This was a trip that, despite having planned it for months, I was completely unprepared for. The Wednesday that we left the States, I had foolishly worked from home instead of doing the smart thing Lily did and take the day off, and I hadn’t yet packed my bags for the trip.
Once my meetings were done halfway through the afternoon, I decided enough was enough and I turned on my out of office message — “good luck trying to reach me for the next two and a half weeks” — and quickly threw a weeks worth of clothes and the suit I was going to be wearing to Josh and Beckie’s wedding into our suitcases. I also packed a small camera backpack with two small Fujifilm mirrorless cameras, leaving my full frame Nikon and my film cameras at home.
The flight was supposed to leave at 8:50pm, and since we were checking in a bag, I was a bit panicked about making it to the airport early so that we would have enough time to check in the bag and go through security. A previous trip to New York City via Spirit Airlines (yeah, I know) nearly went awry when Lily and I barely made it in time for the plane due to long lines for the luggage drop and security, and I absolutely didn’t want that to happen again. My worries were unfounded, as we arrived “late” to the airport at around 6:30pm, and there were no lines anywhere to be found. I suppose that’s one of the benefits of flying out in the middle of the week instead of on a Friday evening.
Lily and I ate at a Coney Island inside the airport, then waited to board our puddle jumper to Toronto. Our flight to London was a red eye Air Canada flight from Pearson International to London Heathrow.
I tried to sleep on the plane, but as usual, I simply couldn’t pull it off. That meant arriving in London at around noon with basically no sleep yet still jacked up on the adrenaline of finally making a trip back to Europe.
It was expensive, but we took a London black cab from the airport to the AirBnB. This was the first and probably last time that I’ll ever do this, but I’ve always wanted to at least ride in one of these cars. It was just me and Lily in the back seat, but in front of the bench seat where we were sitting were a trio of jump seats. I imagine it would be “fun” to load this tiny cab with six paying passengers.
Also, much to my surprise, the cab we were riding in was electric. In hindsight, this makes obvious sense.
We arrived at the AirBnB and perhaps it was because of the brain fog from a lack of sleep, but I kept trying to punch the code for the key safe that my AirBnB host gave me into the wrong key safe on the building. After some embarrassing phone exchanges with the host, we finally got into the AirBnB and we unpacked.
It was mid-afternoon at this point. We were tired but we did not want to go to sleep, so we decided to wander around the neighborhood. There were tons of barber shops around us and so many chicken fast food joints.
Like the tourists that we are, we stopped in a Tesco Express and checked it out. It was basically a convenience store. There was a Lidl supermarket down the street, and we went inside and took a look too. We marveled at the selection of pastries and baked goods, and commented on the foodstuffs that caught our eye. I’ve never seen a frozen pepperoni pizza labeled as “American” pizza.
It was early evening at this point, and we were hungry. We started looking for a dinner spot in a place Google Maps tells me is Little Portugal.
We ended up eating dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. There were a few tables of old folks drinking and smoking outside in the very brisk weather, so I figured the food had to be good.
After dinner, we returned to the AirBnB and crashed for the night.