“Jetlag be damned!” I thought, as we hit the ground running once our British Airways flight touched down in London.

We had what we believed to be the perfect vacation plan: ten days by ourselves from England to France to Belgium, then we’d join up with a tour group for an additional 21 days and six more countries: Holland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Vatican City and Switzerland.

I was speaking British English even before I left the airport, thanks to chatting with locals on the plane and their accent rubbing off on me. When I lapsed into Cockney rhyming slang, however, Angie ordered me to stop impersonating Audrey Hepburn from My Fair Lady.

Of course we hit the Tower of London and took the ubiquitous Beefeaters tour (though I did not see them eat any actual beef). The Crown Jewels were there on display, including a crown that weighed five pounds. I need at least a 10- or 15-lb. crown to feel like a king. But that’s just me.

Angie and I were enjoying our walk across the Thames, admiring the fresh blue paint job on Tower Bridge, when all of a sudden—WOO! WOO! WOO! Sirens started going off.

“It’s true! London Bridge is falling down!” I screamed as I frantically tried to figure out what was going on. But brave Angie just rolled her eyes, then she pointed out that: (1) London Bridge was actually moved to Arizona years ago. (2) The sirens were just announcing the drawbridge was about to open.

Whew, that was a close one.

Back home in Florida before the trip, my friend Nick and I would jog up and down hundreds of stairs at our college football stadium, over and over until we couldn’t go on without puking. This running practice came in handy when I decided to scale St. Paul’s Cathedral. Basically, Angie and I wanted a good view of town, but without paying the £11 for the magical ooh-la-la London Eye giant ferris wheel.

We climbed the stairs for days, stopping occasionally for sleep or to listen to other stair-going travelers’ tales in one of the several pubs along the staircase. Okay, fine, well it seemed like days. But the view from the top was amazing. I should point out that the day’s biggest disappointment was not seeing a little old bird woman selling bags of crumbs, as had been assured to me and countless millions of other Mary Poppins fans.