Honeymoon Journal

We flew into Heathrow Airport at 12:45 A.M. Chicago time -- and 6:45 A.M. London time. Customs was less hassle than I thought; we soon retrieved our bags (Note: everyone on Earth owns a set of black wheeled luggage) and headed to a Bureau de Change for money. We tried our ATM card...and again...and again. It didn't work! Thankfully, we had enough travelers' cheques for the first few days and weren't thrown into a panic immediately. Tom noticed that the machines weren't asking him which account he wanted to use; it turns out that, in Europe, all the ATM machines are bound to checking accounts -- and our card was only usable by our savings account. We contacted the bank that evening and had the whole thing resolved by the following afternoon.

We hopped on the Underground to Victoria Station, the stop nearest our hotel. Our map was poor and it turned out that Londoners are pretty clueless about their own roads; we spent two extremely jet-lagged hours walking in circles, dragging our luggage behind us, before realizing that our hotel was only a few blocks away from the station. (Believe it or not, Belgrave Road is also called Eccleston Street, Upper Belgrave, Belgrave Way, Lower Mews, and Eccleston Court.) We collapsed into the bed and slept through most of the afternoon. Emerging bleary-eyed from our hotel, we thought it would be fun to get acquainted with London via the British Airways Eye, a mile-high Ferris wheel set on the banks of the Thames that affords a compelling view of the skyline. Since we hadn't been quite touristed out by that point, to further orient ourselves, we hopped on one of those whirlwind double decker red bus tours (which provided ample photo opportunities). We really did see most of everything, but near the end I had to retreat to the inside of the bus because of the wind and cold. We ate dinner at a sports bar close to the hotel: our first, but not last, experience with British pub food.