We made it to London after a rather trying day. We had arranged to check out of our flat at 9:00 a.m. but things were happening rather slowly in the morning, then the woman who was to meet us called on the flat telephone to say she wasn’t feeling well and asked us just to close up ourselves. She called a taxi for us for 9:30. So we got to the train station too late to take the 9:37 train to Pisa. Instead we caught the 10:37 which stopped everywhere and it was noon before we were in Pisa, over an hour and a half later than planned. Instead of spending time at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, we just had a taxi stop for 5 minutes to take a look and some photos.
We then got to the airport to find there was some technical problem with the baggage check in system and it took over an hour to check our bags. We had intended to use the time to have some lunch. Instead, I ate my apple which I brought with me, drank a bottle of water and ate some of Allie’s crisps she bought in the check in area while we were standing around waiting. That was better than Scott, who basically had nothing because he was so annoyed. Too bad, we could have seen more of Pisa.
The plane was delayed because of the problems and we landed in London just after 4 p.m. which was about 1/2 hour late. We got to the passport control and Allie discovered she had no passport. She had given it to me so I could fill in a landing card with her passport number but couldn’t remember what she had done with it. I pulled apart my purse and carry on and she searched her carry on with no results. We had to get the security to check with the airline, Easy Jet, who usually do a 1 hour turn around, so wouldn’t let us go back and look ourselves. In the end, to make a long story short, we were another hour getting Allie a temporary pass into the U.K. when someone showed up with her passport found on the plane. We were massively relieved and our stress levels could decline.
After a long car ride, almost an hour and a half, we got to our flat in Covent Garden, dropped our bags, then had Robin show us how to get to his flat on the Tube. One of the fortunate things that happened was being able to buy London transport passes, Oyster cards, on the plane. So we were able to ride the Tube without problems but basically had no time to do anything in order to get to our dinner reservation. We dropped Robin’s things at his flat then walked to dinner at a French bistro place, Le Bouchon Breton.
I bought a good Bordeaux bottle of wine, Chateau Talbot, since we felt like we’d had a small victory by arriving back in London all together, Allie with her passport and eating more than 12 hours since we’d had breakfast in Florence. We’re now back at the flat, Robin at his and trying this rather slow internet connection.
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