Londontown

It was the smallest hotel room I’d ever seen. Just big enough to stand the luggage up, but not big enough to actually open it. And the bathroom was about the size of the one in the airplane. 

It was the second-cheapest hotel in town (the cheapest had cockroaches.) And it came with free breakfast —  four pieces of white toast and a bowl of unsugared cornflakes. 

It wasn’t much, but it was London. 

We’d saved up our money from our part-time jobs at the credit union and the library and combined it with the little bit of cash left over from the wedding cards we’d gotten two years earlier. 

And now we were here, twenty-four years old and halfway around the world. We’d survived the redeye flight and managed to pull our luggage through the morning rush at the train station. We’d then lugged it up a million stairs, out into the world, and down the street to the hotel. We’d made it. 

We tried to fight through the jet lag by visiting the National Portrait Gallery but fell asleep every time we sat down. 

Over the course of a week, we rode the Big Red Bus with all the other tourists. 

We walked across the Millennium bridge to the Tate Modern museum.

We got lost on the Tube but figured it out eventually.  

We took the train to Stonehenge, paid for the audio tour and listened to the British narrator ask, “Where did these mysterious rocks come from? Were they put here by aliens?” She then answered her own question flatly, “No, they were not.” 

We tried eating in a pub, but got too nervous that we wouldn’t know how to do it, so we went to McDonald’s instead. 

We flew to Amsterdam and paid extra to go on the “Lovers” canal tour. It was exactly the same as the cheaper tour that was not called the “Lovers” tour. We stayed in a bed and breakfast with a shared shower surrounded by wet, purple carpet. 

But the room was bigger. There was enough space to store — and open! — our luggage.  And it had a queen-sized bed (that was really just two twin pushed together). We watched Punk’d on Dutch MTV and had sex. 

We flew back to London, confident we were now international travel experts. We stayed in the same hotel and ate the same toast and cornflakes. 

We rode the train to the Salsbury cathedral. We took the Tube to a play in the West End. We took a selfie in front of the Tower Bridge with our brand new digital camera.

We celebrated the successful trip at the Indian restaurant next to the hotel. When the waiter asked if we wanted naan, we said yes. When he asked if we also wanted vegetables, we said of course. When he brought us the check, it was nearly $100 — the most expensive meal we’d ever bought ourselves. We didn’t know the naan, the veggies, or the soda refills had cost extra. 

We still had a lot to learn. But we’d figure it out together.