After walking out of the baggage claim area to the common area, we realized how difficult it might be to find the person who was picking us up. Tyler thought her name might be something like Christina. (The vagueness of it all did not sit well with me.) There were MANY people holding signs in this part of the airport, and we closely read them all. We didn’t see our name. I noticed an area that said “Meeting Point”, which I thought was a good place to stop with luggage and just wait and pray. Tyler said he would walk back through the line of signs to make sure we didn’t miss something. At that time, over the loud speaker, we heard our name. Our ride was waiting for us in the Meeting Point.
After meeting and walking out to the parked car, we rode for over an hour to our hotel which is located in the town of Watford just outside the city of London. The traffic was not good, and there was no AC in the car. Even with all the windows down we were sweaty and red faced by the time we arrived. (England and much of Western Europe had just been experiencing a heath wave. I still don’t have Celsius/Fahrenheit worked out in my brain.) I sat in the front seat with Catherine (not Christine) and it was strange to be in the “driver’s seat”. The roundabouts were confusing and people drive quite fast in narrow lanes.
After arriving at the hotel in one piece, the first thing I wanted was a shower. The hotel was great. The toilet paper was not. After cleaning up we had a short nap and then walked around Watford. We found a McDonald’s and out of curiosity we decided to see what the menu looked like. Much to our surprise there was a Spicy Vegetarian Deli Sandwich on the menu. We ordered it and liked it very much. We wish our McDonald’s back home had this. We upgraded the meal to a large so we could share the fries and drink. The large looks like our small! When Tyler asked if there were refills, the worker did not know what that meant so Tyler explained and of course, they do not have refills here. Funny, we come all the way to England to have McDonald’s!
We went to the supermarket and found out that most stores are closed by 9pm. The only thing that seemed to be open were small betting houses and clubs. We noticed signs at each establishment and often saw Kebabs (some kind of food), Doner (lamb meat?), To Let (For Rent), Off License (not sure about that one yet), and Toilets (restrooms). I did pass an Everything 1Lb store, which is obviously like our Dollar stores; I was very excited about visiting that one the next day. We would have to shop tomorrow for fruit and water. Arriving back at the hotel, we were not very tired, but turned the lights out at 11pm.