Or the same day – it's hard to tell with jet lag.
It does not matter how many times Immigration tells you to look right then left when crossing the street, there's not a chance that your sleep-deprived brain is going to hold onto that information. To make matters worse, our hotel was situated in the middle what was essentially a busy traffic circle.
Having dodged an endless sea of cars in a city that is morally against crosswalks, my wife lead us to England's most important contribution to world culture: breakfast.
And yes, I know the English didn't invent breakfast, but I do suspect they were the first to serve it mono-chromatically.
We had just recently become coffee drinkers, and for those of you on similar journeys let me just say that the English make it pretty simply for you: White Coffee, Black Coffee. Black Coffee is exactly what you would expect, and White Coffee is always some combination of coffee and milk (cow, presumably), but in 2013 that was the extent of choice available. Having recently become accustomed to the American diner expectation of bottomless coffee, the English method of reserved caffeine consumption took some getting used to, and frankly, made me a little cranky this entire trip.
Fueled up on the biggest plate of brown you've ever seen, washed down with the hottest cup of black on the planet, we headed off to our first sight.
The British Museum
In a way, visiting the British Museum is a lot like visiting the rest of the world, but maybe not in an entirely un-problematic sort of way. It was a great experience, and my lack of understanding around the history of how these artifacts came to be here, in England, made it all the more enjoyable. According to my camera roll, I took nearly 4000 photos in here (okay, maybe not that many, but also not not that many).
I'll spare you those photos because I'm sure anyone reading this has had the experience of a friend visiting a museum and doing a big photo dump from their iPhone 4 afterwards.
I think we spent the rest of the day wandering the city, taking photos of everything that looked vaguely British – the reality of where we were was still slowly sinking in.
I will admit, I don't remember what most of these buildings or statues were, but I do remember that they were important landmarks and my wife had done an absolutely tonne (metric, since this is England) of work planning the perfect sight-seeing walking path.
I don't know if it was all of the walking, or the crowds, or the jet lag, but these first few days were absolutely overwhelming. Not entirely in a bad way, but in a "I sort of wish I could sleep in my own bed" way. I suppose a big part of what I was feeling was fear.
England is a very safe place, that's not what I mean. I was young and very shy and the thought of "looking out of place" was very terrifying to my very introverted, self-conscious self (see the previous post about researching how to order a pint if you don't believe me). I think I spent the entirety of this trip (and many after it) worrying too much about "getting it wrong," which is a dumb way to spend a trip. This theme will probably become apparent the further into this blog I get.