked our way to the boarding area, we ran afoul of our first big culture shock. Apparently the Brits don’t hold their handicapped people with the same aplomb as we Americans do. Robin has MS, I have severe peripheral neuropathy in my lower legs, we both have canes, and there was no handicap access to the station we needed to get to. Now, I can still get around pretty good. I had just completed a 6-week stint in Milwaukee, sans cane, so I was able to carry my two suitcases, briefcase and C-PAP machine up the stairs. I got to the top and thought, “Well, shit! If I leave my bags here to go get Robin’s bags, I’ll bet my bags will be gone when I get back up top!”

Fortunately, some enterprising and caring British took pity on the woebegone look on Robin’s face as she searched for a way to blame me, and they got her bags up top the top. My thanks was met with “Cheers!” And “No worries!” And they were off. Immediately prior to that I had our only negative reaction with a Londoner, when I stopped to see if there was a lift to the station. He kind of brushed by me, and in a very passive aggressive manner told me there were better places to stop. I, like any good-hearted American, said, “Bless your heart!” And texted his picture to the NSA along with the key words #Jan6, #Trumpwasrobbed and #Transthekids. If you want to do passive-aggressive, I can do passive-aggressive, more passively and more aggressively.

The Not-So-Direct Line

Anyway, so there we were, at the West Brompton station on the not-so-direct Direct Line. We needed to get across the tracks to the other side to catch the next part of the Direct Line (See? I told you!). Guess what was missing in being able to get up the stairs to the bridge across the tracks? That’s right, a lift. Once again some compassionate Londoners saw Robin’s near tearful face and her “My President has Dementia” song and took pity and helped her with her bags. We got over the bridge, got onto a lift that some very Cockney-accented person explained was now working, even though the alarm was going off, got off on the ground level, followed the directions on the London Tube app, and promptly got onto the wrong train headed in the opposite direction on the, yes, you guessed it, the Direct Line. We got off at the next station, got on a Direct Line back in the right direction and did the rigamarole all over again, although this time it took multiple pictures of dogs in horrible living conditions to get some nice Londoners to help us out. By now the Londoners were probably thinking we were two of those “special” Americans they had heard about.

We finally reached Kensington Olympia Station, four hours after our first foray into the London Tube station, and my smoking hot wife had not sold me to the Ukrainian Defense Forces, and I hadn’t sold her to a cute little bear in a raincoat,

We made it to our hotel at 12:00noon. We were exhausted, frustrated, and dehydrated and I couldn’t seem to get rid of a cute bear in a raincoat who would not stop talking about train schedules. We were able to check our bags in, which was a huge relief to both of us, and went to the hotel’s restaurant to have lunch. Robin only had lemonade, whilst I had a Dirty Burger with fries, both of which were delicious,

Robin and I then took a a stroll along Kensington High Street, bought som pastries and some breakfast for tomorrow morning, and headed back to the hotel. We checked in, got settled in, made some preparations for our flight to Manchester for the Manchester United soccer match with Sevilla, ordered in room service, and are going to bed early because we’ll have to get up at 3:30am to get our cab to the airport at 4:30am.

It will be match-Day Bay-Bay!