London Baby!

July 3, 2017

Day 3

N will be meeting us at Leicester Square. We have no data, so we are coordinating over (read surviving on) free wifi. Here, we start our tour of London. It’s a very pleasant day; no jackets or hats needed. We walk down to Trafalgar Square, where much to  our amusement there is a sign prohibiting people from feeding the pigeons, prompting the husband and N to comment that it probably put there because of and for tourists like me. Now, if you grew up in India in the 90’s, you must know, that’s what you do at Trafalgar Square!

Buckingham palace is right around the corner. When we get there, much to my surprise and delight, we see the horse guard marching past. I so did want to see the changing of the guard at the palace, but our delayed flight had put an end to that dream. Unexpectedly seeing the horse guard absolutely made my day. Hereon, nothing could go wrong!

We are now in  London’s tourist district (I think). One simply needs to stand in the centre and turn around to see most of London’s most iconic landmarks – Westminster Abbey, the houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the fake red phone booths scattered all over London for tourists to pose in. I want to go inside the abbey to see the graves and relive the climax of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci code, but the line is too long. We walk down to 10 Downing Street and then take the ubiquitous London tube to Borough Market. I imagined Borough Market to be a livelier farmer’s market sort of place, but it turns out to be covered marketplace, with designated stalls.  Strangely, many of these are shut. A joins us for lunch. The boys have been absolutely wonderful hosts right from finding us places to order food from late night to accompanying us around the city. They even called Scotland to see if we could try our hand at falconry and looked up last minute tickets to the game at Lords. I suspect they might have ended up seeing and learning more about London than they wanted to!

We stroll down  London Bridge to the Tower Bridge, where we get some amazing pastries while we wait for our boat cruise on the Thames. We can barely hear, much less comprehend what the captain is saying but it’s nice all the same. The new buildings juxtaposed against the old make the waterfront an interesting study. We pass Shakespeare’s Globe, the Shard, that crazy building that melted roofs of parked cars and go all the way to the London Eye. We hop off here and take the underground to St. Paul’s Cathedral. We reach a few minutes before the last mass of the day ended but cannot go in because I was dawdling along, taking in the outside. Next stop Kings Cross.

We don’t have time (and the others don’t have the inclination) to head across the city to the Fortnum and Mason’s flagship store, so we visit the little one in St. Pancras station across the street from King’s Cross. My big belly gets us/me ahead of the winding queue of Harry Potter fans at Platform no. 9 ¾. Good thing too, as the husband is throwing up his hands at my willingness to wait in queue. The rest of our little group seems more done with the day than I am!

We head over to Dhishoom – the promised Mecca of Indian street food. This place is wildly popular to be prepared to wait. Again, my growing bump gets us place to sit while we wait.  The food surpasses my (admittedly low) expectations and sets a new standard in my eyes. Food is good. Everyone is tired, except me, but I suppose I could use some rest too.

Goodnight London.

London, London, STOP

 June 30, 2017

Day  -1

I’m having a crazy day at work. We’re at a day long workshop, trying to understand two probably super big ticket solutions to a large looming problem. I receive a text from the airline (Norwegian, if you must know), which I missed. Subsequently I get a text from the husband that says “We can’t reschedule our tickets now and other airlines are too expensive to re-book.” I panic and call him as soon as we break for lunch. Turns out our flight is overbooked and the airlines is offering to rebook volunteers on another flight and 400 euros as compensation. That’s 400 euro’s each. Long story short, the husband has managed to get us tickets on a flight that leaves earlier the same day, but reaches Gatwick around the same time as our original flight. The flight is from EWR (Newark), which suits us so much better than the original JFK (New York). The only catch is there is a stopover in Iceland. We don’t care. We are super elated.

July 1 & 2, 2017

Day 1 and 2

We’ve boarded the flight and are waiting to take off – for the next three (3) hours. All flights out of this region are delayed due to bad weather.

Result – we miss our connecting flight from Reykjavik and are forced to spend more than eight (8) hours at the airport. We can’t get out because we don’t have Schengen visas. We can’t even get to the only lounge here because it is on the other side of passport control. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. the terminal is deserted. The airlines staff has disappeared. We have food vouchers but the only two delis/shops are shut and will reopen only at 1400 hours. There are two other stranded passengers ( one desperately looking for a Dunkin’ Donuts!!) and occasionally, some cleaning staff. Thankfully, there’s free wifi and we can book our stay in London.

That, dear reader, is the story of how we’ve lost an entire day and ended up with half a dozen bars of Icelandic chocolate.

We reach London pretty late. By the time we get dinner and reach our hotel, it’s almost midnight. We’ve had to rearrange plans in the interest of making the most of our limited time here, so we won’t be staying with the boys as planned. This remains my only real disappointment.

London Dreams

May 2017

I’ve made Scotland/ London/ London-Scotland plans so many times and not followed through that people don’t even take me seriously about it now. Classic case of the boy who cried wolf. Honestly, it’s a little hard for even me to believe this is actually happening. It’s feels unreal.

We’ve hatched a plan. We’ve blocked vacation time and applied for our visas. We’ve sent the embassy our passports and with great trepidation, our green cards. Our passports come back, green cards securely taped to the back, single entry visas stamped inside. It still doesn’t feel completely real. We book our tickets, and now I know we’re really going – YAAYY!! We still need to figure out our itinerary details and make reservations, but we’re going for sure.

I plan and re-plan, and drive everyone around me generally crazy. That’s too much you’re trying to do in too little time, they say. Slow down. You’ll be seven (yes 7) months pregnant, have you taken that into account? You’ll be big and slow, your feet will hurt and you’ll constantly want to pee…

To my credit, I did cut myself enough slack. Even though we were one day short (more on that later) and started much later than planned on other days, we did do 90% of what was planned. For everything that we didn’t do, there’s always a next time.