Bloody Foreigners

All UK Photos have been uploaded to Flickr.

Saturday July 14th
I decided this morning that the Big Bus tour should be what I do this time. I headed toward Buckingham Palace since that was where I hopped on the bus the day before. I rounded the corner onto Buckingham Court and saw the office for the Big Bus. Went in, paid my 22 GBP ($44) and off I went. Hopped on the bus – just me. Off we went. It was early, only about 9AM. It was pleasant to not have the bus full of those bloody tourists. This tour took me through other fantastic sections of London. We went past many of the things I had seen the day before. Only this time I stayed on the bus. We drop past the Tower Bridge, The Tower of London, closer to the London Eye, and I hopped off at Buckingham Palace just in time for the changing of the guards. Buckingham Palace was swarming with tourists. Millions. The changing of the guards was all the pomp and circumstance I expected it to be, yet not that thrilling. It might have had something to do with the BAZILLION tourists. I heard around me 5 different languages other than English.

The London Eye. Just look how big that is compared to the office building to the left.

The Tower of London. I thought the Tower of London was, well, a tower. Apparently not. Anne Boleyn and some King lost their heads there.

The Parliament Building and Big Ben.

I battled my way through the crowd (You all know how I love crowds) and found myself in a nice little pub for lunch. I gasped when I got the bill and saw that I spent $8 on two diet cokes. God I miss the free refill. I decided to come back to the hotel for a breather and ended up taking a nap for about 3 hours. Woke up in time for dinner. Had the worse meal of my trip in the hotel restaurant. And by worst I mean HORRIBLE.

Changing of the Guards

The Tower Bridge. Many folks confuse this with the London Bridge - which is actually in Lake Havasu California.

Sunday July 15, 2007
My God. My trip through Heathrow Airport can be summarized in one word: Chaos! Not only did British Airways have a malfunctioning baggage belt, which backed up the masses, but the masses were MASSIVE. I haven’t experienced this onslaught of people in, well since the Changing of the Guard. People of all nationalities trying to get to their destination. None of BA’s customer service people actually appeared to have taken any customer service training. You couldn’t pay me enough to deal with the public who is trying to travel in a foreign country. There was little to no compassion to any of the passengers and in fact were seen as more angry then helpful. I asked a question to one young woman wearing a BA uniform who barked back,”Do I look like Customer service?” Um, yah I thought. But whatever. I gave her my best charming smile and simply asked if she could direct me to customer service. She shrugged and simply nodded her head to the left. I assumed that meant go that way. Another young woman from Thornbury was also trying to find where we needed to go so we bonded in the queue and laughed at the chaos all around us. Once through the mayhem, I made it to the customer counter. “Bad News”, says Sammy the counter clerk, “but all we have is a center seat.” I asked what the charge would be to upgrade and he informed me there were no seats. Ugh. A center seat for 10 hours. I figured I had fought the war of just getting that far, surely sitting in the middle for 10 hours couldn’t be much worse.

Through security, something went off and I got “searched” – by hand. I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of what was happening to me, but I had flashbacks to my days of leaving Saudi when being frisked really meant going into a room full of smelly Arab women who apparently got off filling you up. I made the mistake one time of wearing a skirt. Since then I never travel in skirts. The flash back past me, a nice looking young lady directed me to a small area. She wand frisked me not hand frisked me. Stupid underwire set off the alarms. Reminder: Toss that bra when you get home.

And then, freedom. Getting to the other side I could only imagine was like crossing over the border to a land full of promise. In front of me Duty Free shops that puts the Mall of America to shame. For some dumb reason I thought of my St. Louis Sister-in-Law who would have been in heaven with all these shops…and tax free. Remembering I had – “had” is a lose term here – to buy myself and friends some Cadbury, I hopped into World Duty Free. 40 GBD later (that’s $80 to you and I) I have about 14 lbs of chocolate, Johnny Walker Fudge (Yes Johnny Walker fudge – have yet to decide if I’ll give that away), and Tobleron’s. My plan is to share the wealth, but if I know myself well enough, the “wealth” may just be me.

And so here I sit in a bar, Stella in hand (incidentally I tried to recount how many stella’s I’ve had on this trip and since I only have 10 fingers I stopped counting), delicious mozzarella, tomato and basil pannini, and a computer. What more could a girl want? And so my UK adventure ends. I consider myself quite fortunate to have made it through with little to no issues other than I’m literally down to my last pound – well besides the ones I’m saving. I need to travel more. But I need to rest first. Home sweet home! Its so nice to travel, but why is it so nice to come back to all the comforts of home?

I made it home but my luggage opted to spend another night in London. Oh well. I'd rather lose my bags on the way home than on the way to vacation.