Together in London...

Apology: Sorry, sorry, sorry. I meant to post this entry days ago, but there was some confusion with transferring pictures between my hard drive and my friend's computer. I now have the pictures, so, without further ado, I present our trip to London..:-)


HBoO thought it would be a great idea to stay up all night on Wednesday because we had to catch an early flight to London. I was fine with this because of my history with insomnia, but HBoO passed out sometime after 5 AM. Having forgotten to drink any water the day before, HBoO woke with a hangover of death. Luckily I was able to muster the strength to get our stuff together and get to the airport on time. When we arrived, obtaining tickets and eating a Boots meal deal went off without a hitch, but airport security decided to throw us a curve...

I approached the conveyor belt and handed the guy my jacket, bag and shoes. He told me to walk through the security laser thing, forgetting to tell me to empty my pockets. Lots of beeping happened, then I was patted down and practically stripped and prodded with phallic objects and JESUS CHRIST I WANT TO GO HOME MOMMY!!!!

Then we flew on a plane and landed in Heathrow. Getting to our hotel was easy, coping with the sheer epicosity and opulence was difficult. Just a month ago, I had danced with joy when encountering a bathtub. Now, I was staring at this...
We spent hours trying to figure out how to describe how awesome that bed was. We came up with "oppressively comfortable". I literally felt crushed and helpless under the sheer wonder of the bedsheets. We thought about renting a movie, but it cost 7.50 for a single viewing (roughly $15). Yeah, no...

After reaffirming that we could use HBoO's mom's credit card for a few things, we took advantage and had dinner downstairs and ordered a bottle of wine afterwards. It was quite romantic...
For those that don't know (most of you), this trip marked HBoO and my one year anniversary as a couple. Most of our time was spent reminiscing about all the cool stuff that we've done over the past twelve months. It was a pretty awesome year...

The next day, we got up early and went into the city center. Our first stop was Fleet Street, home of the infamous Sweeney Todd. We couldn't help but sing snippets from the musical, most notably belting out, "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd. He served a DARK and a VENGEFUL god! What happens then well that's the play and he wouldn't want us to give it away..."

Yeah, we're dorks. We even found 186 Fleet Street, the building that Sweeney supposedly lived in...
It doesn't get much creepier than that...

Our next stop was Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. We took a look at the impressionist section (HBoO and I love to run away from a paintings then run up close), then spent some time trying and failing to climb all over the monument in the middle of the square. It was good fun...
Next, we headed down the street to see the houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. These places were packed to the brim with tourists from all over the world, all screaming in their native tongues and jumping out into the street to avoid stampeding herds of young students. It was quite a sight...
The Abbey was closed, but we found a back entrance that went into the catacombs and the cloister where all the monks live. We had to sneak around a bit to avoid authoritative members of the clergy, but it was totally worth it for this...
At this point, we were getting hungry, so we walked back to Fleet Street to eat in the world's creepiest tavern...
This was HBoO's last sit down meal in England. In the few days that we spent together, I got her to eat a full English breakfast, fish and chips, steak pie, Gregg's, and a Boot's meal deal. Eating doesn't get much more British than that. After navigating our way back through the city to our hotel, we stayed up all night talking about how old we felt. There we were in a foreign city alone together paying for our own meals and utilizing public transportation on our own, staying in a hotel without parents, and planning our own vacation itinerary. Kids just don't do that...

So, HBoO had an awesome time in England (I think). We saw a huge number of landmarks in three different cities spanning the entirety of England, sipped wine in a four star hotel, ate traditional English food, and flew on a plane together. It was one of the best experiences I've had so far on this trip, and I got to share it with the girl that I love. Life doesn't get much better..:-)

-Matt

If you want to read more about this trip, HBoO is writing a series of vignettes about the experience. You can find them here.