Ryan Air offers 20 Euro ($25) one-way airfare from Frankfurt Hahn airport to London Stansted. Only you have to leave at 6 am. No worries. $50 per person! Plus an offer to crash at a friend's pad. Let's go to London.
Only after I booked the airfare did I learn that the Frankfurt Hahn airport is misnamed. It is really the Luxemburg airport, almost 2 hours from Frankfurt by train. I imagined trying to motivate the kids to walk to a train station at 3 am and quickly realized we would be driving to the airport.
We arrived at 5:15 am on a drizzly morning of dense fog. Having made all this sacrifice of convenience for cheap airfare, I was not about to ruin the bargain by paying a premium to park at the airport. I chose P3, not P1. 800 meters at 5 am with three kids in the rain and wind is equivalent to 872 miles under normal circumstances. That's a confirmed scientific conversion ratio.
At length, we boarded the plane. If you have not been on a Ryan Air flight, let me set the seen: It is decorated like a McDonalds. No soothing greens or blues. Nope. This is harsh reds and yellows. I had to squint. The seat back safety instructions are replaced with a menu for outrageously priced utterly disgusting food-like substances. Which I purchased because I started to fear it might be a long time before I could find proper food. Ugh.
Arriving at Stansted "airport" we discovered that its lone border agent for non-EU citizens was a deliberate man. Four minutes of questioning per entrant. Sorry, you filled out your customs form with lower case letters. Caps only. Please go to the end of the line. Next.
Almost a full hour later we were trying to buy train passage to London. Katie and I having completely failed to fall asleep before our 3 am wake up, we were in no condition to understand such terms as "alight" and "way out." What is this language they speak in England? We bought something that included the words "train" and "London" and then got a train. They accepted the tickets, which we took as a positive sign.
"Does this train go to London?" asked a man seated next to us on the train. I shrugged and said, "I only speak American. Sorry."
One hour later we arrived at Liverpool Street Station. Looking at a map of the Underground (subway), we determined we were not that far from our ultimate stop of St. John's Wood, so we just hired a cab for simplicity. We then learned that the map is highly stylized and we were forever away from St. John's Wood, could have gotten there by train for $4 but were now stuck in traffic with a meter that would ultimately reach $65. Door-to-door, the value of Ryan Air was quickly evaporating.
But then we arrived, and it was awesome. London: awesome. Ryan Air: meh. Heathrow, please.
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| Why not a selfie from the London Eye. Whitehall in the background. |
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| Big Ben and Parliament |
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| Entering Tower of London. Katie was giddy. Super fun. |
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| Katie and this Beef Eater were kind of flirting. |
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| The Tower Bridge, which until this trip I thought was the Tower of London. |
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| Hogwarts Great Hall entrance. When they raised the curtain, the adult woman next to us wept. |
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| We only saw ourselves, as we are, so I guess that means we are at peace. |
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| Favorite chess piece |
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| 4 Privet Drive |
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| I thought the Hogwarts miniature was pretty sweet. |
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| I also like the gate at Buckingham Palace |
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