The Griswolds Have Landed!

Becky's Version: (the truth) well, we got separated at the train station with no way to find each other, got in a traffic accident and helped some guy with his marijuana problem......perhaps i should explain....

Day 1: well, julie's brother matt drove us to the San Francisco Airport exactly on time. we go there so fast, it was amazing. as soon as we get there we cannot figure out where to go (it is only right in front of us!) so we go eat chinese food and then we ask some little old lady at the information booth. so, we are joining the line and there are a bunch of German dudes in front of us. well, julie starts her flirting so i know this is going to be a loooooooooong trip...hahahah. at the security checkpoint, miss julie gets detained because she thought she was a bad ass and tried to smuggle in a gallon of water. well she got busted big time. Hilarious.

the flight was great, did not feel like 10 hours or whatever it was. we were talking about how funny Ricky Gervais is (the comedian) and i was telling jules she should totally see the movie Ghost Town and lo and behold, it was playing on the plane. weird. plane ride was great even with the woman behind me putting her stinky sweating foot on my armrest. the food was great, pasta with some weird brown things. breakfast was eggs and another weird brown thing hidden underneath. But all good.

The toilets on the plane were downstairs, so that was fun.

we arrived in munich while our next flight was BOARDING! cant tell you how much fun it was to run across the airport -and it must have been at the furthest gate from where we arrived...anyway, had to go thru a 2nd checkpoint and the TSA must have had her on their special list, cuz she got busted again and had to be wanded by this manly german woman with the hand up one side and down the other...over and over. Bet she had to get a smoke after that one! again...Hilarious...we finally get to our gate like 10 minutes after it started boarding. it was great that Lufthansa seated people with an empty seat between them. jules and i both had isle seats. Flight was great and nice and short.

so, we finally figure out where the luggage is and they are there in like 2 minutes. we decide to use the bathroom (i mean the loo) and it is really cool, the doors go all the way to the ceiling and there is no peeking in the cracks...awesome. so the toilets are really shaped like bowls,,,weird. so as i am taking a photo of the Loo some one comes in and must think i am crazy. oh, and each toilet has it own toilet brush.

so, we leave the restroom and go have our passports checked, julie and i tell the people checking our info 2 different stories, so maybe next time jules will get a cavity search. That'd be fun. we finish that and then find out we have to go to customs. no problem there. getting on the stupid train was another matter. had to drag our suitcases up hella flights of stairs....i got a fit of the giggles and my muscles went to mush and i could not drag it up the last couple of stairs so this cute little Irish boy grabbed it from me, Then we kept getting different directions from people. but we finally get our Oyster card (to run around on for a couple days pre-paid) and get on the dang train or underground or whatever they call it. so we get to our stop and i get off and stupid jules is sooooo freaking slow that the doors shut and away she goes with deer in the headlight looks. so i stand there all by myself wondering if she will get off and then get back on the train in my direction or if she thinks i will get back on and join her. our stupid cell phones do not have service here and even if they did, we were so far underground it was a moot point. well, after about 20 minutes or so, here comes julie. sheesh.

we find our hotel with no fuss. our room is in the basement (apparently the only ones that have been recently refurbished) and it is really clean, cute, and comfy. made julie sleep on the couch. we found a restaurant to eat dinner at called Cafe Diana....there are hundreds of photos of Princess Diana all over the walls and about 40 minutes into the meal, jules says- it finally hit me why this is called Cafe Diana. ahahhahahaha

well, we finally get up around noon today (thurs) and while we are walking around trying to forage for food, we meet this cute little English dude with 2 cute bulldogs...i take a photo of his pooches...so adorable. he then hands me money and asks if i will do him a favor. sounds interesting, so i say sure. he wants me to go inside this store and purchase a lighter for him. he decides to leave his dogs with me and he goes in himself. these are 2 big bulldogs and they literally drag me into the store after him. so this cute little dude (26 yrs old) then tells jules and i that he has been smoking marijuana all morning and he is a little wasted and needed the lighter to smoke some more in the park. are we accomplices to a crime???? if so, julie made me do it.

so we had a really good breakfast, the ham here is not like at home....the food is amazing here. everything has so much flavor, i am never coming back to the US. OMG

we finally find the double decker buses with the open tops to travel on around london so we can see more of it than on foot. during the trip, we hear a crash- our bus must have side swipped an SUV and tore off the driver side (well, here it is the passenger side) mirror. it was funny, sort of. the sights were amazing.

last night we were too intimidated to order food in a PUB in the area, so we found one tonight after the bus ride that was not so scary. i had bangers and mash and jules had some chicken in the pot or something...again the food was amazing- then we had these Profiteroles and Treacle sponge for desset....holy cow that food is good...the profiteroles are little cream puff things with cold cream inside and choc dizzled over it and the Treacle sponge is sponge cake with hella sweet something soaking the cake...served HOT....OMG OMG.... i made julie take photos of all the food.

our cell phones do not work but we (well actually "I" found this Hostel that let us use the internet for 75 mins for only 1.5 pounds ($3) so that is a screaming deal.

we have done plenty of jaywalking, partly because we do not pay attention when we are walkling. They have painted on the ground whether to "look left or look right" for the pedestrians and we always choose the wrong way to look and end up violating traffic lays....again, probably julie's fault. oh, you know the gas keys we have to use at the county pumps, we have one on our keyring for the hotel- we use it to open the front door to the hotel.

The people here are very nice and love the accents. for some strange reason, every foreigner who is lost has approached us for directions..how sad is that? we have not been able to do ANYTHING on this trip without asking for help ourselves. pathetic. Oh, when we asked for directions to get bus tickets, they guy said something like ~go to the petrol station....we were looking for a underground station that sounded like Petrol- ha....the bus station is in front of a GAS station (petrol here)...what stems we are!

well, on the way back from shopping...little miss jules lost her mitten and thus began a trek to retrace her steps to find it. if only she had lost both of them, then she would have just shut up about it...but no, since she had ONE, she HAD to find the other....jeez louise....and you guys think i am anal....so after some searching...little kitten found her mitten...AT THE FRONT DOOR. for criminy sake's.

oh, we just left a pizza place....her new boyfriend is an Iranian pizza man! sheesh, can't i just have a quiet fricking meal without her hitting on men at every turn. good thing i had finished eating when she began the shameless display of throwing herself at him. and to make things worse, she promised this guy we would have breakfast there! OMG (AND she left him her business card....)

Day 3 should be fun as julie's friend is taking us out on the town. this should be fun...not as fun as julie's cavity search, but memorable nonetheless.


Julie's Version: What an incredible couple if days! Thanks again Matt for the smooth trip to the airport. We walked in and were isntantly lost. Luckily, people seem to see us coming a mile away and are very nice to help. Even better, no one seems to want to pickpocket us either! Oh nad if Becky says I was flirting with cute German boys at the airport, she's L-Y-I-N-G! :) And I didn'y smuggle anything either....that German lady just wanted to feel me up.

Although the flight was long, it went very well. I highly recommend the red-eye to Munich, then a short hop over to London goes very quickly. The flight went much quicker than we were anticipating. Once we got off, we irritated the man at the travel desk at Heathrow. We didn't know the train and underground were two different things. Maybe if we had actualy read that London book we got things would have gone smoother, but we were much bappier being entertained by our oblivion.

We had no idea what time it was, where we were, but we had a rough idea where we were going, so at least we had somewhere to start. We hopped on the underground (tube) and decided the best way to get to our hotel would mean getting off at the Earl's Court stop. While I was being entertained by teenagers passing around a two-liter bottle of Coke that didn't smell at all Coke, Becky decides she's too good for me & jumps off the car. I try to catch up, but the door shut and there's no button to open it. So, I'm in the train, Becky's on the platform, and the train window is between us. Then the train started to move, and I turned around to everyone on the train laughing at me. There's no cell service underground, but luckily we were able to find each other surprisingly quickly.

Out hotel is very nice, I'll have pictures up on my smugmug website as we're having issues uploading pics to the blog. Our hotel is off Queensway Avenue, which is a brightly lit, vibrant bustling London street. We ADORE London so far, and Londoners walk fast & everyone has headphones on. Everyone seems to wear a lot of black, and I must say they dress much nicer than Americans. The few people we've talked to have all been extremely nice. We thought we had it down when other tourists started asking US for directions, then we decided that was a sign of their desperation.

We're learning all kinds of new words, and learning about tipping at eateries and other cultural differences. We spent the day riding around on the roof of a double-decker bus, and, although cliche, it helped us see parts of London we wouldn't have seen otherwise. We just had a British dinner at a small pub and it was delicious. Before we left, everyone warned us of British food being bland and not very good, but we beg to differ....everything we've eaten has been delicious and seems to be of higher quality than what we eat in America. One word: bacon.

Oh, I almost forgot the best part. The dog man from this morning. Becky saw a guy in his 20's walking two English bulldogs this morning after breakfast. She wanted to stop and take pictures of them to show her son, who has one himself. We chatted with him a little, then left. We ran into him again across the street outside of a small convenience/souvenir shop. He asked Becky to go inside and buy a lighter for him. Of course, we looked confused and did NOT want to contribute to the delinquency of a minor. Then. he handed Becky the dogleash and asked her to hold his dogs while he went inside and bought it himself. We were ok with that, until he went into the store and the dogs bolted in after him, pulling Becky behind them. So this guy is at the counter trying to buy a lighter, the lady behind the counter is yelling at Becky to get the dogs out of her store, and I'm laughing. We all get out front again, and the guy takes his dogs back. He thanks Becky and says, "I forgot they would do that, probably because I've been smoking marijuana all morning! I'm going to go smoke at the park!" He holds up his lighter and giggles and walks across the street into Hyde Park. Way to go Becky.....I hope the Sheriff reads this and knows that you're helping the youth of England smoke weed....