Traveling From Los Angeles to London
Whew child! Tiredness is dragging my tail right about now. I’m fighting, but it’s fighting ‘bout as hard, I ain’t lying. Let me push through though, and write in this travel diary for at least two pomodoros.
Sitting aboard the aircraft at LAX before takeoff. I lucked up with an entire row to myself on the Norse flight from Los Angeles to London! | photo: aroundLAwithTK
Jet Lag Chronicles: Battling Fatigue Across Time Zones
I’m a person with high energy levels almost always. When me and my girlfriends travel together, or host each other while visiting the other person’s city, at some point they’ll end up commenting on how I’ll be running off of very little rest with ease. That’s not the case right now. I’m struggling.
Traveling across time zones will put a hurting on you.
I landed in London from Los Angeles around this time yesterday morning, and I’m trying to decide how well I’ve adjusted my body to this new time zone in these first 24 hours.
It’s important to intentionally adjust your body to your destination’s time zone upon arrival, when traveling across a great number of time zones, such as from Los Angeles to London, which is an 8-hour time difference.
How to adjust to time zones in Europe when traveling from the United States?
Well, I’m no chronobiologist, but I can tell you what I’ve done differently to start this voyage than I did my first time on this side of the Atlantic.
I want to give a cute bullet-point list, but it’s really only one point:
don’t sleep when you want to sleep.
Yep. It’s really as simple as that.. well, sleep science is intricate, but as far as you need to know (do), it’s as simple as knowing that you’ll want to go to sleep, but don’t.
This is the case when landing during the daytime, as I did. The wheels to the aircraft I was aboard must’ve hit the tarmac by 10 o’clock in the morning. After taking a mirror selfie and a tiny tinkle, getting through customs, picking up my luggage, making my way out of the airport and onto a train, followed by a bus, I made it to the hostel for my stay in London about 3 hours later.
Ladies’ room stop on the way to customs and passport control at London Gatwick Airport, after deboarding 10-hour flight from Los Angeles.
(Side note: about that tiny tinkle.. does flying dehydrate you, or did I forget to drink water in the midst of trying to get from Los Angeles to London? Because I didn’t go to the restroom once at LAX nor on the 10-hour flight to London, then when I finally did at LDW, it was only a splash.. and it was far from opaque. Yikes.. tmi? I digress.)
I hadn’t eaten, so after getting my room key and rolling my bags into the dorm I was assigned, I grabbed a bite at the first restaurant I saw. Baby, when I tell you, I almost face-planted into that salmon and avocado toast, I almost face-planted. You know how your eyelids grow heavy? My whole head was heavy. And this is a whole lot of head to be heavy! It was almost as if I were intoxicated. I’ve never been drugged, but I imagine this is what it would be like if someone tried to drug me and didn’t give me a high enough dosage. I was still in control, but barely.
Though I wanted to go to sleep when I landed in London from Los Angeles SO badly, I forced myself to stay up.
I told myself I could have an early bedtime, just stay completely awake until then. 7pm, local time, even.. something.. not now, you can’t go to sleep now, not even a short nap, no, come on, my girl.
Even when I know the answer to something, I enjoy asking the question and reading through the search engine results. I typed, “how to keep myself up after landing in Europe in the morning when it is night at home.” I must’ve thought I was talking to ChatGPT. I didn’t get a direct answer to my question at all, but I did get reinforcement that staying up upon arrival to Europe was the right idea.
Should you sleep when you arrive in Europe?
That’s the more Google-search-engine-friendly question. And the answer is no.
“On arrival, stay awake until an early local bedtime,” is the expert advice from travel writer and travel TV show host, Rick Steves.
Okay, miss ma’am, it’s not only you thinking you want to stay up to make sure you’ll be able to fall asleep tonight, it’s the way to start off on the right foot in the fight against jet lag. Let’s go!
First stop in London? A bite to eat at a long-standing Hyde Park restaurant, Leinster Arms, next door to my hostel.
I had to get out of that dark local bar. I typed “Goyard” into my GPS, because I knew one would be within a reasonable distance, plus other eye candy along the way. As soon as I was in the daylight, walking, I felt better.
I stayed out, window shopping, only buying some postcards, until well after London’s early nightfall. When I returned to the hostel, my big eyes couldn’t help but to look at the bar’s happy hour menu. The wine was only 3.50 pounds.. I had to do it. Then one of my roommates from the dorm came down and offered to show me to a local market he’d seen on his walk. I hadn’t eaten dinner, so I took him up on it.
Back at the hostel, I sat down in the lobby bar area to do what I’d initially set out to do, write on these postcards (and not procrastinate how I have a tendency to do, then never end up doing it). Of course, I got distracted a couple of times by fellow guests making conversation.
Do you know my little raggedy behind didn’t go to bed until after midnight local time, after all that whooping fatigue was putting on me?!
As I was walking back to my hostel, a herd of pedestrians around me rushed into a store named Primark, so I followed to see if the place was giving away something free. They weren’t.
In that same blog post from Rick Steves about Conquering Jet Lag, the very first tip is to leave home well-rested before flying halfway around the world. Do you think I did that? Not a chance. I was my same ol’ last-minute-Lucy self. Ugh, sickening. Insufficient sleep the nights leading up to my travel day.. shoot, look at the bags under my eyes as I sit on the plane after boarding at LAX (the tab image for this blog post).
That being said, I’m going to take a nap. I went for a walk around Hyde Park at sunrise to get some morning light in my eyes — a key piece of getting over jet lag when traveling across times zones, (I heard one time while listening to neuroscientist Andrew Huberman..) but maybe we’ll get more into that in the next travel diary entry.
