Hello from England!

Since I arrived in London on Tuesday morning, my days have been full of the same routine- gym, breakfast, office meetings until 6pm, late dinner, and then crashing into bed.  Since our days are so full of meetings and work, I’ve barely taken any pictures but I did snap some on our travel that I haven’t had time to share just yet.

I’m always surprised when we get dinner on flights now since it seems that airlines have been cutting back on so many services these days.  We flew United and both of our flights weren’t completely full which meant we had an extra middle seat to stretch out on and we arrived early at both destinations.

Our first meal was well-rounded with a nice green salad, a roll, a pasta dish, and a brownie dessert.

Obviously my subtle picture taken with my phone on the plane isn’t super high quality but I wanted to get a close up of my pesto-ish cantelloni dish.

I’m not usually great about sleeping on long flights because I like to curl up when I sleep and economy class isn’t usually too conducive to that.  Luckily our empty middle seat gave me a little more room and Baby Keefe had me a little more tired than usual so I got a few naps into which was great for adjusting to the time zone. 

I also made sure to enjoy the in flight television which was basically an on-demand set up.  I introduced Brianne to Mindy Kaling’s show and watched most of all five episodes that were available. 

We ended up arriving before our other colleague from Denver thanks to our early flights and her flight delays (apparently a couple hours after we left, the snow started coming down).  We hung out in a coffee shop in Heathrow with our driver and when I saw this friendly gingerbread man and his cute name, I had to take a picture .

I know that a lot of people struggle to work out when traveling, which I totally understand but I happen to really enjoy it.  I view it as a time to forget about whatever routine or habits I was following before and have a whole new start.  I have very few responsibilities and obligations, obviously I need to be at our work meetings, conduct presentations, and be a contributing member of the team, but I don’t have household responsibilities, commute considerations, and the need to divide my time between work, family, and friends.

I also think that it helps me to establish my own routine since most of our agenda and time is scheduled out for us.  Being able to workout and take my time getting ready in my hotel room is a way for me to enjoy being out of town and feel that I accomplished something outside of work obligations.

When Brianne and I arrived at the hotel, we decided to hit up the gym for a light workout to reset our bodies and help us sweat out some airplane toxins.  The gym at the hotel isn’t huge but it does have a great variety of equipment- treadmills, ellipticals, rowers, stationary bikes, stair climber, weight machines, free weights, benches, fit balls, and I’m sure there’s more!

Since I spend most of my workout either running outside or on the treadmill, I’ve been doing 15-20 minutes of cardio on different machines (rower, elliptical, and stair stepper so far) and really focusing on weight lifting.  Obviously I’ve been doing lighter weights than I would normally do, but just being able to really work those muscles that have been waiting patiently for the morning sickness and general nausea to go away is awesome.  They also have a pool that isn’t huge but doing laps is feasible so I will definitely be getting a water workout or two in while I’m here.

I’m planning to make a hotel gym-specific workout to share later on in this trip but for now I will just share one of my workouts that I made up on the fly.

Warm Up:

20 minutes of elliptical (I played around with the resistance and incline to keep my interest)

10 minutes of stair stepper (Again, I played around with it since I haven’t been on one in so long)

Workout:

Squat and press (the weights are in kg so I just picked a weight that I felt I could do high reps with)

• 3 sets of 10 reps

Single leg squats

• 3 sets of 10 reps

Bench step ups with press

• 3 sets of 10 reps

Speed step ups

• 3 sets of 30 reps

21 curls

• 3 sets

Tricep kick backs

• 3 set of 8 reps

Since it’s a hotel gym and a little light on space, I opted to complete all the sets of each exercise before moving on to the next instead of circuits so that I could guarantee that I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way or that someone wouldn’t accidentally pick up one of my weights.

The eats here haven’t been too interesting since we have lunch brought into the office everyday but the first team dinner we had was at one of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants which had a cool vibe.  Not my favorite Italian food ever, but who doesn’t like a little celebrity in their life?

Question:

Do you get into a routine while traveling or just enjoy being in a different environment and go with the flow?

Do you ever bring food with you to ensure some healthy options or just try to make good decisions with what you are given?  My family usually packs an additional bag for Mexico for the vegans in my family plus healthier options that would either be unavailable or really expensive where we are.