I am in a funk this morning. We had another great day yesterday - this time ending our day on a London Walks Pub Walk. These are Pub walks and not crawls, so you don't necessarily get hammered on them... but I pretty much got hammered last night. We had a lot of fun and got back to the hotel a little after midnight.
About an hour and a half after I passed out, I woke up because Alex was shaking me. "Listen!" There was a very polite but firm male British voice speaking in our room. "... the fire alarm has been activated. Please vacate the building and go to the assembly point in Lincoln's Inn Fields behind the Hotel. Please do not attempt to use the lifts." I immediately wanted to throw up. Shaking, I jumped out of bed and pulled on the clothes I was wearing earlier. I was flying all over the room while Alex tried to calm me down. "Grab your bag," he said which made it all too familiar for me. At least this time I had my camera in the bag... I grabbed our passports out of the safe, slid on my flip flops and followed Alex out into the hall.
We passed other hotel guests in various stages of awakening - coming out of their rooms with their hair askew in wrinkled pajamas, rubbing their eyes and asking if we'd heard an alarm. I'm sure that I was not a reassuring site to them as I likely had a look of extreme panic on my face. Alex located the "in-case-of-emergency" stairs and we fell in line with others walking down the winding staircase.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs we met with some hotel staff members who apologetically informed us that it appeared to be a false alarm and invited us to return to our rooms. The line of us on the stairs turned around and trekked back up to our rooms. I wouldn't get undressed when we got back to the room and couldn't lay down right away. I was drunk and scared and not reassured by the fact that it "appeared" to be a false alarm. I kept trying to peer out of our window into the courtyard - "What are you looking for?" Alex asked. "If you saw a fire truck and lights would that make it better?! Come back to bed!" I eventually did return to bed but left the passports and my bag fully packed next to the bed along with my flip flops and fell asleep in my clothes.
Thankfully, I'm not hungover today. I'm still a little freaked out - I'm having a hard time returning to calm. Today's our last full day here and I'm excited to go out into the city, but Alex is taking forever to get ready which is making me antsy. I'm sad that our honeymoon is coming to an end - Alex said that he's been having a great time but is ready to return home to our kitties. I'm not fully sharing in that wish yet... I'm not ready to return to wash and dishes and work and bills. I'm not ready to go home and say goodbye to my family. I'm really not ready for that. I'm going to try and pull a Scarlet O'Hara, though, and "...not think about that today." I'll push it all out of my head for now and focus on having fun today in London!
