London!!!

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Today we woke up nice and early. We were all in a fantastic mood. London here we come!! Luc and Marc Debu drove us to the train station in plenty of time to catch the train. We caught rush hour traffic but no one was worried. We had tons of time, there was no possible way we could miss this train! After all for the first time on this trip, we weren't in charge of anything! We even had time to grab a quick espresso in the station. Then we got all queued up to clear customs. The French officers were nice and kind, dashing even. Obliging us with stamps in our passports and everything. Life was good. The helpful ticket checker looked over our tickets and pronounced everything in order. So we proceeded on [key music here...dun da da dun]. Just as we were about to make our way into the waiting area, someone yelled at us to get back in line. We had no idea, poor, helpless, American tourists. Apparently we have to clear customs for the UK as well as the exiting France ones. No big deal, get back in line. Nope, thats not good enough. We need to fill out entrance forms with our name, birth date and citizenship on it because, you know, our passports don't have that type of information. And the final crucial step, the address of our residence in England. How would we know that? We're getting picked up at the metro stop, we don't need a postal code. Hello! So we put down 'N/A' because we didn't realize that forgery was probably a better option for us. We jump back in line. A lot of people are already through customs. In fact most of them have cleared it. No worries, this should be fine. Besides we like the border control people here in Europe. They're all so nice. They ask us about our trip and wish us well and stamp our passports. So we walk up to the booth and hand over the passports, tickets and entry forms and politely ask if we could have our passports stamped when he was finished. Well welcome to the twilight zone. Border control guys from Britain are NOT nice!!! He snapped back at us to hang on, one thing at a time. He was not obligated to allow us access to his country and in fact he refuses people all the time so we shouldn't expect to get a stamp in our passports. Oh sorry, sir, might you possibly be having a bad day? Yes apparently he was and wanted to make sure everyone shared it with him. Starting be refusing us entry into Britain since our forms were not 100% filled out. Evidently he needed to know the exact address of where we were staying. "What's this 'not applicable'? Where are you going to sleep? A park bench?" We tried to explain the situation to him, but yeah he wasn't in any mood to give us a break. So as a note to all future travellers through France into England, you need to have the full address of where you will be staying. name, phone number and city are not enough. Cell number and metro stops are not usable either. This was a problem for us since we couldn't possibly get a hold of Pauling Newbold for her address. The train checkpoint was closing down and we watched in horror and disbelief as our train slowly pulled away from the station without us. Yes, the same train that there was no way we could miss. Char and Amanda headed off to find a pay phone so we could call the Debus and find out if they possibly had the address. They didn't but said to call back in 5 minutes and they would have it for us. In the meantime, LeAnne and Natalie checked out when the next train was due to leave. Not until 12:30!!! Over 2 and a half hours away! Well the girls couldn't get through the second time to the Debus so after trying numerous times they gave up and started systematically calling all in English and Belgian phone numbers we had in our possession to find A. someone who wasn't at work and B. had the correct address. This was impossible so they decided to try calling the Debus one last time and finally got through! And they had the address. By this time almost 2 hours had passed and we had gone through an entire package of chocolate covered Belgian waffles. So we got back into the queue and fortunately Mr. Cranky's shift was over and we had a nice English border guard who waved us right through and even stamped our passports without us asking.

On the train, we overheard some old English guy loudly dissing Americans and how they speak. Char went over to stand up for her country and apply for English lessons, while Nat recorded it on the ever present video camera. It was hilarious! Apparently the one guy is some semi-famous recording artist/stand up comedian. Look him up. Earl Okin. He gave us his myspace address, so if you happen to ever need that, just let us know. We also have his autograph now woo. He has performed for lots of famous people including Queen Elizabeth, etc. and he knows on of the Beatles. After a lengthy discussion on American politics, including who had the better chance, Obama or Hillary Clinton, he left us with a gem: According to people in the UK, Canada is best known as the United States the way it should be run. HA!

Finally made it into London. We decided to leave our luggage at the train station and go see some of the sights before going to Pauline's house. The exchange rate is horrible!! it's about 2 US dollars for 1 pound! It cost us 6.5 pounds for each bag left. We took the metro to a tour place and got a full bus tour of London. Our passes are actually good for 48 hours, so we can get off and on as many times as we want. It actually includes a boat tour and several walking tours, as well. We thought this was a cool idea since we don't have much time and wanted to see everything we could! The tour also has headphones with lots of info about the places we were seeing that come in many different languages. We chose English. Ah! How beautiful our native tongue sounds! Although we have to admit, sometimes it is as hard to understand as a foreign language, they speak with such a different accent! Since we only had a couple of hours before we were going to Pauline's house, we thought we would just stay on the bus and see everything quickly and then the next day we could take advantage of the get on/get off part. This was a great idea until we noticed that a certain street had more Starbucks than downtown Seattle. Not sure how this is possible but we thought that is would be the perfect opportunity to try out our on and off passes. :) It all worked our perfectly and then we caught the metro back to the British Rail System. Pauline lives out of the city a little bit so we had to take another rail system to get out there. Since it was the evening rush hour the rail line was pretty well packed. Standing room only. This was not good idea for the drunk old men standing next to Amanda and Char. They were falling all over their luggage and kept inviting us to hang out with them at a local pub. We felt that they had had enough to drink and didn't need to spend the evening having more so politely declined. When they got off one of the men held back and came to apologize for their behavior and admitted they'd had too much to drink. Hmmm. We hadn't noticed. Once we got to the train station in West Wickham, Pauline was here to pick us up. Char got to sit in the front seat and definitely felt that sitting on the left side and not having a steering wheel in front of her was strange indeed. When we got the house Pauline had an AMAZING hot meal all ready for us, which we gobbled down. We get pretty excited about home cooked meals! Don't worry, we tried to be polite and even took a stab at holding the cutlery the correct way. She also has the craziest shower system. It's all electronic so there's a power button in the shower and you control the heat with little dials. The weirdest thing is that she has a remote so that you can turn on the water for your bath from your room and have it all ready before you get there. The next day we hopped onto the bus again and spent the day seeing sights such as Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery Museum, Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. Buckingham Palace was closed to visitors this time of the year but we got to stand at the gates and keep our eyes peeled for glimpses of William and Harry. Sad to report, we didn't see either of them but we did get to see a bunch of guards parading around with white gloves. They hide out in these little booths on the palace grounds that are about the size of a coffin only upright, and come out occasionally to stretch their legs. This is to the great delight of the throngs of people clustered at the gates. Evidently watching guys in gray trench coats and white gloves march in a 3 meter by 3 meter square is incredibly exciting. I didn't realize. Unfortunately, London lived up to its reputation of being rainy and wet so Char and LeAnne broke out the plastic garbage bag ponchos, supplied by our tour company, to the great embarrassment of Natalie and Amanda. We also spent some time walking across the Tower Bridge (which is beautiful and much more exciting than the London Bridge which was just a bunch of boring steel) and even took a ride in the London Eye! This Ferris wheel is the largest in the world and I think hold around 20 people per pod. It takes half an hour to circulate and you get some wonderful views. We also left an umbrella somewhere in London so if anyone happens to be passing through and sees a polka dot umbrella, it quite possible belongs to us. That night we met up with some of the local young people for a Mexican dinner including Ruth and Nancy Nunn as well as Antonia Newman. They were all lovely and it was great getting to know them just a bit. Antonia's grandparents are Gordon and Pearl Hayhoe so she has spend many summer months at the cottage some of our parents spent time at as young people. The next morning we had to be up by 3 a.m. to catch our plane to Athens, Greece. We felt horrible about Pauline having to drive us at such an early hour but she was super nice about it. She has been a wonderful host and treated us so incredibly well. We would have LOVED to stay longer!!