One thing I have learned from years of travel planning is that you can never trust a map to convey how long it will actually take to get somewhere when you’re in a strange place.
Case in point: THAT time I booked a hotel in London with prepaid tickets for the London Eye.
The embarrassing thing is that this wasn’t my first trip OR my second trip—it was the third time I’d been to London.
You’d think I’d have some concept of the lay of the land.
You’d think.
But yeah…
NO.
I’m sharing this tale of woe so you won’t get trapped like I did. Because apparently, I needed to learn this lesson the hard way.
I had planned for our family to drive down from Scotland to London for a nice evening before we grabbed an early-morning train to Belgium.
We would leave the Highlands in the morning, make the seven-hour drive to Heathrow, drop off our rental car, hop in a cab, and arrive at our hotel around 4:00 in the afternoon.
Easy.
We’d then have most of the early evening to wander around Westminster, grab something to eat, and enjoy a relaxing ride on the London Eye.
We’d be tucked into our beds around 8:00 for a refreshing night’s sleep before catching the 7:00 a.m. train out of St. Pancras.
Best. Laid. Plans.
I had enough points for a free night at a hotel that I had acquired through some travel platform, but there were only four hotels available that fit within my points allowance.
Okay, that works.
At the time, I had a general idea of the layout of London and could see that none of the hotels were close to Westminster, but they all looked like they were in decent locations.
So I thought.
I opted for a nice little Holiday Inn in Stratford, which is way out in the East End of London. On the map, it didn’t look that far out. But we’re talking almost in Canterbury.
Not really.
But you get it. Very. Far. East.
What I didn’t consider was that Heathrow was very far to the west. And that’s where we had to drop off the car.
Oh, right.
The rental car.
The thing we were currently driving.
I didn’t think about that.
We were driving down from Scotland after spending a few days in Edinburgh, leaving our hotel around 8:30 in the morning. The trip to London was supposed to take approximately seven hours, which seemed completely reasonable.
Except…
The trip included a few “A” roads over to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where we stopped for breakfast and took some time to get a few nice family photos around the North Sea. Because why not? We were on vacation!
We had time!
We were taking pictures!
This was, in hindsight, a mistake.
As we made our way toward the M1 with the greatest of ease, we continued south, expecting to pick up speed as we changed from the dual-carriageway “A” roads to the motorway.
Surely the motorway would make things faster. That is what motorways are for, right?
Well…
No.
As we got closer to London, we realized that the opposite was going to happen.
And somehow, six hours into our seven-hour drive, we had only made it as far as Doncaster.
Doncaster.
If you check the map, that’s roughly the halfway point. At this point, the math was beginning to feel… concerning.
By 4:30, we were still quite a way out and starting to hit some afternoon traffic. That’s another thing: just because we’re on holiday doesn’t mean the rest of the world is.
And when you’re sitting in traffic, the words “We should be there by now” become progressively less comforting.
By this point, everyone was getting cranky. I was getting cranky. The kids were getting cranky. And someone—probably me—needed a bathroom approximately five minutes ago.
Near tears, and with very full bladders, we finally made it to Heathrow around 6:00 p.m.
Almost ten hours after we started.
Okay. Dust off the frustration. We’re at Heathrow. The rental car is back. We’re almost there.
Except…
We still had to get into London.
We checked the Tube, and the trip from Heathrow would take almost two hours at that time of day.
Two.
Hours.
(Note: these days, there is the option of the Elizabeth line, which can get you into central London in approximately an hour. It wasn’t running back in the day.)
Two hours would get us to the hotel at 8:00! My prepaid London Eye tickets were only good through 9:00 p.m.!
Oye.
No.
No, no, no.
There had to be another option.
Black cabs are everywhere in London! Surely one of them would take us to Stratford.
We asked one.
No.
Another?
No.
Another?
Absolutely not.
Apparently, driving from Heathrow to Stratford during rush hour was the London equivalent of asking someone to personally transport us to the moon.
We even asked if we could tip £100.
Nope.
Not doing it.
At this point, I was prepared to offer one of my children, or my husband. Just get me there.
We opted to take the Heathrow Express to Paddington, which took about 15 minutes, and then take the Tube from there.
Progress!
We were moving! We were on a train! We were going in the general direction of the hotel!
Everything was going to be fine!
Well…
Sort of.
We actually made it to Stratford, albeit around 7:30 pm.
At this point, we had been traveling for approximately eleven hours, and I was beginning to question every life choice that had led me to this particular hotel.
After checking in and dropping our bags, we still had to make it back to Westminster from Stratford.
Which, if you’re marking the route on a map, is generally back in the direction we had just come from.
Let that sink in.
We had spent the entire day traveling south toward London.
Then we went west to Heathrow.
Then east to Stratford.
And now we were going back west to Westminster.
I had basically created my own London transportation triangle.
Via the District and Central lines, the trip took another 45 minutes.
At this point, I need to point out that we had been awake all day, had driven approximately a thousand miles emotionally, had eaten who-knows-what, and were now racing across London because I had prepaid for a ride on a giant Ferris wheel.
I need some bubbles 🥂
We actually made it to the London Eye that night with a whopping 15 minutes to spare before closing.
Fifteen.
Minutes.
I’m not even sure whether I was relieved or just too exhausted to feel anything.
We had done it.
We were on the London Eye.
At night.
In London.
And I was mostly thinking about how much I hated myself for booking that hotel.
It was ridiculous. To this day, don’t even mention Stratford to me. I know there’s an amazing Westfield there. I know that Abba Voyage is there. I get it. Not going there again without significant bubble pre-treating to avoid PTSD.
Honestly, I hated that I had messed up the day by not thoroughly understanding the geography of the journey.
I had looked at a map. I had considered the distances. I had apparently done all the things a reasonably competent travel planner would do. I felt like Ross with his sketch.
Looking at a map of a city like London, you simply cannot assume you can get anywhere in the amount of time you normally would.
There are too many people. Too many cars. Too many trains. Too many connections. Too many tourists standing directly in front of you on the Tube escalator. And way too much traffic.
What do I do differently now?
And the North Sea?
Well… I haven’t looked at those family photos since that trip. Not once. I’m sure they’re lovely. I’m sure we looked happy.
I just can’t.
I’ve lived to tell this tale, and I will always remember the frustration of that day.
But hey—
We made it to the London Eye with 15 minutes to spare.
And honestly? That might be the most London thing I’ve ever done.
