Hot

Hot, hot, hot. As far as I can recall, those were my first thoughts as I stepped through the airplane door and felt the air of Madrid, air-conditioned though it was, rise to meet me. It had been a long flight – 8 hours. I had reached the gate right at boarding time, though it was another twenty minutes before boarding began. Through some weird fluke of checking in, my seat had been moved to 44J, which was right above the wing. This proved providential as my seatmate didn’t arrive. I therefore had the row to myself in an otherwise crowded plane.

If you’ve taken a trans-Atlantic flight before, you know that for all you may plan to sleep on the plane, you rarely get your beauty sleep. This was one of those not-so-rare times. To begin, I had lost my neck pillow within three minutes of arriving at O’Hare. I must have dropped it, and of course airline employees are very good about removing anything that might possibly prove a potential threat. 

Across the aisle from me was a little Spanish family who looked like they had some gypsy blood to them. The little girl was tiny and busy, playing with her little toys and wanting to watch movies on either Mom’s or Dad’s entertainment system, but never her own. Her face was a miniature Spanish version of my Pastor’s littlest girl’s right down to the nose shape. She finally went to sleep in the final two or so hours of the flight.

In front of me was a sea of mainly blonde American students, who must have been going on a study abroad trip. They were fairly quiet, but did an astounding amount of texting as testified by the amount of flashing from their phones getting notifications.

Ladywell and Fish & Chips

Considering the fact that the Tube was down and all buses took about 4 times as long as the Tube would normally take, the day yesterday went remarkably well. Our 8-hour flight was delayed by about 35 minutes, and we arrived only 15 minutes behind schedule.

You must remember, dear reader, that Heathrow has been called, at least by The Telegraph, the "worst airport in the world." That takes a bit of doing. So we were pleasantly surprised, to say the least, that border control took no longer than 30 minutes. We seemed to be always either on the short end of a long line, or the long end of a short line, for everything. It was nice.

The Tube being as nonexistent as it was, we had to take the Heathrow Express in to Paddington Station, from whence we took a bus to Victoria. (We passed the Wellington Arch on the way, but we were holding on for dear life and couldn't be bothered to take a picture.)




While this was happening, we were still stuck in traffic.

Then, when we got off the bus, we walked past the turning where were supposed to go, got some help from a friendly girl who grew up in Ladywell, and arrived at our hotel safe and sound and utterly overwhelmed.

While all this was happening, everyone was stuck in traffic.

Our hotel is a pleasant sort of place - not much in the way of room service or sheets or shampoo, but that's OK - situated in Belgravia. The neighborhood used to be "fields of no healthy aspect," then "infested by footpads and robbers," then the unsuccessful launching pad of one of the first ballooning expeditions in London (resulting in the accumulation of a great deal of money for the owner of the balloon and great destruction by those who paid for it). It then became the property of the Grosvener family, and then "a convenient place for quiet murder," but is now mainly comprised of hotels and office buildings.

So, after checking in to our hotel, we unpacked our backpacks to make sure we had enough room for food shopping and took ourselves off to Ladywell by bus.

The reason we were in Ladywell was this:

This is my Grandfather when he was a little boy. He lived in Ladywell as a child. I feel like it would be a travesty to come to England and not see where he lived. It's a quiet street, for all that it's a busy thoroughfare, surrounded by spires and old, shrapnel-damaged graveyards.

His house isn't there anymore - after the bombing of the Blitz, the area was rebuilt.

We had fish and chips in a little park near Ladywell, and spent quite a bit of time looking through the cemetery of the church that gave Ladywell its name - according to tradition, Our Lady appeared at a certain church well (hence Ladywell).

We saw the World War I monument dedicated to the brave men and women of Lewisham - the borough where Ladywell is.

Then we went back to our hotel. Still stuck in traffic.

All the same, that was all we could take the first day. It isn't easy to jump right into the flow of life when it's 6 hours different from your own.