“Nothing holds you back more than your own insecurities”

I can totally identify with that. Folks are surprised when I tell them I’m terrified the day or two before every trip. Just because I’ve done it many times, doesn’t mean it’s not scary. Leaving your comfort zone is ALWAYS scary!  Every time you face them, it gets a little easier only because you know that most of your fears never come to fruition.

After a harrowing drive to the airport our flight was completely uneventful. We arrived at Heathrow at 1:30 am our time, 6:30 am in London and headed out to buy a tube pass for the day.  After missing the Westminster stop we wanted we figured we’d just keep going and got off at the Tower stop where we wandered about seeing the London Tower and the Tower bridge. That was a nice extra.

Next we headed to Westminster where we connected with a guide (Steven) from London Walks. The next couple of hours were spent getting a great history lesson and viewing all the architecture of down town London.

When in London one MUST eat fish and chips so we found a restaurant called Garfunkels and enjoyed a huge meal. Our kind waitress gave us directions to the nearest tube stop and we were off again.

We got to Little Venice just in time to meet another guide from London Walks. He took us through little side streets and led us around the canal system that was widely used for transporting goods right up until the 1960’s.  Now it’s occupied mostly by pleasure boats. We walked along the horse path and listened to lots of great stories and more history and ended up in Camden.  By then it was dark and time to head back to the airport so we headed for the nearest tube station. We knew we needed the Piccadilly line to get back so got off at the nearest stop that connected with that line. That’s when we found out the line was closed.

The station was packed and the announcer said to ask staff for help. Right. That was impossible to find in the crowd. Finally we found someone who gave us such complicated directions we both just stared at him in awe. He tried again. We still didn’t get it so we looked for someone else and found a policemen who suggested we walk to the next stop as it wouldn’t be so busy, then get off at Paddington and take the airport special. We’d have to pay extra for that as it wasn’t included in our ticket but by then, we didn’t care. We had a plane to catch!

Once there we lined up to buy a ticket. 22 lbs. Wow. Not cheap! The man said “why don’t you just take the airport express that comes with your ticket? It leaves in 6 minutes.” BONUS!  That went to Terminal 3 so we transferred again and were finally in terminal 5. It turned out we had plenty of time as security was remarkably UNbusy.  Nice!  We sure got our 12.50 lbs worth out of that tube pass 🙂