Sunday, May 11, 2008

A Dinner Date in London

I know that I've been slacking a bit on updating my travelings. I've been flying around the U.S. most recently, to New York, D.C., Las Vegas, Dallas - but mostly short trips with not very much time to get out to see and do things. Imagine working an 8 hour day at the office and then when you walk out the door at night, your office has been magically transported to another city or a foreign country - many timezones away. I have to reset my watch, find the closest grocery store for some shopping and cross my fingers my hotel room is comfortable. I suppose I'm always getting somewhere at the end of the day - literally!  

On my most recent trip, we boarded the plane bound for England. The flight was smooth, but seemed to go by extremely slow. I served dinner to my two passengers as well as the pilots, made beds for my passengers in the back of the cabin and put them to bed. I sat up front in the crew rest area reading Jim Cramer's Mad Money (thanks to my Dad) and drinking coffee to try and stay awake. We arrived in Luton around 1:30am after almost a 9 hour flight from Dallas. We settled into our hotel and I set my alarm clock to wake me up around 11:30am to do some grocery shopping at Marks and Spencer for the flight home. (One thing I have to mention about the hotels in Europe are the beds. Why do they always have two tiny beds pushed together to make a double bed? There is a huge crack down the middle anyway - it just doesn't make sense to me).






Even though our trip was going to be very brief, I was excited to be heading into the city to meet Molly for dinner! Thursday turned out to be the most perfect day to be in London (our cab driver said it was the nicest day all year). People were laying out in the parks, sitting around the fountain in Picadilly Circus and eating gelato. It was gorgeous outside and as 5pm rolled around, the pubs were spilling with patrons enjoying the warm evening outdoors. I was supposed to meet Molly at the "Ain't Nothin' But Blues Bar" but instead met at the Blues Post next door. It was fun catching up and hearing about her exciting life in London town since the move from San Francisco. Later in the evening we started to get hungry and I really wanted to find some Fish n' Chips for dinner. As time got away from us (and the hungrier I got), we ended up settling for the nearest KFC!!


We ended our night and said goodbye and I caught the train back to Luton. I boarded the plane the next afternoon and headed back to LA - just in time for dinner on Friday night.