Whelmed

May 25th - Day 0

Once we finally got out of the District, we made it to Brian's family's house. Brian's mom did a remarkable job of restraining from grilling us for all the details on our final plans, which is impressive considering MY parents probably would have resisted our venture to the third world in any way possible. Probably by at least refusing to drive us to the airport. Brian's family is a little more accomodating and we had a full send-off party at the airport with his mother and siblings. We got a "Day 0" picture with our packs on, said our goodbyes, and the journey began! (I did grab Brian as we walked away and demanded in only half mock terror - "what are we DOING??")

During our flight to London, we had some delicious chicken curry and watched "Invictus" in order to get in the proper frame of mind for both [South] Africa and thrilling world sporting events. We got about as excited as teenage girls during the first showings of Titanic every time there was B-roll of some of the stadiums we'll be seeing World Cup games. The movie quoted Ellis Park stadium, where we'll be watching some games, as holding 63,000 people. That's going to be ridiculous. In the best possible way. The airline was also kind enough to include high red socks in our transatlantic flight kit along with the requisite toothbrush and sleep mask. We will be fashioning these as "shooting sleeves," which, for the World Cup will obviously be worn on the calf rather than the arm sleeve favored by AI et al.

Invictus cut into our already limited sleep schedule and we ended up probably dozing for only 2-3 hours. Part of this deficit was due to the fact that we were seated in front of the loudest passengers on the flight who felt compelled to hold a discourse on very time-sensitive and mission critical questions such as 'is there a difference between celsius and centigrade' while the other 246 people on the plane had the good sense to be sleeping. Except for the two innocent bystanders (us) unlucky enough to be caught in earspace. Consequently, while I couldn't do basic math the next day I was so tired, I DO now know that guy on the left thinks there is a difference, guy on the right disagrees enough to punctuate his points by slamming his tray table into the back of my seat (thanks, guy) and the girl in the middle is adamantly neutral. Like Switzerland. Without the diplomatic usefulness or courage of conviction.

May 26 - Day 1, London

We arrived in London at 7am local time, giving us a 13 hour layover before our second redeye flight in as many nights. A quick rundown of activities of the day:
-discovered transportation in London is very very expensive. Almost 8 pounds for an all day metro? Unreal. Good thing we really got our money's worth and used it only twice.
-Additionally, you can't take the metro from the airport into town (advantage: DC) and so had to buy another (very expensive) ticket to get in to and out of the city.
-the circle line does not, in fact, operate in a closed loop circle.
-There's not a lot to see of the Tower of London from the outside.
-the Tower Bridge is sweet. And Carolina blue.
-the "fish" in fish n chips is large. Real large.
-the British criminals charge you exorbitant fees for visiting churches. See: Cathedral, St. Paul's and Abbey, Westminster.
-What exactly are the Horse Guards guarding? Their own parade field?
-Buckingham Palace is more impressive from far away than from close up. We're not sure why. The gates are sweet too.
-Parliament is nice to look at.
-Warm British beer isn't actually that warm (thank goodness)
-consensus on London from our party: to paraphrase a great, it is possible to be neither over- nor underwhelmed, just whelmed? We think you can in Europe.

We got back in plenty of time to catch our flight to Nairobi. We did have some interesting interactions with Kenyan Airlines personnel over the issue of whether they should send Brian's checked bag to Nairobi or not. Because keeping it in London seemed to make sense too....? Oh, British people.

In conclusion, a few reasons why London is a lot like Disneyland:
-it's very expensive. You knew this going in and had been warned multiple times. And yet, you still thought you or your friends must be mis-remembering. Surely they can't seriously charge such ridiculous fees. Yes, yes they can. And will. And did.
-normal conventions of naming are suspended - streets are named Broken Wharf Lane ("hey, we could fix the wharf, or....OR we could just leave it and use it as a landmark for the purposes of street naming"), bars are named "the whale and the carpenter" (actually, i want to know the story behind that one) and airport gate numbers appear in the following sequence: 10, 15, 12, 11, 14. I had always thought that the purpose of naming gates by cardinal number is that they would then appear in the order of cardinal numbers. But clearly that is too simple. Instead of putting the numbers in order, let's flippin' mix 'em up! I mean, if they're not going to be in order, why not just name the gates after your favorite tree saplings? Then they'd at least just be not in an order as opposed to being very decidedly out of order. Maple, oak, longleaf pine makes a lot more sense than 10, 15, 12, 11, 14. Just saying saying.
-people talk in funny voices.

Coincidence? I think not.

Preview to Day 2: giraffes, rock climbing, trail blazing.