London

Oh my. We all made it to London just fine. But boy, are we pooped. Our plane left San Francisco at 7:00 pm on Thursday and flew for 9 hours. We landed in London around 1:00 pm on Friday. Virgin-Atlantic was fine and the flight was uneventful. We flew in the “Upper Class” section which meant that we were on the second floor of the plane in the “bulge” of the 747, and that our seats converted into beds. We had something similar when we flew last year with British Airways, but the beds then were a little too small and I froze most of the time I was trying to sleep. Virgin-Atlantic had longer beds and I think they were a bit wider too. I also had a duvet as a cover so I was warm enough. But… the bed was rock hard! My shoulders never hurt so much. Anyway… I did get about 4 hours of poor sleep, which I think is about 3 hours more than Patrick got and 4 hours more than Amber got. We’re all grumpy.

Once we landed we began a l-o-n-g walk to immigrations, where the clerk wanted the exact address of where we were staying. We told her we didn’t have the address since we’d stayed there before. She was not happy. Amber pulled out an inch of printouts for our trip and at that point the immigration lady gave up and let us in. Whew. Next we had to go through customs, which consisted of walking through a passageway under the sign “Nothing to Declare”. Please don’t tell anyone that I smuggled in carrots and an orange.

Then another l-o-n-g walk to the tube station. I think we were up to a mile of walking by this point. I needed to “top off” my “Oyster” card from last year, and the darned machines would not cooperate with us. Finally we got help and it ends up that even though the machines *say* that you can add a lot of money to your card, there’s really a 10 pound imit.

We found our Derwent Apartment just fine – praise be – it’s right by a tube station and there are no stairs into the apartment!

We dropped off bags and started walking toward a big Tesco store so we could stock up on toiletries and food. Of course, we went the wrong way and ended up at a baby Tesco and did the best we could. The walk to Tesco and back was 3 miles – and after all the walking at the airport and our lack of sleep… it was not pretty.

We stopped at a burger joint near our apartment where we’d had great food last year. I got falafel on pita bread, and sadly it wasn’t nearly as good as before. Oh well.

How tired am I? I haven’t taken even 1 photo since the plane took off in San Francisco.

So, to sum up the last 24 hours…

Patrick says: The beds were so nice on Virgin-Atlantic; I could stretch out…but my contacts were killing me.

Amber says: My feet hurt and I’m tried.

and I say: Where’s my bed?