Cheerio London!

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3:35 in the afternoon on Sunday so we decided we had plenty of time to go to sacrament at 10:00 and be home in time to check out at noon and then leave immediately to the airport. We asked at the underground station for a ticket with enough money on it to get us to the airport. They sold us two tickets and never mentioned anything about areas being shut down for construction. We got half way to the airport only to be told that the track didn't go any further because of construction and we would have to get off the train! We ended up having to back-track to almost the distance we had come so that we could get to the high speed train to take us to the airport. As we got on they asked us which airlines we were going to. We told them British Airways and they told us to get off at terminal 4. We followed instructions and waited in a HUGELY LONG line for what felt like FOREVER only to get to the baggage check counter and find out we were in the wrong terminal. Apparently British Airways has a sister company that they book flights through sometimes! It was 3:10 at the time and we had to go all the way back to terminal 3. (It is a HUGE airport!) We got to the customer service counter at 3:30 only to be "greeted" by a man who had about as much sympathy as a rock! He told us that we should have checked the e-mail they sent because it said specifically that we would be flying with Iberia airways, not British airways! >:( Oh yeah, WE DIDN'T HAVE INTERNET!!!! We ended up having to purchase all new tickets for the following day (that is the soonest they had) and walked away sorely disappointed.

The only good thing to come from the airport that day was...
We found a Baskin Robbins! I got a picture in honor of you, Spence! :)

Supposedly London is the most expensive city in the world so you can imagine that hotels aren't cheap! We decided to look to our Rick Steves guide book to see if we could find an inexpensive hotel near the airport (our flight left at 9:30 in the AM and we WEREN'T going to miss this one... in fact, we left our hotel at 7:00 only to stand around and wait for 2 hours before our plane left! :)). He recommended one and said "Easy Hotel is a radical concept-offering what you need to sleep well and safe-and no more." That was an understatement! On the phone they asked if we wanted a window because it costs 6 pounds extra. We decided we didn't know what kind of neighborhood it was in anyway, so we wouldn't waste the $12. I wish we had taken a picture of the hallways. It felt like a maze once we got in. The lights would turn on automatically as you walked into the hall and then turn off behind you- I'm guessing in an effort to save electric bill costs??? We called our room "THE CAVE". There was no closet... only this hanger-looking gadget that you could drape things over... unless you brought some hangers of your own from home! :)


Ta-da! Here is our room... wait, did you blink and miss it? :) I am standing as far back in to the corner as I can possibly go! There is about a foot and a 1/2 of space between the wall and the side of the bed and about 2 1/2 feet between the wall and the foot of the bed. Our suitcases were shoved in the corner... maybe we were supposed to squeeze them into the orange cubby hole underneath the bed that went back about 2 feet???


This is what the door to our bathroom looked like... it reminded me of a submarine door... it was a pretty "tight ship" INSIDE the bathroom to say the least!


Introducing... the bathroom! Notice the half-circle on the floor next to the toilet...


...and look! There is the other half! It's the shower! I guess it really doesn't deserve the title "bathroom". More like "toilet, sink, shower-head room". There was no hand soap. In fact, the only soap to be found was a ginormous bottle of shampoo/conditioner (well, it seemed huge compared to the teeny sample size bottles they usually have in hotels :)) ! The more we looked at our room, the more we laughed!

You had to pay extra (5 pounds per day) if you wanted TV. We decided to be cheap and not get TV. I sat on the bed next to Tim and as we both stared at the blank TV said, "Well, what should we do". Then the best part happened! The lights turned OFF! Yeah, no warning, nothing! They just turned off! We started laughing uproariously! It just couldn't get any worse! It was like they were on a timer or something and once they thought you had laughed at the room long enough they would turn the lights out on you so you couldn't see anything else to laugh at! :) We finally figured out that if you put your room card into this...
the lights will stay on! :) We went out and found a place for dinner and then decided it was worth the 5 pounds for TV. We also discovered another perk to "The Cave"... there is a green alien ship looking night light right above the bed that stays on ALL NIGHT! The bed felt like we were sleeping on a piece of ply wood all night, so together with the perma-night light we didn't get much sleep!

Well, all except for the airport experience ("the cave" was horrible, but made for some good laughs and memories) we had a wonderful time in London and were sad to leave so soon.