We woke up early to check-out of our hotel on time, and
decided to check our bags at the hotel this time instead of the super expensive
train station bag check. I had read about the Camden Market on another travel
blog that I read, and we decided to check it out on our last morning in London.
We took the underground over to Camden and wandered around until we found the
market. Camden is a cool, eclectic part of London, and the market was full of weird
shops all selling the same t-shirts and souvenirs. After walking through the
market for a little while, we found a huge area full of food booths – Peruvian food,
Middle Eastern food, mac & cheese, BBQ booths, Mexican food – everything you
could think of. Jeff bought a polish dog and pierogi plate, while I opted for a
chicken marsala wrap. Everything was delicious, and it was most definitely the
best food that we had in London.
After lunch, we took the underground back over to our hotel
to get our bags. Then, we hopped back on the underground to Liverpool Street in
order to get on the Stansted Express out to our airport. Let me tell you a
little something about European airports (or at least the ones that we used) –
they work a little differently from American airports. Let’s say you are
checking in for a flight in the Atlanta airport; you might be able to find out
your gate information hours or even days ahead of time. Not in Europe. They
wait until 45 minutes to an hour before your flight to announce gate
information. So everyone ends up waiting in a general holding area around all
of the shops and restaurants until your gate is announce right before your plane
starts boarding. Also, some airports and airlines do not use boarding zones. So
when the plane starts boarding, all 200 people on the plane get in one huge
giant line waiting to board the plane. Not sure why…
Also in the London airport, I took my Apple Watch off to go
through the security metal detector. I was in a hurry to grab all of my stuff
out of the bins and get out of everyone’s way. [No one wants to be that person
taking their sweet time in the security line holding everybody else up.] Well,
in my hurry, I left my Apple Watch in the bin. This nice little security lady
was holding my watch in the air yelling, “Whose Apple Watch is this, please?!
Whose Apple Watch is this, please!?” I ran back over to her, grabbed my watch,
and thanked her about a million times. I would have been so upset if I would
have left my watch in London.
After the longest security check every, we finally got on
our flight to Rome – along with three or four crying toddlers. There was a really funny,
animated flight attendant on the flight who apologized on behalf of the child
saying, “Sorry, We are auditioning a new baby for Game of Thrones. You know,
one that needs to cry all the time.” Glad he had a sense of humor about the
situation.
We landed and took a taxi into Rome to our VRBO apartment.
Livio met us there and was so nice. He showed us around the flat and the
neighborhood. He gave us a map and suggestions on lesser known attractions to
visit. We ate a late dinner at the pizza place at the end of our street. My
pizza had nasty mushrooms on it that made the whole pizza soggy. Gross. Of
course, Jeff ordered pasta with mussels and clams – this will become the theme
of all food Jeff orders for the rest of our time in Italy. We found some gelato, headed back to the apartment, did some much needed laundry,
and went to bed.
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| This is me in the piazza at the end of our street with some gelato. Also, my husband is a terrible photographer. |
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