Mind the Gap

Original post date: Friday, March 14, 2008


Mind the Gap

Below you will find the beginning of my "journal" of Heather and my trip to London. I was mocked a bit for writing as much as I did. I really did it for myself because I want to remember this trip, we did a lot and I wouldn’t remember everything I did if I didn’t write it down. When I went to Guatemala back in 1992 with Garrett I didn’t keep a journal and I regret it to this day, so I will never go out of the country again without doing this. So if you don’t want to read it that is fine, if you think I wrote too much, bugger off and go read someone elses blog.

That said I will be posting our days of travel over the next few days so not to overwhelm anyone who wants to read it.

Friday March 7th - travel day.

Our day started with an unenthusiastic goodbye from our two girls sitting on the couch with Sampap. They hardly even looked up as we walked out the front door…"Bye mommy and daddy…" Now leave so we can watch a movie with Sampap.

A quick drive to the Orlando airport and leaving our house early and arriving to the airport early gave us plenty of time to sit around so we had a leisurely lunch at Outback. Margarita’s and salad and a wrap. With the leftovers we were ingenious and asked the server to bring us a tortilla so we could wrap the remainder of the steak salad and the one coconut shrimp, which gave us a tasty treat at 7 while we waited, taxiing around the runway in New York, but wait I am getting ahead of myself.

Our flight was at 245p we actually took off at 330p…already running late. An uneventful flight, a bit turbulent, but nothing unusual and all you can ask for when you are flying. We got to watch the movie "Enchanted", it was quite funny, I wouldn’t have watched it otherwise, and it was funny. We arrived in New York, an airport that I have not flown into even though I have been to NY four times in the last six months…yeah crazy, and finally found our gate after many false hopes as we turned many corners. We sat and listened to quite a few foreign accents and my interest and excitement was growing with each second.
We boarded the plane and it was quite fun, we got free eye masks, a toothbrush, and earphones, very nice. We had to fill out a card that we were to give to the customs officer telling them where we were born and where we were staying, we got reprimanded later for not knowing Jason and Stephanies address. On this flight Heather had the window and I had the aisle, two seats and a very funny Scotsman sitting across the aisle from us, more accents, yay. Honestly I could just sit and listen on a bench the whole time I am over here in London. On with the flight…I mean let us sit on the runway for an hour…and now after thirty three planes go ahead of us…now we take off. Woohoo!

Expecting to have some good sleep while on the plane, I didn’t, I watched the free movies instead. Heather slept more than I, but she didn’t sleep that well either. We watched "Martian Child" with John Cusack, very good - highly recommended, and "Bee Movie" with Jerry Seinfeld, I thought it was funny. After a good dinner, I have never had issues with airplane food, bbq chicken, mashed potatoes, corn and a brownie. I finally had enough and knew I needed to get some sleep so I had to revert to something that I know would put me to sleep. I slipped back into my freshman year in college, crashing on Seans’ (that is plural - Sean Germain and Sean Gorman’s) dorm room floor after crew practice with Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream blaring in our ears, I put Siamese Dream on my iPod and immediately passed out. Unfortunately for me thirty minutes later I was woken up by the flight attendant giving me breakfast, ugh. We landed shortly after the croissant and jam.

Customs was easy, only the quick, "Next time you come you need to have the address where you are staying." We waited for quite some time for our luggage, but I never mind waiting if we actually get it and although it was wet from going from the plane to the baggage claim in the rain, we got it. We found the train station from there and spent our first pound over in London, the train tickets were £19. (that was fun actually getting to use the "£" key - have I mentioned a United Kingdom keyboard is different than a U.S. keyboard?) We found our station and boarded our train, and learned a lesson, when you are extremely tired, hungry and just flat out exhausted, don’t over stimulate your body and mind by riding in a train sitting backwards. You get very nauseous. Luckily by the time it really started to hit us we were at the Victoria train station. We gathered our luggage and went to find Jason.

Jason was sitting in a little coffee house reading a book in the corner as we approached him, he didn’t see us, he was very engrossed in his book. Where was Stephanie? She was at the ticket window buying tickets to "Wicked". We gathered her up at the line for the tickets and she came running to give us a hug, and apparently forget she had a coffee in her hand and with her excitement splashed coffee all over her yellow jacket and Heathers purse…no problem it all came out in the wash, but very funny and we got some crazy looks from the fellow Wicked enthusiasts.

We then went to the tube (that is the subway in London) and boarded our train to get to Ealing, the borough Jason and Stephanie live. After two or three train changes due to weekend work on the tube we arrived to our final destination and walked the ten minutes to their flat. We said "how cute" and found our bed and crashed for a couple of hours.

more to come...