The England Experience

Saturday night, location: Just outside of Rome, on our way to Florence, Italy.  We have not had Internet since Thursday night in London, so I am doing this thru Word, with the intentions of catching it up and uploading it to Blog as soon as it is possible.

Here is what happened…

On Wednesday morning, we packed up and headed for the airport in Amsterdam to head to England. Both of us excited about the prospect of seeing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace Stonehenge and just being there during all of the festivities of the Royal wedding.

 Off to ENGLAND!!!

 Waiting inthe airport, so excited to see England!

 Boarding

 Off we go!

How CUTE are these little tiny coke cans?

Our first glimpse of England!

When we got to the airport, we had to pay an excess baggage fee, plus the over limit fee on one of our bags. We expected that.  However, we paid 45 Euros for extra bag and another 45 Euros for over limit. That’s almost $150 US for one extra bag! The price of the ticket for us to fly was only $100 each. It would have been cheaper to pay for another ticket, paint a picture of Prince William’s face on the front of our big ass suitcase and strap it in the seat next to us. LOL

When we arrived, I couldn’t figure out if we landed in England or India. There were Indians everywhere. Not native American Indians, the kind with the red dots on their foreheads. I gotta remember to look that up and see what it signifies. It seemed to be only the women who have them. Maybe it signifies a married woman. I don’t know.

We decided to go ahead and exchange some money. In Amsterdam, we walked all over the place looking for the currency exchange and we didn’t want that fiasco again. First mistake. The exchange rate was 1.85 (but no commission fee).  So we changed $1000.00, then we hopped on the underground train to go to our hotel. Now, keep in mind we have 3 full sized suitcases, our backpacks with computers and whatnot in them and my purse.  It took about 1 hour 20 minutes to pop up out of the train station.

 This is the train station coming up off the Central Line.

We are still in the train station but this is the BACK of the hotel where we will be staying.

 Luckily, our hotel was right there.  So we checked into this super schmancy, ultra modern hotel called the Andaz.  It was quite expensive, which we knew going into it, as Tim booked it online. I think Tim wanted a really nice place to stay during the wedding festivities. The VAT (Very Asinine Tax) was 20% which added another $200.00 PER NIGHT to our stay. We are now paying $3000.00 to lay our heads down to sleep! I WANTED TO THROW UP. OK. Move on.

 The Andaz Lobby

 Tim in the Andaz lobby

Our suite at the Andaz

 The hallway from the living room to our bedroom at the Andaz

Another view of our bedroom suite

The living room area of Andaz suite.

 The "get ready" area of the bathroom.

 The bathtub and bathroom of the Andaz.

The lobby area looking up at the floors which are NOT connected

 Looking down into the lobby area.

 Tim in the lobby of our floor.

Tim gagging over the price of this hotel

 It is now about 5pm and we are both on 3 hours of sleep and neither of us has eaten since the croissants we had for breakfast in Amsterdam… time to eat before Kym rips someone’s head of. So we went out for a walk and food.

Our first glimpse of real England.

 LMAO.  This is a bar in England. It should be in Amsterdam.

Just in case you aren't sure where the traffic is coming from. They DO drive on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the road in England. Probably good to have signs for us dumb pedestrians.

10 minutes later we find food alley (not the real name) and stop into this little fast food type place for real English fish and chips.

 English Fish and chips

Chicken pie for Tim. So nasty

 Tim got a chicken pie, which was a pastry with cream of chicken soup in it and maybe a couple of pieces of chicken. Gross. Very gross. 

Me in the middle of chewing my food. Food makes me happy.

I think this is Tim looking over our bill.

Total cost for a meal that would have cost $15.00 anywhere else = 20 pounds. That is almost $35.00 US. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

At this point, I think we were both tired, freezing cold and frustrated with the money situation (it doesn’t matter how much money you make, no one likes to get taken advantage of). So we got a little snippy at each other and neither of us wanted to make a decision about where to WALK to next, so we went back to the hotel. I took a bath and promptly fell asleep. It was 6pm. No ambien needed. The last time I fell asleep without ambient or some other form of sleep aid before this trip was probably when I was 24. We slept pretty much straight thru till 6am the next morning.

Upon awakening, we decided to make some decisions about our accommodations.  We called the front desk and asked if we could cancel and they said yes. FOR BOTH NIGHTS! We spent the next little while deciding how and when we were going to leave London. We decided to go ahead and stay all day Thursday and go to Stonehenge and leave Friday morning. The only flights available were at 9am, which would mean getting up super early to take the train back to the airport. So we booked a room at a hotel closer to the airport, cancelled our 2 nights at the Andon, packed up our shit and went around the corner to the train station. Everyone travels either by train, or as they will say “the tube” or by bus, which they call “coach.”

We were able to drop off our bags to be babysat for a small fee of 32 pounds ($65.00), we got our tickets to Stonehenge, got on a train and off we went.

Now, other than the fact that we were getting royally raped financially, none of this seems that bad, but I think it was more the people and attitudes we came across that really put us, and especially Tim, off.  I have never felt like I was in a more foreign country than I did in England.  That is kind of a crazy statement considering it is supposedly an English speaking country.

Everyone mumbles, no one looks you in the eye and when they do it is with the most vacant stares I have ever received in my life. I thought the French were rude, but they are mostly “uppity rude.”  The British were truly rude.  When we asked for directions, we either got, “I don’t know,’” or “Somewhere over there,” with the wave off of a hand. NOT helpful in any way shape or form. The trains were EXTREMELY difficult to navigate. We got pointed in the wrong direction almost every time we asked for direction. We would ask one person, head off in that direction, then stop and ask another person after a while just to make sure we were on the right track. The next person we asked would give us completely different directions. It was extremely frustrating.

At one point, we asked a lady at the INFORMATION DESK where the station was for Stonehenge and she said, “I think it is in Salisbury, that’s what I heard, but don’t quote me on that.” WTH? Don’t quote you on that? You work at an INFORMATION DESK in the busiest train depot in the city and that’s the best you can do? It WASN’T in Salisbury, by the way. GRRR.

I have never seen a more vacant, uninvolved, depressed looking city of people in my life. At one point, on the way to our new hotel, in the train station, I saw a little old woman fall down. She didn’t just fall, she totally wiped out. (Nancy, stop laughing. You would have laughed so hard at this one that YOU would have fallen down! She biffed it HARD!) NOT ONE PERSON stopped to help her up or ask her if she was ok. I was a good 50 feet away and by the time I got there, she was up. Rude ass people.

At the train station on our way back to our hotel, we couldn’t get thru our final gate. It wouldn’t take our ticket, so the train Nazi came over to “help” us and literally pointed to the ticket window, without saying anything. When I handed him my ticket he said, “One pound, forty pence each.” Ok that’s 2,80. I got out 2 of the coins that said 2 pounds on them (In my mind that was 4 pounds and should have covered it, apparently my mind was wrong). I asked him, “Is this right?” He said, “No,” and just looked at me with the vacant stare. I showed him my hand with the change in it to have him help me and he just looked at me with the dumb vacant stare. For hell’s sake! I don’t live here. I don’t get your money. Help a person out. GRRRR

We are both HUGE people watchers. We are always pointing out people to each other. Really good-looking people, really bad looking people, the way people are dressed, good or bad. Yes, you do it too.  At one point Tim asked me if I had seen ANY pretty people. I replied, “Yes. Some pretty ugly people.” At one point we saw a woman who had on blue high heels with a HUGE bright orange purse. Tim asked me, “Does that work together?” I said, “Well, it depends on what color her top is.”   When I could see the front of her here is what I saw; Long dangly turquoise colored earrings, a fuchsia colored top, a black skirt, a cream overcoat, dark nylons and bight blue high heels, carrying a bright orange, huge purse. You tell me, does that work? LOL

So, those are some of the reasons we hated England and won’t ever go back. Tim hated it so bad, he says he is getting rid of all his James Bond stuff (some of you know what a James Bond freak he is), he’s decided he hates Def Leppard, Rolling Stones, Beatles, a bunch of other music he really likes all because they hail from England. Might be a little overkill, but that’s how strongly he felt. L

So, as irritated as I might have been by some of this, Tim was 100 times more pissed. Yeah, that’s the word. I was mildly irritated and he was just plain old pissed off. His feelings may have rubbed off on me more than I would have liked. Once we got the hotel and sickening amount of money that was going to cost, all taken care of, I felt much better. However, our money did not stop disintegrating into thin air until we were OUT of England.

This was Tim’s breakdown of his viewpoint of England;

It was like going to watch a movie you have been waiting to see forever. One that everyone says is amazing, like The Godfather, Avatar and Titantic all rolled into one. But the price of admission is double, the popcorn is $50, the movie reel squeaks and floor is sticky. The movie ends up being ok but not what you had hoped for and the rest of the movie is a terrible movie experience.

Stay tuned for the update on Stonehenge.