Plane Ride Home

Thursday morning I woke up feeling a bit better.  Amber and I slowly walked to a local Starbucks where I had half a small mocha and half a muffin. Then we went back to our hotel. Checkout time was 11:00 and I wanted to push it as much as possible.

At 10:45 a.m. we checked out of the hotel and headed back to the tube station. This time it was only a few stops to Heathrow. I have to admit, I wasn’t feeling too hot and all the “charm” of the British accents was totally lost on me. The noise and hustle/bustle of the train stations was a pain. All I wanted was to be home!

We got to Heathrow fine, got through security fine and all that. It was interesting watching a couple with a small baby try to get through security with all their baby stuff. They even had to prove that the baby’s bottle of formula was OK by having the baby drink some of it before they could get through security.

Waiting in Heathrow

We found our flight information on the board and sat down to wait. Now you have to realize, it’s about 11:30 at the time, and our flight left around 4:00. Ug. I felt crappy. Virtually ALL seats at airports have arms to you cannot lay down – but we managed to fine a missing arm in front of an air conditioning unit so I snuggled on to the seat and let the cool air blow on me. Although Amber and Patrick were helping me enormously, Nessie sacrified his body to be my pillow. I stayed there for a long time.

I ate an entire plain bagel (wow!) and then we got on the plane. We took off about on time and flew west, which meant that we were flying with sun. So, although we flew for about nine hours, we got to Seattle just about 1 hour after we left London. Of course, to our bodies it was 1:00 a.m. on Friday! I survived the nine hours on water, orange juice and the center of half of an egg sandwich.

Patrick and Amber again grabbed all my luggage and we almost ran to Customs – we were about the 3-5th people to get through (it really pays to not check any luggage) and we headed out to wait for Mike to pick us up. By the time I got home it was about 7:00 p.m. local time but it was 3:00 a.m. to me. It was great to see my dog (Bailey) again, I showered and fell into bed.

It’s great to go on vacation, but there really is no place like home.

 

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

I’m tired… I’ve got a headache… I miss my own bed…I miss my family… I miss my friends… I miss my mochas… I miss my dog!

*sigh*

Things are just different here and while at first it’s quaint and exciting… some of them are now getting tiresome. 

• All the energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs make everything too dim. It’s like living by candlelight during a power outage.
• Everything that plugs into the wall has to be turned on twice – once for the appliance and then there’s a second on-off switch for every wall plug-in – and they’re ALWAYS turned off.
• Rooms are so small – I have to squeeze into a shower, the toilet seats are tiny, there’s usually *just* enough room to squeeze around my bed (if I’m lucky). For confirmation I just measured; there’s 15” between the foot of my bed and the wall.
• Things are so expensive. Monday night near Salisbury I had a tiny room with two twin beds and paid £75 (translation: $112).  A tiny bag of potato chips at a quickie mart is 82 pence ($1.23). We haven’t dared fill up the car with diesel yet – it looks like it’s over $9 a gallon. And yes, that’s a NINE.
• Food had been problematic but most of that is because I’m trying to stay vegetarian. I’ve been living on bread, cheese, eggs, and of course, sweets.  I’m desperate for a salad!
• Every time you turn on water anywhere you hear a pump running. I’m guessing there’s not enough water pressure without?
• The water system in each shower is different. Sometimes there’s a wall-mounted heater in the shower; sometimes not.

On the bright side:

• Amber and Patrick are terrific and put up with all my issues.
• All our room reservations and such have been flawless.
• The weather, although cool, has been beautiful.
• The individual room heaters never seem to work well but I like a cool room anyway.
• The TV sets are tiny, but I haven’t been watching them anyway.
•  My cold is about gone.
• The car is larger than what we usually drive at home.
• We should be in Scotland today (Inverness) after another long day of driving.