Jet Lag

The first time we visited London was before kids. We flew into London on a red-eye, each toting a giant travel backpack the weight of an average 6th grader. It was the type of bag you might use to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail and looked like the chrysalis of a new human being hunched over your spine. It was too large not to check on a commercial flight, but had been universally recommended by all the travel sites for getting on and off trains during a trip that would take us through four countries in two weeks. Of course, both straps on a bag that size have to be in working order, unless you plan to bear-hug it like a bag of mulch or drag it by a single strap like a dead dog through the street. Unfortunately, those were essentially the options recommended by customer service when Ray’s bag arrived at the London airport, brutalized and missing a strap. After a heated debate with airline staff over who should pay for the bag’s replacement, we eventually left with a credit to use at a predetermined baggage retailer. In the meantime, we had to navigate a foreign city with no car and nearly 200 pounds of cumbersome luggage at what felt like 3 o’clock in the morning to us. It was an exceptionally long day, trudging awkwardly through the city with our broken luggage until check-in time. Nevertheless, we pushed ourselves to stay awake until the equivalent of a toddler’s bedtime at roughly 7 pm. Our reward was a memorably blissful sleep, the kind that only comes after staying up for more than 24 hours. The next morning, we woke up refreshed and ready to see the city.

We only spent a few nights in London during that trip, but we’ve been plotting our return ever since. Two kids and one global pandemic later, our bar napkin schematics came to life in the form of a month-long stay as a family. Our kids had never been on a plane, so even the act of physically entering an airport was an unprecedented thrill. Kind of like the time we stopped at a basic interstate hotel en route to Disney World when they were 2 and 4. The hotel experience was so new and uncharted, they almost forgot there was something coming after it. Because what could be more fun than sharing a hotel bed with your brother in a room with its own ice bucket? Naturally, the boys are much older now and not as easily impressed. Nevertheless, sitting around at an airport restaurant with snacks and drinks while waiting for the first flight of their lives was just about as exciting at 11 and 13 years old as a hotel elevator was to preschoolers. Between the countless phone charging stations and the fact they could window shop for cologne, gummy bears, neck pillows and Stephen King novels within a 20 foot radius of our gate, they were ready to sign a lease and move in to the Hudson News for good. Our kids were, at last, the perfect age to fly. I humbly salute those titans of air travel who bravely take to the sky with their infants and toddlers. I envy the level of patience other parents must have to endure a flight with one child on their lap and the other straight-jacketed into a bespoke airplane car seat specially designed for the confines of a Boeing 737. I know it’s something people do, but it was always a hard pass for me. Given the choice between flying with a young child who needs a snack, a nap, or a change of scenery every 15 minutes and a sullen adolescent who’s tailor-made for 8 consecutive hours of screen-time—I stand by the latter option every time.

While the headache of flying with young children had been a significant deterrent to air travel, it wasn’t  the only one. For instance, there was COVID. A big chunk of our kids’ mid-elementary years was devoted to actively avoiding the modern plague. But even before that, there was some mild-to-severe flight anxiety. Mine was always leading up to a trip. It was characterized by quietly spinning out in the weeks and days beforehand over a range of remote and tragic likelihoods (ex: my fiery death, my motherless children) that would vanish from my memory as soon as I checked my bags. Ray’s was more significant. He would fly for work, occasionally and begrudgingly. And he’d fly for special occasions like our honeymoon or our first Europe trip. But flying was not his preference. Frankly, the pre- and mid-flight anxiety just was not worth it to him for any distance he could otherwise just drive. 

Having survived a flight for work just a month before our family London trip, Ray was feeling a little more confident and we were both committed to putting on a brave face. Regardless of our own fears, it had been our general policy to avoid projecting terror in the presence of the kids, implementing a “fake it til you make it” approach. Since we’d never actually flown with our kids, this method had been fairly easy to follow until now. When our youngest briefly touched on the quandary of “what if our plane crashes?” over dinner conversation, we casually brushed it off with made-up statistics. When he never mentioned it again, we took that as a win and doubled down on ignoring our own mental images of nose-diving into the North Atlantic. 

The day of our flight, things were going well. As always, my fear was instantly dispelled by the first pre-flight cocktail on the concourse, and Ray was successfully holding his in like a fart in an elevator. Meanwhile, back at our gate, Ray happened to spot a particular gentleman squirreling around and acting cartoonishly suspicious. I was already in vacation-mode and completely oblivious, but according to Ray, this guy was all but drumming his fingers together in a creepy steeple like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons. I sure hope he’s not getting on our plane, Ray thought…right up until the man did board our plane and took a seat directly in front of him.

On the plane, this man—who I’ll refer to as Antsy Pants—continued calling attention to himself. He repeatedly rang for the flight attendant, asking for his dinner while the plane was still at a 45-degree angle with the earth and in full ascent-mode. By the time we reached cruising altitude, the flight crew was so done with Antsy, they were speaking to him through clenched-teeth smiles, like a mom asking her 5-year-old to stop fucking around in church. Even when they turned off the lights—the universal sign for red-eye flight “bedtime”--Antsy was constantly getting out of his seat, loitering in passageways, and moving suspiciously toward the front of the plane like a character in an after-school special called “See Something, Say Something”. Ray and I had split ourselves up for the flight; I was with the oldest son in the center row of seats and he was with our youngest son in the right hand row, directly behind Antsy. While I intermittently noticed Antsy’s antics, I was more focused on trying to sleep with my forehead pressed against the entertainment screen on the seat in front of me. Ray, of course, noticed it all. Had I handed him a set of rosary beads, he probably would have invented prayers to say over it. Something simple and to the point like Please, God; make this motherfucker sit down. While the rest of us were hunched over our tray tables, trying to reach REM sleep, Ray slept with one eye open, mentally choreographing his attack moves for wrestling a box cutter out of someone’s hand. Lucky for us, Antsy Pants wasn’t actually a terrorist, just a colossal pain in the ass. When we landed at Heathrow, he barreled off the plane like his balls were on fire and that was the last we saw of him. 

Unlike our first experience in London, all six pieces of luggage arrived intact and fully functional. Except for one carry-on-sized roly bag that only had 3 wheels. We’d done that to ourselves, knowing full well it was already broken when we packed. It had to be propped just so against someone’s leg to keep from flipping to its back like a dying roach. It was assigned exclusively to a parent for our trek from the airport since it would require extra effort when hustling through a turnstile. I wanted to throw that bag in the Thames about 5 minutes after plucking it from the baggage carousel, but it was still a thousand times easier to maneuver than Ray’s strapless log of luggage from so many years ago.

Due to jet lag, it felt like 3 am and none of us had slept well. Nevertheless, we had a busy morning ahead. One of Ray’s superpowers is thorough and meticulous planning to maximize savings and efficiency. The one fly in that ointment is that some degree of hoop-jumping and rushing around may be required up front to ensure maximum enjoyment later. Zip Cards were an integral cog in the machine of our savings, our efficiency, and ultimately our happiness. As Ray had discovered through hours of research, Zip Cards provide discounted travel on the London Underground (aka, Tube) and free bus rides for kids aged 11 to 15. This is awesome for a family that intends to rely exclusively on mass transit while abroad. The application must be submitted with the child’s photo 28 days in advance, which adds a layer of difficulty. Then, the physical card has to be picked up in person at a TFL Visitor’s Center, which gives off a real post-office-DMV-this-is-gonna-take-awhile vibe. The sooner we could pick the cards up the better, because we’d be using the Tube right away—and there was no time like the present, because we couldn’t drop our bags off at the Airbnb until 10:00 am. 

Our first challenge upon arrival was taking turns babysitting our collection of baggage while everyone rotated in and out of the bathroom. Our second challenge was keeping the older son from riding his rolling suitcase like a horse through Baggage Claim. Constant angry gestures to my dead-roach suitcase ensued as the cautionary tale for what happens when you break a wheel. The next set of obstacles involved actually getting into the city and acquiring the pre-ordered Zip Card for the boys. This meant schlepping from Heathrow Airport to the TFL Visitor’s Center at Victoria Station with four people and eight bags for nearly an hour across two different trains. Heathrow Express to Paddington; Paddington to Victoria. I’d been rehearsing the itinerary to myself since we landed, not looking forward to the struggle. Years ago, I’d been forced to drag four-months-worth of baggage on and off the Paris Metro alone after a semester abroad. Let’s just say there may be a parallel universe where I’m still stuck in a turnstile at Gare St. Lazare with a line of angry Parisians building up behind me—because the residual trauma is real.

As it turns out, modern luggage is much sleeker and more manageable than the coffin-sized suitcase and bodybag-length duffel I saddled myself with back in 2000. Even my dead-roach carry-on was small enough to Hail Mary over the top of any obstacle if absolutely necessary. We made it successfully to Victoria Station with each of us carrying or rolling 2 pieces of luggage. The office we needed to visit was directly inside the station, a cavernous expanse of shops, food stalls, and oddly enough, a Krispy Kreme Donut stand. The office didn’t open until 9 am (which felt like 4 am to us) and we were way early. We tried to walk around a bit, but we were too wide and wonky with all of our bags. So instead, we got to be “that family” at the train station, pressing our noses up against the office window with slack-jawed expressions and blood-shot eyes filled with longing. 

The office opened at 9 on the dot and they shuffled us in and out with a level of charm you’d expect more from a Chick-Fil-A drive-thru attendant than 9-5 government worker. By roughly 9:06, the boys had their Zip Cards and could now travel more cheaply by Tube to our next destination: Gloucester Road Station. This stop was just a few blocks from our flat (that we couldn’t access until 10 am). We ended up at a goddamn Starbucks of all places to wait out our last half hour. Nowhere else within striking distance of the apartment seemed quite roomy enough for our American girth and our Oregon-Trail-like procession of luggage. So we went with a familiar place, where there was sure to be a slew of other assholes taking up space. 

Gloucester Road Station

We counted down the seconds to 10:00 from a cramped corner near the front window of that Starbucks, our bags piled under and around us like a hobo pillow fort. As soon as it was reasonably possible, we set out past Gloucester Road Station toward the flat. It was four blocks back from the station and could be accessed from Cromwell Road, a bustling, multi-lane thoroughfare, or by Courtfield Road, a sleepier side street through the more residential face of our Kensington neighborhood. Further into our stay, we’d opt for the louder, busier Cromwell route that allowed us to spread out along its broader sidewalks, even if it meant shouting conversations as we walked. For this first trip to the apartment, however, we picked the Courtfield Road route, walking single file along the narrow tree-lined sidewalk, past rows of churchy-looking buildings that had been converted to flats and a fenced garden area so dense with greenery we could never see in, but always, always, always smelled weed wafting out. Just before our right turn onto Collingham Road, we maneuvered through a miniature traffic circle, where the “circle” aspect was implied by the shape of the intersection, but not actually used to govern the traffic pattern. Black cabs and Land Rovers alike would just plow right through the middle, bouncing over the rounded cobblestone hump in the center like a runaway school bus. Turn signals weren’t popular either, so traversing the crosswalk was a guessing game of “Should we go?” until we finally did. 

Collingham Road

Our flat was the basement apartment of a building called Melbourne House right across from a church-like structure that was now home to a theological college. Melbourne House wasn’t, in fact, its own building as the name suggests, but a long row of buildings squished together in a long white row. Each building had its own front stoop and white-columned portico. looking almost identical to the building on either side. I won’t lie, it took me longer than I’d like to admit before I could tell our stoop from the others. There were helpful differences, here and there. Some had fun names (like Melbourne House) etched into the front door glass. Some had little gated enclosures at the street-level that looked like quaint little patios, but usually housed heaps of trash bags. Melbourne House had a gated enclosure and a set of stairs that led down to the window of our basement apartment. Unless you wanted to break through the glass, there was no way to enter our flat from these stairs. But the narrow stairwell allowed natural light to come in through the large bay window from the street above. The view from the window was 80% wall and 15% feet from passing pedestrians above. The remaining 5% was the door to a storage room full of empty Rubbermaid trash cans where residents were supposed to put their “rubbish”. Most of them preferred to put their trash on the fenced-in patio at street-level, contrary to multiple signs asking them not to in the foyer. This quiet disregard was apparently on-brand for the rest of the town, as we would frequently pass a pile of trash bags at the base of a light post, just below a sign saying “Please don’t put rubbish here”. The neighborhood was otherwise clean, beautiful, and full of picturesque Victorian architecture, but for whatever reason its residents had chosen to die on this hill, a kind of “Keep Calm and Fuck Off About My Rubbish” approach. 

Rubbish at the base of a tree

We’d made special arrangements with our Airbnb host to drop our bags off at 10:00, with the understanding that we wouldn’t actually be able to use the space until much later that day. Apparently, the host forgot to mention this to the family that was checking out that morning, so we encountered a very confused family from Liverpool when we arrived at the flat. “As you can see, it’s quite smoll”, the mother told us as the living area disappeared behind a wall of our luggage. It created quite the obstacle for her family to pack around, but it was now 5 am to us and no one was in the mood to think twice about it. We just dumped our crap and got the hell out, happy to be multiple bags lighter.

View from the top of the double-decker bus

From then on, the name of the game was “Stay Awake Til Dinner”. We boarded a double decker bus—which was now free for the kids, thanks to their Zip cards—and sat up top to get a good view. We’d been up for more than 24 hours at this point, so the world was starting to look a bit trippy. We rode alongside what looked like a horse-drawn chariot race in the street running parallel to us and cruised past iconic landmarks using exaggerated gestures and overly enthusiastic tones in an effort to get our kids’ bleary-eyed attention. Nevertheless, our youngest succumbed almost immediately to the soothing lull of the bus in motion. Look! Big Ben! I said excitedly as he slumped against my shoulder like a bag of mulch. The bus had no seat belts, so it became a full-time job to keep him from rolling into the floor. We got off at Trafalgar Square, propping him up by the armpits like the dead body from Weekend at Bernie’s. 

Chariot races?

It was Saturday, and a free festival of some kind was going on at the foot of the National Gallery building. Our older son was barely awake but slap-happy, and the younger son was finding his second wind. They spent the next half hour stumbling through free carnival games like narcolepts through a hedge maze. One of them crawled into a box and popped his head up out of a series of holes, while the other one tried to crush him with a foam mallet. Then one of them army-crawled through a series of obstacles while the other tried to peg him with a tennis ball from an elevated position. The scene was surreal at times, an Alice-In-Wonderland dream sequence of the kind you’d expect to culminate with a giant weed-smoking caterpillar inching across the square. But it kept us all awake that much longer.

From there, we tried to get back on the bus, but the route we were looking for never came. It was our first lesson in understanding that the bus is still a bus and it likes to take its time getting to you at the most inopportune moments. We defaulted to the Tube instead, and pushed each other forward to the Tower of London. We would visit the Tower in depth another day when we could all see straight again, but in the meantime, we posed for pictures in front of the Thames and walked across Tower Bridge before ending up at our first of many pubs in London. 

Tower of London

The boys and I, approaching Tower Bridge

Ray and the boys, crossing Tower Bridge

It was called the Anchor Tap and it was located just far enough off the beaten path of a touristy area that they acted surprised to see us. A small cluster of old British guys were gathered at the bar and turned to look at us as if a needle had just scratched across a record. Depending on what source you trusted, this pub was possibly 250 years old and looked it, with its dark wood, uneven floors, narrow passageways, and nary a screen in sight. According to home-made signs written in Arial font on basic-bitch printer paper, they discouraged the use of smart phones and considered themselves a “digital detox” zone. As a result, we have zero pictures from the pub (aside from a clandestine photo of Ray took of his lunch). The toilets were located at the top of a skinny circuitous staircase, adjacent to the upstairs bar that was closed for patrons at this hour, and the kitchen was…we’re not exactly sure. One of the old men at the bar—whether or not he worked there, it wasn’t clear—brought us drinks and menus. Food, he explained, would come from “next door”, where it seemed they were likely to be “out” of many things. He was bald, stocky, and looked more like a bouncer than a server. He was older than the trendy, fresh-faced drink-slingers we expected from a major city and his was voice unexpectedly high-pitched for such a hulking figure. He was a Millwall fan, which Ray explained in hushed tones to mean that he was not to be fucked with. 

During the course of our visit, I learned that you have to say “HOO-muss” like an asshole for your British server to understand your hummus order and that steak and ale pies are delicious. Two beers in, I started feeling a little delirious and definitely used the word “soccer” too many times while making conversation with our bouncer-like barman. He did not find it cute—and neither did my kids. When they weren’t dying of embarrassment, they were swaying in their seats with hooded eyes like a slow-motion video of what happens when someone punches you dead in the face. We finished up as fast as we could at that point, since falling asleep at the bar is generally not a good look for anyone, regardless of your age.

Shortly after leaving the pub, I got called a bitch by a passing cyclist for darting across the bike lane in a panic over when to cross. Too be fair, I was definitely in the way—but as I learned throughout my stay in London over the next month, the cyclists are almost always in the way and as a whole don’t give a fuck. Nevertheless, I made a big production about it for the rest of the trip any time we approached a bike lane. Sprinting across floor-is-lava-style, I’d say petty things like, “Careful, guys! Make room for the big, bad bicycles!” Butt-hurt and bikes aside, navigating the streets as a pedestrian in London was more complex than expected. One might think we were just a bunch of newbs, unaccustomed to traffic in a big city. But a week later, we’d visit Paris on foot and marvel at how few times we saw our lives flash before our eyes. For whatever reason, walking in London took an extra amount of vigilance that we just didn’t have that first day. Luckily, the Tube was there to pick up the slack and get us back across town to Gloucester Road Station in one piece. It was check-in time at long last and we were well beyond ready for it. 

Melbourne House

I don’t remember crossing the threshold of Melbourne House after check-in time finally arrived, nor do I recall noticing any micro-aggressively misplaced trash on the fenced-in landing. But it was shortly after our trip to Waitrose, the grocery store attached to Gloucester Road Station. Somehow, we must have sleep-walked through in a stupor, knocking toilet paper, wine, Fanta, and frozen pizza into our cart. Then, finally, after having bear-hugged our exhausted children like Ray’s broken backpack across town all day, we finally made it “home”. My youngest passed out sitting up on the living-room love seat within 5 minutes, with my oldest son not far behind. Ray and I had an unwelcome crash course in UK appliances, which included a 2-in-1 washer/dryer (that appeared to be slowly steam-roasting our still-wet linens from the last tenants) and a wordless set of pictograms on the oven dial that looked like the clues from an escape room. 

The bewildering oven dial

Somehow, we tripped the right combination on the oven and managed to heat up a pizza that our kids were too tired to eat. The youngest slept through dinner entirely and the oldest was practically chewing with his eyes closed. Our quest to stay awake til 7 pm London time was bordering on child abuse at this point, and we’d made it long enough. We ushered their sleeping forms like floppy upright sausages to their shared bedroom in our new home-away-from home, a 2-bedroom flat that could fit into our garage back in the US. Ray stayed up later than I found physically possible, rage-Googling instructional videos on our washer/dryer combo that made no sense and firing off late-night emails to our host, informing him that his appliances and his WiFi instructions were both shit. But I gave up gladly and passed right the hell out in our bedroom. It was more like a generous closet off the living area, but it had a bed in it—and I hadn’t been horizontal for more than a day.

Just as I’d hoped, that first jet-lagged sleep was every bit as glorious as I remembered. A satisfying reward for crossing over into something new. A hard reset for the body and soul. A palate cleanser for the feast of the senses that international travel can be. As I lay in my bedroom/closet, sunlight filtered in from the bay window at the front of the flat, flickering with shadows from people passing by on the sidewalk above. I could hear the gentle tapping of fingers on iPads and the muted sound of YouTube shorts emanating from the boys’ tiny bedroom, the soothing sounds of a typical Sunday back home. Because we were home. At least for now. We had a dryer that didn’t work, an oven we didn’t understand, a single bathroom, and fewer square feet per person than I’d had in my college apartment, but we had 30 more mornings ahead of us and a whole city at our feet—well, stomping around above us. Never mind that our WiFi password was for the wrong property and that our coffee pods were the wrong size for our Nescafe machine. The trip of a lifetime had begun.