I consider myself a spontaneous person but I also like to plan ahead. And when I do plan, I expect things to go according to my plans. Now, is that too much to ask for?

Each year we spend several weeks in Budapest during the summer vacation. This particular summer was not any different, I purchased our air tickets in advance, planned out our visit, including a week family vacation somewhere outside of Hungary. We were lucky to get direct flights out of San Diego to London, then onto Budapest. The only catch was a 6-hour layover at Heathrow, which is a bit more time than I like to spend at an airport. What could we do in 6 hours? My brain started spinning, my girls have never seen London, how much fun would it be to go into town and hop on one of those double-decker tour buses to take a glimpse of this amazing city, instead of sitting at the airport bored out of our minds fighting our jetlag. It just all made sense to me, so I started making my plans.

The express train from Heathrow to Paddington Station seemed like the best choice to get us into town, a 21-minute ride and we can catch our hop on, hop off tour bus directly. Then all we have to do is sit on the bus and enjoy the London scenery. I even found locker locationsto leave behind our carry-on for hassle free sightseeing. I quickly bought our bus passes online, downloaded all the maps to the airport, city and bus stops. Printed out the express train timetable, one would leave every 15 minutes. Sounds great, right? Well….Here is what really happened.

I might have forgotten to mention the fact that we were scheduled to fly out of San Diego on a Sunday, which weekend my youngest had a soccer tournament on. Her team was playing great and our chances of making it to the finals on Sunday were really good. No problem, final game would be early afternoon on Sunday, so we would still have time to go home, clean up and shower and drive to the airport. All bags were packed, no traffic on the weekends, nothing could go wrong. It is all about perfect planning. Except half way through the soccer game, I received a text message from British Airways about a 20-minute delay. No big deal, they can make up even an hour in the air. A little later another message, saying an hour delay. I was still very positive, this will all work out as planned. The game was almost over when the message arrived indicating 2 hours of delay out of San Diego. Hm, it could still work out. Thinking positive, as always. Nothing, absolutely nothing can ruin this trip for me and my girls.

We did land in London a couple of hours late. But I was not ready to give up on my plans. My shock came when we reached passport control. I have never seen this massive amount of people entering a country, and trust me we travel a lot. I was starting to get worried, there was no way we were getting out of here in less than an hour. Suddenly, the solution “drove by”. An older gentleman was driving an even older lady on one of those cute little electrical cars towards the front of passport control. I immediately ran after him, you should have seen my girls’ faces, and explained to him our urgency and need for help. He was incredibly nice and told me to get my girls and hop on the car. He drove us up to the front of the line, and got us through passport control in 2 minutes. Sometimes you just have to ask nicely. :)

We quickly bought our train tickets, no time to ditch our carry-on so we headed straight for the station. This was so exciting, pretty soon my girls would see London. How much fun, right? Arriving to Paddington station, tickets in our hands and ready to "hop-on" our tour bus. You mean there are about a 100 different tour bus stops at Paddington? You must be joking. Took us more time than anticipated but finally located ours and were climbing the narrow steps up to the top of the double decker. Sitting down and taking in the busy London view, we realized we were in the middle of the afternoon rush hour. OK, we will be flexible, we might not be able to finish a full 2-hour tour but can still see a lot. Or not. It took us over an hour to make it only to Piccadilly Circus. This was the moment when I started worrying about making it even half way through. I climbed down to discuss our options with the driver and we came to the conclusion that we needed to get off the bus and take the “Tube” back to Paddington. Of course no direct connection, what a shocker! While racing through the underground system with our carry-on, trying to figure out which tube to take, all I could think of was how on earth will I explain to my parents why we will not be at the airport in Budapest at 10pm tonight. The only train we even had a remote chance of catching was the 7 pm Express and even that would be a huge stretch to get us into Heathrow on time. Picture this: three women running towards the train desperately waving at the train conductor as he places the whistle slowly into his mouth, ready to blow it and send the train on its way. Like a movie scene…I think at this point I was ready to cry. Miraculously this nice English gentleman took pity on us and held his breath, no smile, while we climbed on board the train before blowing into his whistle. As we crashed down in our seats wiping the sweat off our faces, I told the girls that I believe we still have a tiny chance to make the flight. We just have to run. Run. Really. Fast. I cannot describe their facial expressions, probably for the better.

As we approached our gate, completely out of breath, a stern looking English flight attendant with her arms crossed, watched us crawl under the tape as I handed over our boarding passes pleading to let us on the flight. She gave us a very disturbing look as I explained how we were lost, taking a look at our tickets and realizing we landed 4 hours ago. “Lost where?” she asks. “Lost in London”. :) #mommydearest

Re-reading the experience we had in London gives me massive anxiety. I think I blocked most of this out as it gave me nightmares for months on end. What my mother calls "spontaneity" I called "a no real concept of time". Not exactly sure how she thought four hours would be enough to get into London, go on a 2 hour bus tour, and then make it back to board the plane on time. But I really wanted to see London so maybe I was naive and suppressed my real feelings of distress when I considered that this whole mini London tour wouldn't go as planned. My specific memory of this trip that will always and forever stick with me was running towards the train in London that would take us back to the airport. We planned out 3 different train departure times that would allow us to get back on time to the airport. As we sat on the "hop on, hop off bus" we kept pushing the train time farther and farther back, suddenly realizing that we would MAYBE make the last possible train in order to get to the airport on time. When I say maybe, I mean we almost missed the train. Running through the station we came to a set of steps. The train was visible in the distance and all we had to do was walk down the steps and over to the train. Well, as we reached the top of the steps we saw the conductor was about to tell the train it could leave. This is where our athleticism prevailed: we sprinted, and I mean literally sprinted as fast as we could each carrying a large carry-on and a purse towards the train. Being that there was no one else around (because everyone else was already on the train) the conductor saw us sprinting and waited for us to make it to the train before he waived to the train to leave. We now had a few minutes to rest before we made it to Heathrow and had to start running again (Yay). Drinking some water, mentally preparing ourselves, we were ready to start the race. I have no recollection of the actual race at this point, however I clearly remember the look on the flight attendant's face when we made it to the gate at the last second and she saw on our boarding pass that our plane landed several hours ago. I mean, embarrassing doesn't even BEGIN to cover it. After this experience I had several nightmares, I think it took away a part of my youth, I probably aged 10 years. My mother now laughs it off as if it wasn't a big deal, ha ha, but I still want to cry when I think about it. To comfort myself now I just tell people I've been to London, omitting the whole fiasco that it entailed. :) #dianasays