"Hanging Out" in London

When I left you last we were headed to bed on Friday night. After a long day we were happy go to sleep at about 10. Unfortunately, my body thought that after an hour and a half nap I should be good to go - so from 11:30PM-6:30AM I was wide awake. (Paul was finally on London time after being there all week so he was able to sleep that night.) Our wake-up call came at 7AM and Paul agreed to sleep in until 10 - the next thing I knew it was 12:15 and we needed to hit the ground running! First thing, check the weather and see strangers riding the London Eye peering right in our window.
(The London Eye is an observation wheel that was built for the millenium. It is 442+ ft. tall, has 32 pods which hold up to 25 people, and one revolution takes 30 minutes.)
Once we were ready and had eaten lunch we headed out on a tour of the city.
Here is some of what we saw:
The New Scotland Yard sign which is much smaller than it looks when they show it on TV,
the busy busy shopping districts,

a home away from home,
big screen for the Olympics in Trafalgar Square,
and of course, our hotel with the London Eye.

Our room was on the left, top/6th floor, sixth window/balcony from the right...

third from the left. (this visual will be important later)

We were pretty frozen after our 2 hour trip around the city on the top of the tour bus...

but were warmed by the sight of our sweet Emily Rose via Skype with Papa.

After a quick change and dinner we were off to see a show.

On our way home I was saying to Paul that we had to go out on the balcony and get a picture of the two of us together since the only ones we had were of the view and me. So before we crawled into bed exhausted, we ran out the balcony to snap a few. First Paul was holding the camera - which never goes too well for me with our height difference...

"Lower Paul."

"A little better..."

"Maybe I should hold it."

And after snapping one of Paul alone...

we attempted to go back inside. Yes, I said "ATTEMPTED" -

Remember those pictures of the hotel, the location of our room, the distance to the ground, the freezing temps I mentioned?? Yep, all of that AND it was midnight!

Basically, there were two sets of doors. The interior ones are pretty new and more weatherproof than the old, old exterior ones with their old, old loose locks. Once the exterior doors closed, (which we aren't sure how that happened because the night before we were overly concious not to close them since the locks/handles were loose and couldn't be trusted to stay up - which is unlocked) the top handle fell enough that we couldn't open the doors. At first we were laughing, sure we were going to get them open quickly, and so I took the picture above. But then, after trying to force them open, the bottom handle fell and it was obvious that we were going to have to find help. I started hanging over the balcony (not great when you are afraid of heights) yelling "HELP!" and other such things. After several people ignored us, one woman responded and started to help. Of course, there was not an entrance to our hotel on that side of the building and I was begging her not to give up when she came back with two men that were going to radio for help. I am still not sure who they were but after they told us help was on the way and made some rude comment that ended in "jump" (which they wouldn't repeat when I asked) they walked away. Hooray! After twenty minutes we were saved and snapped an "OHMYGOD WE ARE ON A BALCONY 6 FLOORS UP IN THE FREEZING COLD AND THE DOOR IS LOCKED!" picture.

I even took one of our view.

If only that was the end of the story. IF ONLY! Instead, help never came. The passersby were diminishing and being very rude. Mostly they would look up and then continue to walk by, but a lot of them stopped to make jokes and tell us to jump. I was getting very desperate and Paul was eerily quiet. I went back and forth between crying (because I was starting to panic and couldn't believe that no one would help us) and trying to remain in control so we could flag down someone before there wasn't anyone to call to. After about 40 minutes we got one man to listen to us and take us seriously enough to walk the length of the HUGE building to the entrance we knew of. The best part, for me, was that he left behind three friends and was gone a long time. By seeing his friends, I knew that he was still "on the job" and the longer he was gone the more hopeful I was that he had walked the distance required to get inside. I stood at the edge of the balcony and in sight so that they would know that we were still out there. This is what the three friends looked like from where we were... they are near the post with banner. As we were passing the one hour mark, our savior appeared and yelled up, "I've just been around and they say they are on the way up to help you!" We were thanking him profusely and yet still a little nervous because, of course, we had heard this before. It wasn't 3 minutes later though that two men were walking across our hotel room to open the doors!!! We were saved!! Paul and I busted through them into the room where I sat on the bed bawling and Paul told them what happened. The men were very apologetic and worried about our well being - offering some medical attention and wine. (They also told us that they had to cut the chain to get in - proof that we thought we were IN for the night.) I think they were mostly worried about me since I had my head buried in my hands and wasn't speaking. We did end up with two glasses of wine and a promise to hear from the manager the following day but we were pretty numb (both literally and figuratively) and kinda wanted to go home.

Here is the lock...

and this what the balcony looks like.