Heading Out | Touring the U.K. 2019

Tuesday, September 10th, 2019

LOCATION: Home

ITINERARY:
Get to the airport in time to make it through all of the checks and get to our flight. In reality, we needn't have worried about getting to the airport early.

JOURNEL ENTRY:
We were waiting for Brian to get home from work. It was 2:45pm and we were getting a little panicked, since he gets off work at 2:30pm and he still wasn't home. [He works 5 minutes away. We were a bit nervous.]

He FINALLY showed up. We left the house shortly after 3pm. The drive to O'Hare was pretty uneventful. Marissa was going to visit a friend in D.C., so we got her bags checked in and got her in the right line to get through security at the airport. Then we went to the international line and began checking in our bags.

That's when Phil noticed there was an inch of water in his clar backpack. Luckily, there was only his backup battery that wasn't sealed in plastic, bet he was able to remove it before it was ruined.

After getting through security, we met up with Marissa to walk around and get a bite to eat. Stopped at the "Wolfgang Puck" restaurant. Then we walked back to Marissa's gate and said our goodbyes.

When heading to our gate, we received another text that the gate had changed, again!! For the first two gate changes, we didn't know why they happened. At the third gate, they couldn't get the passenger loading door open. [There were also cargo loading trailers and other items parked in the spot where the plane usually sits. Making me think getting the door open was the least of their problems.]

At the fourth gate, they were waiting on another plane in the way that had issues. After 3.5 hours of gate changes and delays, we took off. We weren't sitting together, so we wheeled and dealed with some very kind fellow passengers and go to seats together. [Not sure why the airline thinks this is a good idea. You get the privalege of paying an extra fee to change your seat assignment.]

The flight was uneventful. It was only 6 hours and 35 minutes instead of 7 hours and 45 minutes because of a 145mph tail wind. [Not a bad deal at 37,000 feet!]

After getting our baggage, we found the Underground and bought our Oyster Cards. Took the Piccadilly Line and got off at Earl's Court. Starting to walk to the hotel, Lexhan Gardens and asked for help to find it. Received good directions but didn't know how to properly cross the busy streets.

[Near Death Experience(NDE) #1 - Phil told Barb to cross, but there was a huge double-decker buss going at a super fast pace. Barb put her foot on the street and the bus blared his horn. Enough to jump back in horror. A near miss was averted!! [The street has two lanes going in each direction. Each direction is controlled by a separate walk light and there's an island in the middle for you to stand on while traffic whizz's by. I saw the green "Walk" light on the other side of the intersection and thought the whole path was clear. Never did look to see what was coming. Could have been a very short trip. :/]

Got to the hotel[a bit after the 2pm check-in time] and crahsed for 3 hours. Got up and took the Underground Piccadilly Line to Piccadilly Circus (Circus means circle in Latin.). Piccadilly Circus is no longer a circle, but it's still very popular. It's similar to "Times Square" in New York.

IMAGES

Click on the photo to see the full sized image.

I take a certain amount of comfort when I'm able to get all of our luggage to fit in the trunk of the car. Not sure why, but it's like someone is telling us we're doing it right. Or maybe I'm just grasping for any sign that what we're about to do is NOT going to end up very badly. :)

Marissa has some luggage in the mix as well so I extrapolate that to mean that everything is going to go perfectly. :)

On the way to London's Heathrow Airport, we flew on a Boeing 787. As indicated in Barb's journal entry, the airline thought it would be in their best interest to NOT seat couples together. They were wrong!!

Anyone who's flown anywhere in recent years has had the pleasure of watching realtime video showing exactly where you are, how high you are and how long it's going to take to get to your destination. Or you could watch movies. I switched between both sources just to see how we were doing from time to time. You can click on a the picture above to see where we were.

In case you're wondering, riding on a bigger plane does not indicate larger seats. Unless you're in First Class. This was definitely true on our ride home on an Airbus A380!!

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