English coutryside

I flew into London yesterday...or was it the day before? I flew British Airways and was looking forward to a good flight. All in all I don't really like flying long distances and was curious to see if British Airways was really any better than Air Canada. The verdict: not really.

I took a cab to the airport because I was carrying a gigantic bag of presents for my hosts. When I got the airport 2 hours early, I found the British Airways check-in line so long that it wove all the way through its waiting queue section and the continued all the way to near the end wall of the terminal. When I found the end and then asked the question that I subsequently got asked many times: Is this the line for British Airways? I guess that people couldn't believe it was so long. Eventually they split the line by flight but it still took me over an hour to get checked in.

Security was surprisingly fast and they didn't even ask me to turn on my cd player or camera. I bought a couple of boxes of maple candy for Dana and Rachel and Pieter (and winced at the cost because I had been looking for a box for a couple of days but ran out of time). I ended up with a middle seat (in a side bay). Luckily the people next to me were really nice. The plane was a 777 and each seat had a tv screen with choiced about what you could see. There was also a map channel where you could track the progress of the flight and get weather reports about where you were going. Kind of mesmerizing. Like the weather channel on mute and with the same story over and over again. Dinner was salmon and they offered everybody complimentary wine because of a late start! Air Canada would never do that... But...the seats were so close to each other and we had so little let room that it was difficult to get in and out especially when seats were reclined. I was surprised about that. That is a long time to be that squished.

We landed late because we had to circle the airport for 20 minutes. Then I seriously underestimated how long it would take me to get to Cambridge. First we had to get onto these little buses to get the Termial 4 from the plane. Then we had to go through customs and get our luggage. Then I had to find how to get to the other terminals. Then I had to wait for that Heathrow Express train. Once that train arrived we all had to wait for a few minutes while they did some kind of security sweep. Didn't look like anything to me. When I got to termial 2 I had to find the bus station. Signs are not very clear and there aren't enough people to ask questions. Eventually I figured out how to buy a ticket to Cambridge. The woman sold me a ticket on the milk run bus and when I showed the driver my ticket and told him where I was going, he told me that the bus next to him would have gotten me there 90 minutes earlier! But apparently there was nothing I could do. And it was 4am for me and I had hardly slept. This driver was pretty short and rude to this poor man travelling with two bitchy teenagers and I felt pretty sorry for him especially since he was nice to me (in fact lots of men were...play the single girl card when necessary-I have no pride).

Anyway, got to Cambridge and has to wait a while for the local bus. It twisted through Cambridge for a while and very soon I was at Mark and Lindsay's place. Their kids have really grown. Sean is a bigger version of himself and I can't get over how much a baby changes from six months to one year. She is super cute and talks all the time. No one has any idea what she is saying :)

Today we drove up to a beach on the North Sea. The beaches all have these concrete boardwalks with tons of cheesy money-sucking kids games and candy stores and rides and stuff to distract people. It was pretty cold but we played in the sand for a while and splashed in the water. After that we went to Castle Rising Castle and toured around. Neat standard castle built in various stages since the 1400s or so. The grounds are pretty and I read Sean a Curious George story while sitting on the ruines of an old chapel. I tried to stay awake on the drive home but sadly Lindsay had only Sean to talk to.

Good times so far. Gotta go help Lindsay with dinner and Sean wants to play games on the computer.