Gary Storey - My little corner of the internet

I thought I would do a quick write up of our recent trip to Europe. On the trip, Laura and I visited with our friends Greg and Tami in London. We were there for a few days then headed out to Amsterdam and Munich for a couple days each. It was a great trip!

I have never been to Europe before so I was pretty excited to go. So if you are interested in the details, read on....

Wednesday, July 16th

Let me start this off with a single statement of fact: Airports and airplanes suck. It took us over an hour and a half to check in at Hartsfield-Jackson. Once we were through that ordeal it was followed by TSA Security checkpoint. The checkpoints in Atlanta suck; They are the worst of any airport I have been by far. Ugh.

Anyway, once we through the airport and on the flight, I was ready to settle in for the long seven and a half hour flight. But a relaxing flight was not in the cards. Once dinner was served, Laura's tray table decided it was time to fall apart and down went her entire bottle of red wine (you guessed it) all over me.

This leads me to travel tip number one: Always carry a backup set of clothes in your carry on. I didn't and I regretted it the entire flight. Wet red-wine-stained clothes are not comfortable for seven hours. Trust me.

Anyway, the flight attendants were very helpful and moved us to another pair of seats. You can guess where right? The very back of the plane. This is where we sat for the rest of the flight. We did, however, make the most out of having a little privacy with nobody behind us. ;-) Laura was able to doze off for a while but I was wide awake the entire trip.

Thursday, July 17th

We arrived at Gatwick airport around 7:15 AM Thursday morning. Since we were last off we were also at the end of the line to get through Immigration and last to get our luggage. Another hour wasted. By this time we were both worn out and wanted nothing more than to pass out for a few hours.

We met Greg and Tami once we got through customs and hopped on the train to go to their flat. It took about an hour to get there but was a pretty easy trip overall. No beverages spilt. Once we were there, Laura and I crashed out hard. We slept most of the day and ended up just hanging out that night which was good. It gave us almost a full day to just get accustomed to the time change (six hours difference) and the jet lag.

Friday, July 18th

By the time I got up the next morning (which was probably earlier than those of you who know me might think), Laura and Tami had already headed out to do some shopping. They had already made plans for Greg and I to meet them for lunch at one of Gordon Ramsey's restaurant in the Warington Hotel.

When Greg and I arrived, Tami and Laura we waiting for us so we sat down and had a nice lunch together. After lunch and some walking around, we went to a bar called 55 for happy hour (which was two for one drinks!). They had some fantastic mixed drinks there, my favorite being "Matt The Ratt". We followed drinks up with dinner at Wagamama, a chinese food-chain in London. Pretty good chinese if I say so myself (and I do). We followed dinner up with more drinks, of course, at The Worlds End bar, the largest bar in London. After these drinks, it was back to the train and back to the flat for the evening.

Saturday, July 19th

The next morning, we were up and at it fairly early. The plan was to meet up with Laurent, a friend of Laura's from work, at the train station and then spend the day site seeing. So we hopped on the tube, went down to the Waterloo Station and did some quick sight seeing before Laurent's train arrived.

Our first stop was the Cans Art Festival where they had taken a section of Leake Street and closed it off to allow graphitti artists, including the infamous Banksy, to come in and paint the walls. It was very interesting. I hope to post pictures at some time in the near future. This only took a few minutes to walk through and then we headed to the train station to meet Laurent.

It took us a little while to find each other but eventually we did and after some quick introductions we headed over to the London Eye. The Eye is pretty impressive in person. I had only seen it on the New Years Eve celebrations before. The Eye is huge. the line was way too long for us to wait through so we didn't get to go on the ride. Oh well, maybe next time.

We crossed over the Thames and went by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament building next. They are all pretty close together so it's easy to go back and forth. The worst part was the crowds. It was Saturday morning in London during the summer so you can imagine how many people were out.

We had tickets to go to Vinopolis in a few hours so we decided to go ahead and walk down the Thames until we got the the Borough Market which was about (a rough guestimate on my part) three or four miles away. We passed Cleopatra's Needle (an Egyptian obelisk, another London landmark) and crossed over the Millennium Bridge which is a purely pedestrian only bridge across the river.

When we got to the Borough Market, we decided it was time for food and the first drinks of the day so we went over to a place called Slug and Lettuce, which despite the name, was pretty good. After hanging out eating and drinking we headed over to our destination, Vinopolis.

Vinopolis is a tasting house. When you get there, you get a bunch of little tasting cards. Our tickets got us four wine, two beer, two Absinthe, three rums, three whiskeys and one gin tastings. After our previous drinking and finishing this, we were all feeling pretty good.

We hopped into a taxi and headed over to Covent Gardens where we went to the Porterhouse Pub for ahh... well, more drinks. :-) From there went to Wahaca, a mexican restaurant , for a quick bite of food (we needed something in our stomachs besides alcohol I guess) which was good but a bit spicy for me.

Next, it was a quick walk over to Leicester Square (where they have the big movie premieres in London), Chinatown and Trafalgar Square. All of these were really interesting places but by this point I was a bit worn out and it was approaching 10pm. Since we had an early morning flight we decided to call it a night. We said goodbye to Laurent, went to the Charing Cross tube station and headed back to the flat for the evening.

It was a long eventful day that I will remember for a long time.
Good food + good drinks + good friends = good times

Early the next morning it was off to Amsterdam but I will save that for another post.

As an aside, I will say that although the London train/subway system isn't the greatest, it is a lot better than the public transportation we have in Atlanta. You can get literally anywhere in London from a train or bus; Not true with our system. Hell, you can't even get everywhere downtown with ours. We have a long way to go to catch up.