We saw Ireland First. It rose like Valinor from the gray waters of the north Atlantic as we approached. Tall cliffs and narrow strands of beach marked the meeting of land and sea, while a vast green countryside rolled out before us. Even from 32,000 feet it was obvious that this place had been blessed with uncommon charm. Ancient rock walls dissected the landscape, and pretty little villages dotted the terrain like bright stars against an emerald backcloth.

Then, the ocean again, and a wall of thick white clouds. I strained for a glimpse of the land as we drew near the Cornish coast, but no luck. It wasn’t until our final approach to Gatwick that I saw it through a driving rain…The Big Island…The Old Country…England.

Gatwick was a mess but we battled through customs and baggage claim without a single “bugger off”, and snagged a couple seats on the Hogwart’s…err…Gatwick Express for London before it filled up. The train sped through a gray, green world that seemed at once strange and familiar. It was raining hard, and the symptoms of jetlag had started to kick my ass, but the excitement of being there made the beating almost tolerable.



The Gatwick Express.

Shauna’s eyes brightened as we pulled into Victoria Station. London is her favorite city on earth. She spent an entire semester there during her junior year in college, and had been aching to get back ever since.

It was soon very clear that she was in her element, and I was not. I’m really no good at big cities, and London is about as big, and as noisy as they get. The cab ride to our hotel was one part culture shock, one part sensory overload, and two parts scrape with death. The rules of the road were either non-existent or completely inscrutable as our driver picked his route through the maze of main streets and back ways to Norfolk Square and St. David’s Hotel. Shauna was unphased.



Norfolk Square.

Our room wasn’t quite ready for us when we arrived, so we dropped our bags off at the front desk and stepped out into the rain. Norfolk Square is nearly ideally situated. It’s within a stone’s throw of Paddington Station and a short walk from Hyde Park. Most importantly it’s less than a block from Garfunkels restaurant, and a desert of legendary status (Shauna had talked about it for as long as I had known her); a large Belgian waffle topped with unnaturally rich vanilla ice cream, maple syrup, and a sprinkling of toffee bits. It would have probably been worth the jetlag by itself.

From Garfunkels, we wandered down Praed Street and Leinster Terrace to Hyde Park. We’d planned on taking a stroll across the green, but a raucous Islamic Jihad Rally being held there persuaded us to keep moving down Bayswater Road. We turned up a side street and loitered for a moment in front of the building where Shauna had lived during her semester abroad.

It was about then that I decided I’d had enough. Neither of us had slept in better than 24 hours, and walking around in the rain, jet lagged out of my mind just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I was all about going back to the hotel and sleeping it off, but Shauna wasn’t down with it. She insisted that day 2 would suck just as badly if we didn’t allow our circadian rhythms to reset for London Time. She forbade me from going to sleep before 9:00 PM.

I pissed and moaned all the way down Moscow Road and then Queensway, knowing Shauna was probably right. This was her third trip to the UK. She’d backpacked through Europe for an entire summer, toured the Soviet Union, partied in Australia… I had to acknowledge that she might know more about jetlag than I did (seeing as I’d never left North America before).

We thought momentarily about hopping on the tube and seeing the sites in Westminster (Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, etc.), but I wanted to actually be awake for those things. Instead we walked into Whiteleys Shopping Center (London’s main indoor mall) to get out of the rain, and to kill a little time. At some point we spotted a cinema and decided it would be a brilliant way to knock out a couple hours.

We purchased two tickets to a British film called “Children of Men”. It was a dark, unnecessarily violent piece with an agenda. I didn’t get it; perhaps because I don’t completely understand the subtleties of British politics. It was quietly anti-American, and endlessly slow moving. The plot just seemed to collapse on itself. Shauna hated it even worse than I did. Imagine our surprise when Children of Men made damn near every American critic’s top ten films of the year list. I guess there’s no accounting for taste. In any event, it had served it's purpose.

The rain had stopped while we we in the theater, so we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering aimlessly down little streets and alleyways, stumbling into cool little shops and bakeries. We bought some sandwiches at a delicatessen around the corner from our hotel, and took them back to our room after finally checking in.



Barbed wire on the fire escape?



London from our window.

We watched the sun set over London from our window as we ate. We were asleep about ten minutes later.