London for 17 Pounds Sterling

I don't think that any city is more expensive to visit that London. The British pound blows the dollar out of the water. On my recent layover, I managed to have an enjoyable time for less than 17 pounds.

This was actually an out of base trip via Chicago, much like the Dublin trip last month. We arrived into London Heathrow at about 8am after flying all night. We were surprisingly light, a rarity for the summer travel season, but scary to think about how bad it might get in the fall when travel normally declines. We hit lots of morning commuter traffic on our ride into the city, and we had to wait about 40 minutes for our rooms when we arrived, but they have a nice crew lounge computers and hot chocolate/coffee.

My room was on the 24th floor (the above picture is my view) and I rode on the elevator with a particularly nasty American tourist from the Midwest who was complaining about how there is no weather channel here, how everything is so old, small, etc. I kind of gave her a curt response back reminding her that she was in a foreign country and that perhaps she should restrict her vacations to U.S. locations.

I slept a little longer than I wanted too, waking up about 3pm. I went down to Waitrose, a local supermarket chain around the corner from the hotel and got a few food items. They have hot items for "take away". It was cheaper to buy the items at a supermarket than go to a restaurant for lunch. I took my food items and walked about a mile down to Kensington Park. I had taken a towel from the hotel and sat under a tree and had a little picnic, read my book, listened to my iPod, and watched all the people. It was a bit overcast, starting out kind of dreary, but in the end, the cloudy skies kept the temperature cool and comfortable.

After a few hours of relaxing at the park, I walked thru the Kensington Gardens, which were in full bloom. When my sister and I went in February, there were not nearly as many plants in bloom as now.

I got back to the hotel by about 7pm in time to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics which were aired on the BBC. I think I was out by about 10pm, but woke up at 4:30am (which was like 10:30pm body time) and was wide awake. I watched a little TV and read some of my book (When a Crocodile Eats the Sun.... very sad but still excellent memoir of Africa) and then went down to the crew room to check my email. I had a nice work out in the fitness center (I am on a renewed health kick since my uniform pants are getting a little tight) and then went over to Waitrose again to purchase a few snacks for the flight home.

All in all, I spent 17 pounds on my layover, which ain't that bad.

The flight back to Chicago was packed. We all got rest breaks of about 1 hour 15 minutes in the bunks, but I never really managed to sleep. The deadhead home from Chicago found me in 29E, a middle seat, and when we landed, we had to wait an hour because there were no available gates!