Steve's Excellent Swedish Adventure
Travel Day
International travel can sure make for a long day. Eight hour flight, eight hour layover, eight hour time change. Pretty soon I don't even know what day we're in.
One thing sure helps for jet lag though...drugs! Take a sleeping pill, sleep on the plane for five hours. Viola! Ready for anything.
I've heard the weather in London always stinks, but the worst weather was in Denver when we left. One nice thing about a long flight, you get a big plane. Our British Airways 777 was great. Individual LCD displays in the seatback in front of us to watch movies, plane location, BBC telecasts. Fold-down head rests on each side so you don't keep waking yourself up when you start to doze. Plenty of food trips up the aisles with the "trolley". Those who didn't sleep also had a great time.
With an eight hour layover in London, we decided to take a quickie sight-seeing trip. After a 30-minute train ride and a 10-minute subway ride, also known as The Underground or the Tube, we arrived just outside the Tower of London. This fortress was begun in the 11th Century by William the Conquerer. We didn't have the time to stand in line or the $50 to see the inside, so a walking tour around the outside would have to suffice.
Right next to the tower is the Tower Bridge. Built in 1894, this bridge crosses the Thames River.
If we'd arrived a day earlier, we could have gone to Wembley Stadium for the final stop, perhaps forever, of The Rolling Stones world-wide tour.
We hoped to find a quaint pub to get a beer and bite to eat, but since it was early Sunday morning we had to settle for the only thing we could find, a small French cafe across the street from St. Peters Cathedral. The Cathedral didn't want you to miss Sunday mass by ringing their bells for 20 minutes straight at 11:00. Lance and Nathan also found time to try out one of the British telepone booths.
So much for the London tour. Back on the subway, back on the train, back on a plane, and on to Gothenburg, Sweden. With the sun low in the clear sky, the port of Gothenburg was a beautiful sight when it came into view. After a long day, we finally arrived in one piece, a happy but tired group. Whisked to Tommy's parents house, we were greeted with a landgang (a long sandwich), which we snarfed down, and after a couple shots of whiskey, it was good night for a well deserved rest.
