The ten hour flight felt unusually long, I didn’t recall it being that long the last time.

I ate, dosed off for a while, read Vogue’s September 09 issue from cover to cover, peed, read the inflight magazines, made faces at the baby from across the aisle and then checked the time only to find out that barely three hours had passed.

Unbelievable! I’d already done all the things I set out do.

The other baby started wailing the minute we took off, and didn’t stop until we touched down.

Her poor parents were beside themselves… they resorted to passing her off to random strangers.

Having lost some eight hours to time zone difference, we touched down in London around 9AM the next day.

A quick run through immigration and Baggage Claim (it’s ‘Baggage Reclaim’ for the Brits, which makes more sense when you think about it) and we were headed ‘home’.

Home for the next two weeks was Barking, a suburb in East London.

I kissed babies and played doting aunty for a while.

I wasn’t going to bed right away; we followed the rule of ‘staying up during the day’ to reset our internal clock.

Next on the agenda was to get an Oyster card and a new SIM, we got ours from 3 network, which was awesome because for just £10 you get a SIM card with ample (Pay As You Go) voice, data and text messages.

I popped the card into my HTC Dream, set up the APN info and viola, I was up talking, browsing and texting for pennies compared to the small fortune I fork out every month to Fido.

The Google Places app on my phone would prove to be a life saver.

To help stay awake we opted to go to ‘town’ while our hosts went to church.

We took the c2c to Fenchurch Street Station and made our way towards Tower Bridge.

There were tourists everywhere, but I didn’t mind – I felt awake and alive or maybe a little high from sleep deprivation.

Crossing to the other side we caught the bridge opening, which was cool.

On the other end of the bridge was The Mayor’s Thames Festival 09, which felt like our personal welcome to London.

We spent the rest of the day along the river, browsing displays, live entertainments, food stalls, arts, and taking in the history and culture of the city.

We walked towards Westminster Bridge, the weather was amazing and the acts entertaining (some of them, anyway).

Our first day in London had been fun and entertaining; we took that as a good sign.

Making out way back home was a bit of a disaster due to London Underground weekend closures, we made our way back to Fenchurch Street and took the c2c back.

By this time I was beginning to look and sound like a crazy person.

I hadn’t slept in forever, the folks back home were into their second night’s sleep and I was still up.

I got home, unpacked, ate and went to bed and had the most amazing of long sleeps.

I dreamt of London, dungeons, colourful swirly long sashes and Veuve Clicquot.