Unlike Los Angeles, London has a great public transportation system. It's also a city that's heavily congested and expensive to park -- so it didn't make a lot of sense to rent a car for the first three days of our visit.
But we needed a rental for the rest of our vacation.
We made what we thought was a really good plan: Bright and early on the morning we were set to check out of our budget London hotel, my husband got on the Underground and made his way to Heathrow Airport, where he would pick up the Hertz shuttle and obtain the shiny Ford Focus Titanium we had reserved. Then, he'd drive back to the hotel, where we would be checked out by the 10:00 AM deadline and ready to load up our luggage.
It sounded like it would work and the morning began smoothly. I got up shortly after my husband left for the airport, around 7:30 AM. I showered and began gathering our things and packing them back in our bags. And then, my husband called. He was not happy.
"I forgot to bring my passport," he said.
Every other time we've rented a car in the UK, the agency has required we show our passports. This is not a problem when you've just stepped off the plane at Heathrow. But three days after our arrival, it was an easy item to forget.
It was 8:30 AM. If I hurried, I'd be able to bring him the passport and we could still check out of the hotel without incurring any additional fees.
I should probably mention that my husband did not get off on the right foot with the hotel manager when we checked in. She did have something of a prickly personality and let's just say that she was not well versed in the tenets of customer service.
As we left the hotel, I let her know that there was a possibility that our check-out might be a little bit later than 10:00.
"Just do it by 11:00," she said.
I was unprepared for how crowded it was at Paddington Station. It was Monday morning, and of course, it was busier than it had been over the weekend. This wasn't a problem for the regular commuters: They all have rechargeable Oyster cards, and so were moving right on through the turnstiles.
But as Paddington is a major train station, the entrance was overloaded with "irregular" commuters: tourists, like us (you could tell by the ginormous backpacks they were carrying). And most of them were queued up for the one manned ticket booth in the place, in a line that curled around to the station entrance.
Each Underground station has several automated kiosks where you can purchase individual tickets, but most require a "pin-and-chip" a smart credit card. This is a security system that the UK instituted a few years ago, consisting of a smartchip that is embedded in the card and a PIN number that must be input every time someone uses it. We don't use this system in the US -- and so our cards don't work.
There was one kiosk that took cash. Megan stood in the line with the tourists and I waited for the cash kiosk (and prayed that I had enough for two one-way tickets to Zone 6, which was the terminus for the airport). My line moved faster.
Back in Los Angeles, I had downloaded a London Tube app for my Blackberry. This proved to be pretty useful in planning our subway routes.
Unfortunately, I didn't have any phone coverage once I was actually underground - so it didn't do me a lot of good that morning. Megan and I checked the map, determined where we would have to change trains and found our platform
The trip from central London out to Heathrow takes roughly an hour. And once you get out of the central city, you're above ground, so I was able to communicate with my husband.
"Did you tell my mum you were leaving?" he asked.
Uhhhhhhhh.
My mother-in-law was staying in a room down the hall from us, and I'd dashed out the door without telling her what was going on. Frankly, I'm not sure I would have been able to communicate that information to her. She's extremely hard of hearing, and on top of that, she has a really hard time with my American accent. I'm never sure I'm getting through to her, of if I am, what she actually thinks I'm telling her.
"I'll call her," my husband said.
That was actually better. It seems as if she hears better over the phone than face to face. At any rate, chatting with her would give my husband something to do while we caught up with him.
We arrived at the Heathrow station that serves Terminals 1, 2 & 3 just after 10:00 AM (good thing I told the hotel manager we might not make checkout on time). We picked one (#1) and ran down the labyrinthine hallways and up the stairs until we saw a sign directing us to the shuttle buses outside.
We arrived at the Hertz counter at 10:30. We would have a hard time getting back to our hotel in the city by 11:00, but it wasn't impossible.
Except for one thing: My husband hadn't entered the queue until we'd called and told him we were at Heathrow with his passport. It never occurred to him to give it a try while he was sitting around waiting for us to get there.
And here's the kicker: The very helpful clerk at Hertz processed our rental WITHOUT EVER ASKING TO SEE A PASSPORT.
In 18 years of traveling to Britain, this was a first to us. (Moral of the story: It never hurts to try.)
At any rate, we did not actually get into our car until 11. We were now at risk for being charged for an extra night.
"You talk to her," my husband advised. "You haven't given her a reason to hate you."
I explained our situation to the hotel manager, told her we were on the road back to London and were doing our best to get there as fast as we could.
"I'll have the cleaning crew save your rooms for last," she said. "We'll see how it goes."
With that bit of limited assurance, I dialed up the number to pay the London congestion charge. This is an £8 daily fee motorists pay for the privilege of driving in the city centre (the idea, of course, is that by charging this fee, visitors to the city would think twice about using a car to get there, resulting in reduced traffic).
Yes, we were only driving in and then out of the city, but with the kind of morning we were having, I did not want to risk being assessed a hefty fine for non-compliance. Eight pounds is a drop in the bucket compared to what a ticket would cost us.
Fortunately, this is something that can be paid over the phone with a chip-and-pin-less credit card. After a two minute phone call, we were legal.
The next 40 minutes was a mad dash through the streets of London, a city we know only marginally well. We had brought our GPS unit over for use in the rental, and had downloaded updated UK maps. All we could do at that point was pray that we didn't get led onto any weird, dead-end streets.
We made it back to the hotel. My husband parked the car, Megan and I dashed out. I banged on my mother-in-law's door while Megan began stuffing our things back into our suitcases and then we dragged them out, one by one.
It was 12:15.
We did not get charged.
"Did you get everything?" my husband asked, knowing full well that I have a bad habit of leaving something in the room.
"Yes," I told him. I had made extra sure to clear all our things out of the bathroom.
We reset the GPS and headed out of London towards Wales.
About an hour later, I remembered that I'd left my ugly old jacket and an umbrella hanging in the closet.
I didn't look back.
See the rest of my London photos on Flickr, here.
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