Our experience with British Airways- we flew the A380, was excellent!
We were offered a choice of either ‘beef and mash’ or ‘chicken and rice’.
It sounded plain but it was the best meal of the flights so far. Fragrant and rich.
I have disappointed myself though that with each meal I have been able to eat less and less. There is so much on the trays.
Ok- to the issue of sleep on the plane. We needed to have a good sleep on this flight in order to enjoy our first day of seeing London.
I was very happy to see that the the big lads all slept for hours. Kara tried valiantly and got a few hours of broken sleep. It didn’t help that the 10 yr old’s feet kept kicking her. I had him start out with his head on my lap, but as the hours dragged on, my legs went dead and I had vision of deep vein issues. So I moved him the opposite way. He was tossing and turning so much, both legs were dead and my arm was now numb. I tried him on the floor: fail. I fantasized about getting him the spare seat in business class that I saw on a trip to the loo.
In my delirium I realized I didn’t want to see Europe at all. I was scared of the unknown, it seemed overwhelming and that it would be safer to just be home planning it on the computer,
But then the 10 yr old fell into deep sleep and it made my dead arm worth it.
And in a moment of inspiration I turned on the music section of the entertainment; found the wellbeing genre and fell asleep a few minutes into the ‘airplane sleep sounds’
So I will be seeing London on 2 hours of sleep in 34 hours!
One flight tip I will try to remember is that for a very plain eater, the kids meal is not always the best option.
The 10 yr old picked at his meals and basically gorged on the bread.
Ok- we learned a fair amount about London as well as how not to travel today and in doing so we also walked 18 kilometers!
There are mopeds everywhere in the city and pedestrians are nearly as brazen as New York City pedestrians. Fearless!
At least half the cyclists were helmet-less and with the amount of close calls we saw first hand, I was horrified.
Londoners will will go the extra mile to help when we ask for directions. It was a nice surprise in a city where the locals power past us on their way to work in a blur.
I don’t know how we managed to bumble through today. My feet are very sore and if I sit still, my body still feels like it is on the plane.
I am going to try to stay up till 8 to beat the jet lag but it is going to be a tough ask.
We successfully purchased our Oyster cards and they work great. The underground is an efficient system here.
No-one was initially impressed with the location of the accommodation I found us. I heard mutterings of ‘should have known. Whitechapel is the cheapest property in Monopoly.’
If you are familiar with Sydney suburbs, think Lakemba. There is a massive vegetable/fruit market sprawled all over the pavement for a couple of blocks. Half a dozen police vehicles were there loudly sorting out some issue which didn’t inspire confidence.
After buying breakfast and ‘sweets’ at the local Tesco, we convinced our Airbnb host to let us into the house earlier than planned.
We walked past a hospital and the Islamic primary school next to our unit.
When we we stood in front of our home for the week, I nearly burst into hysterical laughter. The already Spartan exterior of the place which I expected because I had ‘street viewed’ it back home was now wrapped completely in scaffolding.
There are two advantages to this, our resident vertigo sufferer pointed out:
1. You can’t see how high you are up.
2. The other residents are probably gone so no noisy neighbors.
Our host popped past very briefly, let us in with minimal instructions and then skedaddled off. Half an hour later, this rapid introduction made sense when the neighbor downstairs came up to complain that our shower water was dripping into his house and he is currently suing our host for not fixing this ongoing issue!!!
We quickly finished our ablutions and slumped zombie-like in front of the telly till an 8 pm bed.
This morning we were up at 6:30 feeling entirely refreshed with a big day ahead!
Dory the Explorer 