Epic British Vacay: Starting Out

As you all know, I recently went on the trip of a lifetime – my husband and I celebrated our ten-year anniversary (almost a year late) by cruising around the British Isles! As you might imagine, there wasn’t much time for anything other than photo dumps on Instagram (if you weren’t following me, you totally missed out). However, I DO want to share the details – both for those of you who are interested, and for myself because you know that come next month, I’ll have forgotten half the things I thought I’d remember forever. So, with that in mind, I’m planning to recap each day’s adventures over the next couple weeks, written as though it had just taken place so you can feel like you are right there with me. So, without further ado, I present Day One (and two, technically).

June 20/21, 2024 (Day 1 & 2): From Virginia to London

Sleep on the plane, they said. Take the red eye, they said. It’ll be fine, they said. What everyone seems to have forgotten is how difficult it is to sleep on a plane. Especially if you are in a middle seat. It doesn’t matter that Aer Lingus gave me a pillow – while conceptually nice, there was no place to put that pillow. And there definitely wasn’t any place to lay my head other than straight back (I did try Daniel’s shoulder a few times, but my back protested greatly at the strange angle), so of course I didn’t sleep well. And it really didn’t help that by the time I finally was sleeping for more than a few minutes, someone a couple rows ahead of me decided it was a great time to open their shade, sending bright sunlight into my eyes, because, surprise, surprise, when you cross into a time zone that is hours ahead of yours, it is suddenly morning.

But I get ahead of myself. In case you didn’t catch it, we left for London yesterday. It was a red eye, scheduled to leave at 8:40 PM on Thursday the 20th, have a three hour layover in Dublin, and land in London at 2:00 p.m. on Friday the 21st. First of all, I’ve never flown internationally before, and I don’t know of all international fights are like this, but it was pretty awesome having a warm meal served to us complete with dessert. I felt spoiled, despite not being able to actually navigate my elbows to eat because it was those seats are so tight. Anyway, they also had ear plugs and an entire entertainment system, so I varied between attempting to sleep, playing Sudoku, Tetris, and watching movies. All in all, despite my lack of sleep, it really was not a terrible flight, although by the time we landed in Dublin, I was exhausted. And also the airport looked exactly like all other airports, which was a tiny bit disappointing. For some reason I thought there would be rolling gorgeous hills right outside the window. But we did swing by a pub and I tried a ham and cheese toasty, which was delicious and the cheese was nothing at all like American cheese and I learned that chips are called crisps, and Daniel got a beer so he could say he had one in Dublin, because why not? That was about the extent of the excitement in our layover until our flight was delayed, of course.

But the upside was, by the time the second flight took off, I was so tired that I fell asleep before we even took off, and slept through most of the hour and a half flight. So I felt much better by the time we actually landed in London at 2:30, which, considering all the delays, was not bad. It was really cool flying over London as we headed toward Heathrow too! We saw so many landmarks! And we were further delighted to find that the tube, which is considerably cheaper than a cab, is remarkably similar to the Metro system in DC, so despite everyone’s warnings about it being confusing, Daniel and I were able to navigate it without an issue. Nope, we didn’t even get lost once.

From there we went straight to our hotel, checked in, and valiantly resisted crawling into bed. Instead we freshened up a bit, and headed to the British museum! We did stop first to take pictures of the Tower of London, which was basically across the street!

Then it was right back to the Tube, and, not going to lie, it felt remarkably similar to when I’m running around DC. The museum was pretty amazing and filled with incredible history. I think it’d be more amazing if I was currently researching ancient history, because I will never be able to remember everything I saw. But there were incredible intricate, gorgeous ancient pieces of history, including the Rosetta stone! We had to explore the gift shop of course, and guess what I found? Snowdrop earrings and necklaces! I was hesitant to spend the money on them, but Daniel said it was an anniversary gift and I had to have them since snowdrops are my brand. I admit I didn’t argue too much.

From there, we went across the street to the British Museum tavern, which was established in the 1700s, and looked exactly who you’d expect a traditional British pub to look. The most exciting part for me was meeting up with an old friend I haven’t seen in about ten years who happened to be stationed in the London area! We caught up over a lamb hash (for me) and steak and ale pie (for Daniel), exchanging a decade’s worth of information before finally parting way too late. But it was worth every moment.

And back at a hotel, we finally finally finally got a good shower, unpacked, and are about to crawl into bed to get about 5 hours worth of sleep before we jump up and do an 11-hour tour tomorrow.

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