London ? Not even someone as impeccably prepared as Giants coach Tom Coughlin had a strategy to help five team buses crawl through London’s notoriously difficult gridlock.

He did, however, know that very little about this history making trip overseas was going to be easy.

“I told the players, you just put a smile on your face and realize that some things aren’t going to run as smoothly as you’re used to,” Coughlin said Friday after the Giants arrived for Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins, the NFL’s first regular-season contest to be played outside of North America.

The Dolphins also arrived Friday. Players, coaches and wives and families from both teams boarded caravans of buses, then took the tedious drives from the airport to their respective hotels and then to their practice facilities.

NFL owners recently voted 32-0 to expand the league’s international footprint and bring regular-season games to London and beyond.

Asked how the NFL coaches might have voted had they been asked – well, Coughlin just laughed at that one.