What Up, Vienna? when a girl and a guy from los angeles move their asses halfway across the world

i need a raincheck, england (part one)

One week before I was to leave for London to meet Alex, on my way out the door of my apartment building to meet my trainer at the gym CRASHBANGBOOM my back went out. As I was crumpled on the ground in the lobby, I thought, "Wow, it is indeed like your back has done gone out. What an apt phrase that is!" I somehow managed to gather myself up enough to hobble up the stairs back to my apartment. After a grueling 24 hours, I got my hands on (read: prescribed by my doctor) some pain pills and muscle relaxers which brought me back to the land of the living. Now, I just had one week to recuperate before flying to London. That's possible, right? Right? Come to find out, no, it really is not.

Armed with my drugs (read: PRESCRIBED drugs) and a request for a wheelchair, I headed to LAX Saturday evening. Now, reserving a wheelchair was something I had never done before. And it was really surprisingly easy to do (just call your airline a few days before your flight), completely free (excluding a tip which is up to your discretion) and totally worthwhile. After checking in, I was directed to wait in a little cordoned off disabled person's corral where at about five minutes before my flight was about to board, I was picked up by my "driver." I don't want to say it was worth throwing out my back to have the opportunity to have an excuse to be wheelchaired at lightning speed through the airport in front of every line through secret doors directly to my seat on the plane, but it was definitely the silver lining of the week.

The flight was a Vicodin, Soma and a glass of white wine induced blur. And when we finally did get to London, my brain didn't even necessarily put together that my wheelchair reservation included a wheelchairing through Heathrow. It was a nice and welcome surprise. I was picked up by an Ali G sounding youngster who went above and beyond his duties. He whizzed me through the miles-long airport, through customs, got my luggage, brought me to an ATM, helped me purchase the right train ticket to get into London and dropped me off on the bench to wait for it. And he refused to take a tip which he greatly deserved. So Booyakasha and Respek to you, young man. Thank you.

I made my way to our hotel and crashed in the room. I was still in a pretty deep drug-fueled, jet-lagged travel coma when Alex arrived a few hours later. That night was uneventful. Some dinner was involved. More sleeping ensued. Let me just point out here that this was my first ever trip to London, England or anywhere in the United Kingdom for that matter. We had three days in London and I was still naively hopeful that I could get some touristy sightseeing checked off my list in the morning after a good night's sleep.

Our hotel was really in a great location right on Trafalgar Square. Jetlag woke me up pretty early. When Alex roused, we made our way outside to go track down a nice full English breakfast. We surprisingly had a very difficult time finding a decent place to eat in our area. It was a bit before 8am and it seemed a lot of places weren't open yet. From this situation, one could surmise that London isn't as crazy about breakfast as we are in the States apparently. Finally, we had to settle on this chain that was right next to our hotel. I don't know if it was just an off day for this place, but they appeared to be opening their doors at the same time as they were receiving deliveries for the day and didn't seem to have any sort of back loading dock type entrance. So as we entered the restaurant, we were followed by carts of groceries. Unfortunately, it seemed that we beat the arrival of the potato truck so we were unable to have hash browns. We should have taken that as a warning sign for the quality that was to come. The breakfast was cold and blah. The coffee tasted like burnt dirt. However, I am smart enough not to judge the whole of England on this shitty franchise's version of their breakfast. Better breakfasts were to come.

After that bold jaunt through our temporary neighborhood, I spent the rest of the day convalescing in bed. However, that night we had reservations at Gordon Ramsey's Boxwood Cafe and I refused to miss it. It ended up being well worth it. We had their Monday Supper which was three courses with an amuse-bouche to start. I can't remember everything I had but I do remember I chose a Shepherd's Pie as the entree. The food was all fantastic. And my body managed to even keep it together until the middle of the second and third course. I popped some pills and carried on. I'm a star!

The sum of my sightseeing these three days were as follows: Seeing Buckingham palace on the way to the Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Well, let me say first Alex pointed the palace out to me and then a few blocks later, I see a fancy building and I ask the cab driver what it is and he answers, "Why, that's Buckingham Palace." This makes me wonder how much of what Alex says is really the truth. We also went to the National Musuem in Trafalgar Square. And we ate a great English breakfast in a crypt below a cathedral. That was pretty awesome. So that was it. The rest of my time I spent on the bed watching BBC which really ain't nothing to shake a stick at. BBC is great hotel TV watching.

Stay tuned for Part Two of our adventures...