Part Two: London Arrival

Here's the next installment on my travel diary:

Thursday, May 29 Somewhere over the Atlantic, it becomes Thursday. And when we touch down at Heathrow, we are informed that it is a little after noon. Once I deplane, claim my bags, and breeze through customs, I begin following signs that I hope will take me to the shuttle for my hotel. How hard could it be? After all, everything's in English. It’s about this point that I’m learning two very important lessons simultaneously. First, Heathrow is a large, disorganized, spread-out kind of an airport with a lot of walking involved. And second, luggage without wheels becomes heavy alarmingly fast. (Note for future reference: select different bags next trip or travel with strong husband to carry them.)

With a little help from a gal at the information desk, I arrive at the shuttle (called the Hoppa Bus – very clever) pick-up point. A bus pulls up only minutes later. Great! I’m dead tired and anxious to get to my hotel asap. Just to be sure, I ask if the bus will take me to the Holiday Inn Ariel. The driver, obviously an immigrant from a foreign land (perhaps Pakistan or India?), shakes his head and points back toward the terminal saying something that sounds for all the world like “hedge seeks.” He repeats it several times with no further clarification resulting. All I get from this exchange is that his bus is definitely not the right bus for me. I wander away wondering where I went wrong and what the "hedge" he was talking about. After asking around some more, I finally piece together that what the driver had been trying to tell me, utterly unsuccessfully, was that I needed to get on the H6. Right stop; wrong bus.

When I made my last-minute travel plans, I didn’t have many options available to me. I felt lucky, then, to be able to book a route through London, which had at least two advantages. Not only did it allow me to get the most out of my trip by making an excursion while here, but, being an English-speaking country, I expected less difficulty finding my way around. I seriously overestimated the benefit of the latter. The bus driver’s is only the first of assorted challenging accents I encounter. It seems that nearly everyone who works in London's transportation and hospitality industries is from somewhere else.

Despite the confusion, I arrive safely at my hotel, only a little the worse for the wear. A shower, a nap between crisp clean sheets, and a meal of fish and chips revives me. I spend what’s left of the evening reading and studying up for tomorrow’s sightseeing tour.