Manion Trip Report Day 1 - Rage!

So, we staggered off the plane. That's always the toughest part of going to Europe. Your body thinks it's about 5 AM. The clock says 10 AM. All you want to do is sleep, but you can't. If you do, you never adjust to the time change. So instead, we pressed on, from Heathrow into London. Finally we arrived at our hotel, the Melia White House.

And there my first mistake came to bite us. I had booked a hotel for the same day as our flight, forgetting that the flight was overnight, and that our first day would actually be the next day. As a result, when we walked up to the hotel's desk, a smarmy spaniard explained to me that (when we hadn't shown up yesterday) they had assumed we weren't coming and sold the room to someone else. I pointed out that I had paid in advance for the room. The clerk pointed out that he didn't give a rats ass. After taking a moment to compose myself, I explained to the clerk that he had two options:

1. Provide me with a room in the next five minutes
2. Prepare for a size ten Nike enema

What can I say? Going without sleep makes me irritable. Anyway, we got a room.


So after ditching the luggage, we hauled into the city. Our first stop? Lunch at the Tokyo Diner. The Tokyo Diner is a great little restaurant in Soho. They serve really good Japanese food for cheap. The best part is that they absolutely refuse to accept tips. Is that great or what? I think the place is run by a cult or something, but I'm prepared to accept some amount of indoctrination for good and inexpensive food. I was bummed that they don't have gyu don on the menu anymore, but Mrs. Manion and I ordered katsu don instead, and enjoyed it tremendously.

From there we ordered walked around the city for a few hours and turned in early. It's always tough to do much on the first day.

LM

Tomorrow, Day 2 - Art!