Yes, it's Thursday morning, but I've just got to go back to Monday night for a brief bit. The flight here once we took off was great. I barely noticed it was a 7 hour flight. They fed us and kept us happy, and intermittently we had some mild entertainment from a nearby passenger who was overly dramatic and very high maintenance for the flight crew!
We landed at 11:15pm, slightly past the curfew I think, but they got us there! We were so excited. England, finally! I can tell you I was very happy to get that stamp in my passport!! We're feeling great and decide we that despite it almost going on 12:30am, we feel like taking on London public transit like a boss. After a short FaceTime session with all our kiddos, we head to the Piccadilly line with purpose, but they have closed for the evening. We were told to take the bus. After four of us waited in front of some elevators that said "0 service" above them for longer than four adults should take to realize elevators were shut down for the night, we did somehow make it above ground.
After googling our bus route and determining that the estimated route time would take 1 hour 40 minutes, and noting the time of 12:30am....we thought....ok, let's do this! Trying to ignore how suddenly we didn't feel so awake anymore.
We're a little nervous that this is our Plan C for travel, noting plan C was not planned out ahead of time, meaning we could potentially end up anywhere is this large strange city. The bus finally arrives and it's PACKED. But cool, it's the standard double decker of course!! We get on, carrying entirely too much luggage to not be completely clumsy getting on this crowded bus. Kelly and Matt get on before me and head to the upper deck, I get on behind another lady and Geno is behind me. The lady in front of me however is trying to get to the back of the bus with her suitcase, and nobody is moving out of her way fast enough. With ZERO warning, the bus driver takes off, SERIOUSLY like Ernie Prang on a mission. I lurch completely forward over my suitcase (didn't fall thank god) and I'm only 30% sure my husband is also on this bus before it took off, that's how fast this all happened. I'm right near the SMALL staircase not designed for luggage and turn left into the stairwell, if nothing more than to use it as a shelter for my body not flying everywhere with my bags! I hear Matt's voice down the stairwell asking if I"m there. A beacon of hope! He rescued my bags from the stairwell and directed me to the back of the upper deck where Kelly was sitting. We both had this look on each other's faces like we'd just survived something harrowing. Slowly....not even sure how long (too long) Geno made it up the staircase and then into the back of the bus, Matt had a seat way in front with most of our bags.
As the near two hour bus ride progressed, and we got nearer the city centre, one of the men sitting behind us notices our accents and says "Oh, Canadians!" We say, "Almost......we're close to Canada" Then he says "Oh, agh you're American"...with a slight tinge of distaste. Kelly and I decide that from here on out, if the mood in the room seems to be leaning a little anti-American.....we're Canadian, all the way. We could pull it off no problem, eh?
So far this is what we had come up with for our Canadian cover story:
1) We sound Canadian.
Sounds good, right? He was quite drunk however and then proceeded to mimic an American accent, which was a mangled version of Texan and I'm not sure what, the girl with him laughed embarrassed and told him to cut it out, we though it was hilarious. We ended up chatting with him and his lady friend for quite a while and they gave us lots of good ideas for Scotland and were very friendly and hilarious.
We were dropped off then at the end of the line, a lot too much to our surprise. Meanwhile Kelly and I grabbing a 2am photo nearest the first red telephone box we spot! Finally, finally we make it to the hotel after we figure out a 2nd bus and then drag our luggage through completely foreign streets but nonetheless find our way. By the time we got into bed it was past 3am....with a 7am wake up call!
We've got this!
That was wild, Steph! Glad that Plan C turned out to be part of the great adventure. Canadians if you need to be ... eh?
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