The Trip, Part 1

I'm going to do this in pieces, to make sure that I'm doing proper justice to everything, and to keep myself from burning out on the memories. That being said, here's the first part of my story.

Jacquii and I left Harrisburg around 3:30 on September 26. Marie's dad had agreed to take us to BWI, and for that I am eternally grateful. My parents were in Georgia for the week, so it saved me the time and expense of parking my car down there while we were gone. We got to the airport around 6, and were able to get seated together on the flight (this had been in question previously because we booked our tickets seperately).

After killing the remaining 2 unbearable hours in the airport, we finally got on the plane, and with the flight attendants we were greeted to our first british accents. They were cute, too, which was a big plus. I was also thrilled to discover that we had our own little video screens in the seatback in front of us, and that along with 18 channels of in-flight programming, there was a real-time map showing exactly where the plane was, how fast the plane was moving, and how long until we got to London. This seemed to make the trip go by faster, because we could actually watch our progress up the coast and across the ocean.

Also, as far as airplane food goes, the meal was quite tasty. In addition to free beer and wine, we had a very palatable lasagna for dinner. However, the flight was very dull, not least because it was overnight and over the ocean, so there was nothing to see. Except, we reached Ireland just about dawn, and, at least from 35K feet, that country is as green as you might imagine.

Not too long after that, we got to England and, more importantly London. Let me tell you, London is a huge, sprawling city. I mean, I knew it was a big place, but I really had no idea until we flew into it. I've been composing this descriptiong since we first landed, and hopefully it will make sense.

Roughly speaking, Heathrow is on the western side of London, and planes land flying East-West. Because we were coming from the West, our pilot took us to the eastern side of the city and executed a banking turn to turn us around. This tipped us up on our side looking right down at the city, for a spectacular view like something from a postcard, with the Thames snaking its way through the middle.

Then, we landed, and that's when the real fun began. I had been saying from the beginning that the hardest part of the whole trip was going to be getting from the airport to the train station in time for the noon train to Edinburgh. All I'm going to say is that our plane was about half an hour early getting to Heathrow, and we got on the train less than four minutes before it pulled out.

That was a helluva lot of travelling, but we made it, and the rest is a story for another day.