London

[heyelander]

Phillies’ Bryce Harper celebrates HR in London with knee slide | MLB on ESPN (youtube.com)

[heyelander]

Back...
Trip started off kind of shitty. We were delayed leaving on Thursday due to weather in Dallas. We got there an hour and a half late, but the connecting flight (dallas to dublin) was delayed. and delayed, and delayed. We were finally on the plane at 11pm ready to go and the pilot comes on and says that someone disconnected the plane's electrical connection and they are waiting for it to be reconnected. In the meantime the air on the plane is off and it is hot as hell. After about 20 minutes pilot comes back on and says "I have no words..." apparently the pilot and flight crew have now timed out and our flight is cancelled.

We are rescheduled for 11am the next morning. I get ahold of my hotel in Dublin and say we will be a day late but we are coming and don't cancel our reservation. AA puts us up in a hotel 15 miles outside of the airport because everything close by is booked. We get back in the morning and they have swapped my seat from an aisle to a middle seat.

We fly the 9 hours to Dublin and then spend 4 hours waiting for our bags which never come ("they may be on the next flight from Dallas"). Nope. They tell us now they may not arrive for 3 or 4 days... we are like, we won't be here, we will be in another country!

We've missed our dinner theater that night already, and the tour guide we contracted is super flexible and changes our tour from a morning / evening thing to afternoon / evening straight. Dude takes us around Dublin for 6 hours, history and pub tour. It was great but we were beat and a little out of it.

At the last pub (the smallest pub in Dublin) there was a table next to us with 5 old drunk guys from York being rowdy, and one of them asks me "Hey mate, what do you think of Trump?" Now I'm thinking, "old white dude asking me about trump, this situation is fraught" so I non-commitally say "We aren't big fans." The dude explodes with "I know we have issues in GB, but the guy is a CLOWN!" So I'm with my people now, and had a rather rousing conversation about the systemic issues of the US and why Trump will only make things worse. Good time!

We get back to the room and collapse. I don't have a cpap for the second night in a row, I sleep like crap, I snore a ton so RJEL wife sleeps like crap. Oh well.
Next day we had planned to tour the Jamison Distillery and Guinness Brewery. Already paid for. Instead we went shopping for some new clothes for a couple of days and then just hit the Irish Historical Museum to see bog mummies.

We were supposed to fly out late the next day, but our flight was moved up for 4 hours, so all we had time for was some breakfast and a trip to the airport. No news in the app about our luggage so we ask at the airport. They offer to take one of us (only one of us can go, and we can't bring our phone) into the island of misfit luggage area to search for our bags. About 30 minutes later, Jen returns triumphant.

So off to London. We arrive, begin to unpack and it is obvious that our bags were left out on the tarmack for a time in the rain in dallas and everything smells musty and is damp. Ugh... So we hang all our cloths from every hook, chair and light fixture in the room and hope it will dry out.

From there, the trip was great. We stayed just off Trafalgar Square where the MLB Takeover was held. Great central point, easy walk to some touristy stuff and about 3 blocks from the west end. Couldn't have picked a better local for a first time visitor.

Day 1 (Tuesday) - Westminster Abbey and British museum. Both were spectacular, although it is a bit troubling all the stuff that England just chopped up and ran off with that is in the British Museum. Seeing the Rosetta stone was cool though. Walking around to find some dinner that night we saw that Ian McKellen was performing in an update of Henry IV with the dude that played Sam in Ted Lasso, so we bought tickets for a matinee on Wednesday.

Day 2 (Wed) Wake up and go to St. Paul's Cathedral (weird to see a church where all the memorials are for Military leaders) and the Tower of London. Did a tour at the tower of london which was cool, but then we kind of had to rush around so we could make it back to the matinee. The show was good although I don't know the play well and had a hard time following on occasion. Oddly, I think the area was also near little italy, and most of the food we had while there was Italian. At pizza that night.

Day 3 (Thursday) Woke up early and trekked over to the bus terminal for a tour up to Windsor/Bath/Stonehenge. Lines getting into Windsor where poorly run and it ate up a good bit of our time there. We rushed around, but it was a neat tour. Roman Bathhouses in Bath were fascinating, but we would have liked to have had more time to wander the shops and restaurants in town. Jen wants to go back someday. Stonehenge was great. We got there late in the day so the crowds weren't bad. I got some nice pictures without people in them. Weather was great. I'm glad I went, checked off my bucket list.

Day 4 (Friday) the art gallery is right on Trafalgar so we went there in the morning and then hung out in the MLB Takeover festival for a couple of hours. They had food, music and batting cages all set up. It was pretty low-key, but I was happy to just chill for a while. There was an Indian place we had been trying to eat at, but the lines were regularly a block long. They were more reasonable for lunch, so we went then. The people behind us were in Mets gear and we got talking.(I would say phillies fans outnumbered mets fans about 10-1) Nice people. We wished each other luck. We had tickets to Romeo and Juliett that evening. Tom Holland was playing Romeo and at one point, as we were waiting for the performance to start, a bit of chatter went through the audience. Jen asked the guy next to her what was up and he said "Zendaya just came in!" So we watched the show with Zendaya. It was a good adaptation. Interesting choices from the director at times. Jen wasn't as down with it, but I liked it.

Day 5 (Game Day!) We did a tour of Parliament in the morning. Well worth the time. Grabbed some lunch and then headed over to the game. Our seats were pretty high up, but they were good seats. It's insane thinking how popular soccer is over there. The game was held in London Stadium which was built for the Olympics and is now the home of West Ham football. We had a couple of cab drivers who said they were West Ham fans. I teased them that the only thing the US knows about West Ham is that they are the bad guys from Ted Lasso. But it's a 45k person stadium and they sell it out every week. Then there are 12 other football clubs in London! Insane thinking in NYC or LA had 13 american football teams! Game was great, I got to see the phillies win. Ranger scuffled a bit but for the most part kept the Mets off the board. Harper had 3 hits and hit a HR, with a soccer celebration slide at the dugout. Merrifield, and Castellanos added 2 other HRs and London got to see the best of Phillies baseball. I will say, and our cab drivers confirmed it, for packing that place every week, they still don't have good infrastructure there for egress. It was us and 45k of our new best friends all walking down the same street to the same tube station trying to exit. Took like 2 hours. We got back to our hotel and had pizza for the third night in a row.

Day 6 (Sunday) A bit of tourist shopping in the morning and then headed over to Herrods for more shopping (we bought nothing) and High Tea. From a cost ROI, probably not worth it, but it was a nice relaxing time. I'm happy we went. Then we were off to the Globe Theater for a production of Much Ado About Nothing. Honestly, I think this was the highlight of my trip. I had seen a lot of history up to this point, it is astounding how old stuff is there, but being in the Globe Theater watching a production of Shakespear was transcendental. I wasn't just seeing history, I felt like I was living it. Doing the same thing at the same place as people were over 400 years ago was just such a wonderful feeling. It really struck me. Walked across the Millennial Bridge before finding a cab.

Got a notification that day that our flight into Dallas was already delayed, so we rescheduled for a slightly earlier flight through LAX. Got on the plane (was not impressed with Heathrow, we flew into London City Airport coming in from Dublin and it was a joy) and I had a row to myself. WIN! Connected, got into Sac at 10 and was home and asleep at 11:30.

[heyelander]

Things I did not do:
Interact with werewolves
Leave my wallet in a cab
Get the flu
Lose a camera

I did leave my coat at a restaurant - cab back to the hotel, wife realized I left my coat, and we cabbed back to the restaurant at 10:30pm to get it, and cabbed back again. I think the coat cost me less than the 60 pound cab ride to go get it, but I like that coat, and I needed one for the evenings there.

[The Feral Slasher]

Back...
Trip started off kind of shitty. We were delayed leaving on Thursday due to weather in Dallas. We got there an hour and a half late, but the connecting flight (dallas to dublin) was delayed. and delayed, and delayed. We were finally on the plane at 11pm ready to go and the pilot comes on and says that someone disconnected the plane's electrical connection and they are waiting for it to be reconnected. In the meantime the air on the plane is off and it is hot as hell. After about 20 minutes pilot comes back on and says "I have no words..." apparently the pilot and flight crew have now timed out and our flight is cancelled.

We are rescheduled for 11am the next morning. I get ahold of my hotel in Dublin and say we will be a day late but we are coming and don't cancel our reservation. AA puts us up in a hotel 15 miles outside of the airport because everything close by is booked. We get back in the morning and they have swapped my seat from an aisle to a middle seat.

We fly the 9 hours to Dublin and then spend 4 hours waiting for our bags which never come ("they may be on the next flight from Dallas"). Nope. They tell us now they may not arrive for 3 or 4 days... we are like, we won't be here, we will be in another country!

We've missed our dinner theater that night already, and the tour guide we contracted is super flexible and changes our tour from a morning / evening thing to afternoon / evening straight. Dude takes us around Dublin for 6 hours, history and pub tour. It was great but we were beat and a little out of it.

At the last pub (the smallest pub in Dublin) there was a table next to us with 5 old drunk guys from York being rowdy, and one of them asks me "Hey mate, what do you think of Trump?" Now I'm thinking, "old white dude asking me about trump, this situation is fraught" so I non-commitally say "We aren't big fans." The dude explodes with "I know we have issues in GB, but the guy is a CLOWN!" So I'm with my people now, and had a rather rousing conversation about the systemic issues of the US and why Trump will only make things worse. Good time!

We get back to the room and collapse. I don't have a cpap for the second night in a row, I sleep like crap, I snore a ton so RJEL wife sleeps like crap. Oh well.
Next day we had planned to tour the Jamison Distillery and Guinness Brewery. Already paid for. Instead we went shopping for some new clothes for a couple of days and then just hit the Irish Historical Museum to see bog mummies.

We were supposed to fly out late the next day, but our flight was moved up for 4 hours, so all we had time for was some breakfast and a trip to the airport. No news in the app about our luggage so we ask at the airport. They offer to take one of us (only one of us can go, and we can't bring our phone) into the island of misfit luggage area to search for our bags. About 30 minutes later, Jen returns triumphant.

So off to London. We arrive, begin to unpack and it is obvious that our bags were left out on the tarmack for a time in the rain in dallas and everything smells musty and is damp. Ugh... So we hang all our cloths from every hook, chair and light fixture in the room and hope it will dry out.

From there, the trip was great. We stayed just off Trafalgar Square where the MLB Takeover was held. Great central point, easy walk to some touristy stuff and about 3 blocks from the west end. Couldn't have picked a better local for a first time visitor.

Day 1 (Tuesday) - Westminster Abbey and British museum. Both were spectacular, although it is a bit troubling all the stuff that England just chopped up and ran off with that is in the British Museum. Seeing the Rosetta stone was cool though. Walking around to find some dinner that night we saw that Ian McKellen was performing in an update of Henry IV with the dude that played Sam in Ted Lasso, so we bought tickets for a matinee on Wednesday.

Day 2 (Wed) Wake up and go to St. Paul's Cathedral (weird to see a church where all the memorials are for Military leaders) and the Tower of London. Did a tour at the tower of london which was cool, but then we kind of had to rush around so we could make it back to the matinee. The show was good although I don't know the play well and had a hard time following on occasion. Oddly, I think the area was also near little italy, and most of the food we had while there was Italian. At pizza that night.

Day 3 (Thursday) Woke up early and trekked over to the bus terminal for a tour up to Windsor/Bath/Stonehenge. Lines getting into Windsor where poorly run and it ate up a good bit of our time there. We rushed around, but it was a neat tour. Roman Bathhouses in Bath were fascinating, but we would have liked to have had more time to wander the shops and restaurants in town. Jen wants to go back someday. Stonehenge was great. We got there late in the day so the crowds weren't bad. I got some nice pictures without people in them. Weather was great. I'm glad I went, checked off my bucket list.

Day 4 (Friday) the art gallery is right on Trafalgar so we went there in the morning and then hung out in the MLB Takeover festival for a couple of hours. They had food, music and batting cages all set up. It was pretty low-key, but I was happy to just chill for a while. There was an Indian place we had been trying to eat at, but the lines were regularly a block long. They were more reasonable for lunch, so we went then. The people behind us were in Mets gear and we got talking.(I would say phillies fans outnumbered mets fans about 10-1) Nice people. We wished each other luck. We had tickets to Romeo and Juliett that evening. Tom Holland was playing Romeo and at one point, as we were waiting for the performance to start, a bit of chatter went through the audience. Jen asked the guy next to her what was up and he said "Zendaya just came in!" So we watched the show with Zendaya. It was a good adaptation. Interesting choices from the director at times. Jen wasn't as down with it, but I liked it.

Day 5 (Game Day!) We did a tour of Parliament in the morning. Well worth the time. Grabbed some lunch and then headed over to the game. Our seats were pretty high up, but they were good seats. It's insane thinking how popular soccer is over there. The game was held in London Stadium which was built for the Olympics and is now the home of West Ham football. We had a couple of cab drivers who said they were West Ham fans. I teased them that the only thing the US knows about West Ham is that they are the bad guys from Ted Lasso. But it's a 45k person stadium and they sell it out every week. Then there are 12 other football clubs in London! Insane thinking in NYC or LA had 13 american football teams! Game was great, I got to see the phillies win. Ranger scuffled a bit but for the most part kept the Mets off the board. Harper had 3 hits and hit a HR, with a soccer celebration slide at the dugout. Merrifield, and Castellanos added 2 other HRs and London got to see the best of Phillies baseball. I will say, and our cab drivers confirmed it, for packing that place every week, they still don't have good infrastructure there for egress. It was us and 45k of our new best friends all walking down the same street to the same tube station trying to exit. Took like 2 hours. We got back to our hotel and had pizza for the third night in a row.

Day 6 (Sunday) A bit of tourist shopping in the morning and then headed over to Herrods for more shopping (we bought nothing) and High Tea. From a cost ROI, probably not worth it, but it was a nice relaxing time. I'm happy we went. Then we were off to the Globe Theater for a production of Much Ado About Nothing. Honestly, I think this was the highlight of my trip. I had seen a lot of history up to this point, it is astounding how old stuff is there, but being in the Globe Theater watching a production of Shakespear was transcendental. I wasn't just seeing history, I felt like I was living it. Doing the same thing at the same place as people were over 400 years ago was just such a wonderful feeling. It really struck me. Walked across the Millennial Bridge before finding a cab.

Got a notification that day that our flight into Dallas was already delayed, so we rescheduled for a slightly earlier flight through LAX. Got on the plane (was not impressed with Heathrow, we flew into London City Airport coming in from Dublin and it was a joy) and I had a row to myself. WIN! Connected, got into Sac at 10 and was home and asleep at 11:30.

Sounds like fun, well not the first part

[madducks]

Sounds like you made a nice recovery from that rough first day. Way to brush off the bad airport experience and maintain the positive energy. Del Griffith and Clark Griswold would be proud.