21 May: What's the Opposite of Jet Lag?

The lack of sleep from our night on the plane had the boys asleep by 6:oo PM last night and Taylor and I in bed by 8:00, so we were up and ready to go at 6:30 this morning. None of us really thought about how early it was for a weekend, so we headed off to Trafalgar Square  without seeing many other people out and about. It was only when we returned to the square later in the day that we realized how early we had been there, based on the number of people in our pictures versus the number in the square at 10:00 AM. All of our claims about not wanting to be touristy flew out of the window this morning, and fueled by British pastries and some sort of reverse jet lag we saw (and posed for photos in front of) Trafalgar Square, the Nelson Column, Big Ben, Parliament, the Themes, the London Eye and the National Gallery before 2:00 PM. My camera was also dropped and broken during this adventure, so I’m currently hunting for a shop in London to repair it, and taking pictures with my iPod in the meantime. 

Our early morning meant that we were all asleep again by 6:30 PM, but this time we woke up around 10 and headed out to experience some London nightlife. This didn’t go so well. We walked around for over an hour in search of Soho, and were left with nothing but very full bladders, which is when we learned the hard way that public bathrooms (sorry, loos) are hard to come by in London at night. We eventually found a coin operated toilet in an alley, but only had one 50p coin among us. At this point we were faced with the harrowing choice of all going in the single stall at once or squatting in the alley, and for the sake of my father’s reputation I will not reveal which we chose.

Although the bathroom adventure was definitely the highlight of the night, we eventually made our way to the oh-so-trendy club Metra, where the tall, blonde Taylor was immediately mobbed by men, one of whom kept saying he wanted to touch her elbows. 

Two buses and a very cold walk later we are back in the hotel and ready for sleep, and I will be mad if we’re up at 6:00 AM again tomorrow.