London - Day 1 - "Arrival"

22 December 2006

Karen got out of work at 2:45 pm, and (since we *assumed* there would be a lot of holiday traffic on the Dulles Toll road and at the airport) we went straightaway.

Check-in was mostly harmless (done on-line the night before, with really nice seats reserved for out 10 pm flight), except that no one was manning the Fast Bag Drop desk at the British Airways counter. We checked in via the Club World / First desk instead, and moved on to a wonderfully easy security screening.

We began waiting patiently at gate D32 at 4 pm (a wait we reckoned at 6 hours), only to find out that our flight was being pushed back until midnight. At this point all thoughts of waiting till we boarded to eat fled, and we went to fake-Moe's for a burger and a rueban (the rueban wasn't for me, surprisingly). We played a game of cribbage which left Karen hungering for revenge, and returned to our gate to wait.

There were several piercingly loud children running around (or sitting around in their own filth, or whatever) and CNN was playing all sorts of ridiculous Christian nonsense (including an interview with some prostletizer or something). It was not a pleasant wait.

We both (while waiting) contacted our families to say good-bye and happy christmas, and waited around increasingly impatiently to board.

And when we finally reached the front of the really long like, guess what: our seats had been changed. I wasn't happy about this at all (though I said nothing), and even though the flight attendant said they were "lovely seats" and we were told to go upstairs to the flight deck, it still took seeing them for it to finally sinke in: WE WERE UPGRADED! That's right, we got bumped from Premier Ecconomy to Club World. The fully reclining seats, champagne when you sit down, night cap, tuck in service, etc upgrade of a lifetime. Unbelievably COOL! Extremely Fantastic! (Very Nice!)

Our seats (sort of) faced eachother (Karen was by the window). We were given hot towels, a freshening-up bag with lotions, socks, earplugs, and eye mask, champagne and orange juice (separately, but YUM! together...) and a light dinner (as part of the "Tuck-in Service"). The meal was a vegetable sandwich (Karen) and a steak sandwich (me), but we shared them. Chocolates and salted macadamia nuts rounded it out.

We watched Invincible (though Karen napped through it), and I took a bit of a nap (listening to their classical station and enjoying the noise cancellation of the head phones).

Breakfast was served within an hour and a half of landing (I don't remember what I had), and my pen slipped down into my seat. This is a Cross pen I received as a high school graduation present, so I didn't want to write it off (heh heh).

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23 December 2007

When we landed, we stood by the plane door, and waited for a couple of engineers to arrive. It took them about half an hour (and a lot of reaching from both ends, and some lying down, and a "spider tool" to finally retrieve the pen, but retrieve it they did).

After that, we went through a very painless customs, grabbed our bags, and headed down to the tube.

We had to pay £6 (total) for passes, as my pre-ordered passes were the wrong zone. And we ended up not using them at all, mores the pity. We chatted with a nice man for a little while (he got on with his three kids and their bad-smelling candy); they were going to the Natural History Museum. We even had a brief conversation about Pratchett (since there were ads in most of the tube stations for SkyOne's Hogfather (starring Baldric!)).

We switched from Picadilly to District/Circle line at Earl's Court, and got off at Victoria. We had a bit of trouble orienting, but were eventually able to figure things out enough (verifying by asking a coach driver) to get to the Caswell Hotel.

They gave us a room up one filght of steps for the first nigh, but after that we were on the top floor (77 steps up) for the remaining 13. (The manager always seemed to be smiling through his teeth, as the saying goes, and was never really that polite to us (but not overtly rude).) We were *told* that if we left our bags at the desk the next morning then they would be taken up to our room during the day. We believed him, but I'll rant more on this later...

We walked back up to Victoria Station and looked around outside. Wicked was playing right across the street, and we couldn't resist ourselves (IDINA MENZEL!!!!). We dropped £110 on tickets (row B 37 and 38) to the 7:30 show, then went back across the street to the news stand to buy our London A-Z (said "A to Zed"). We grabbed a sausage roll at a pasty place, then went to our show. It was AMAZING!!! Idina Menzel was fantastic. Spectacular even!

There was a couple and their high school senior-aged daughter behind us (from Kentucky) and we chatted with them before the show and during the interval. The girl *was* harmony from the Buffy-verse, which was mildly disturbing. They were fine before the show, but I was pretty annoyed by them at the interval. Still, Americans, it's always nice to have that connection to home, I guess. Maybe.

Then back to the hotel room, "watched" an interview with Dame Judy, and zonked out soundly.