Boarding the plane was pretty darn quick. It was all done by facial recognition … except when it wasn’t. The camera didn’t see to recognize Dan! He had to then have his passport scanned and all was well.

We got to our sets (row 5, Polaris). I know, I know, fancy schmantzy … but these days I just can’t deal with tight spaces and the inability to sleep. Plus I blame my brother Greg who got us seats in business class once. He suggested we wouldn’t be able to go back and he’s mostly right (we do premium economy on occasion).

We were offered a drink. Speaking wine for me, water for Dan. Yep, he lives on the edge. Then it was a bit of sitting, followed by taxiing, followed by taking off. It was smooth until there was mild turbulence, which they apologetically said would delay our meal. Not that we were hungry anyway.

After a bit of time I looked at my watch. 4:20 AM.

No, not in San Francisco. But when I get on a plane I set the watch and iPad to the destination time, hoping it will get me to accept the huge eight hour time change.

I did a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, and read a bit, but my brain really didn’t want to concentrate on anything. I actually wanted to sleep! Sort of a good thing, but there was dinner to eat. What to do? (Some people suggest you do NOT eat meals on the plane: I’ve yet to convince myself to do that.)

What to do was start writing this.

Food was a bit late, due to turbulence, according to the announcement, but eventually we received our drink and warm nuts, followed by the appetizer. That appetizer was lovely, and was enough for a full meal as far as I was concerned. That turned out to be a good thing: our dinners were not quite so appealing.

After dinner it was lights out for the two of us, and we did a good amount of sleeping. Dan is, in fact, continuing to sleep as I type this. But it’s 11:35 AM at our destination so I’d prefer to try to stay awake now. (It’s 3:35 AM at home.)

Where we are:

Breakfast was served near the end of the flight. I would have preferred lunch, since it was lunch time at our destination, but since I only eat two meals a day anyway, I sort of tried to convince myself it was lunch. It was, as usual, too much food and not terrifically exciting.

This flight really flew by. Yep, that’s about how funny I can be! And then we arrived.

Hello Heathrow!

We went through the passport control in mere minutes, but oh all the walking one does before and after that. It’s a great way to get steps in after such a long sit, though!

Then it was Heathrow Express to Paddington Station.

From there we had to find our way to our hotel via the tube. It took a while, but we did figure out how to do that.

Oh … but it DID take us a while to walk from Euston Station to our hotel. One of use (me!) was using a map app and got confused. Then someone else (he!) took over and managed to also get confused for a bit. We figure this is par for the course and today we had a number of “oops!” moments so perhaps we got it out of our systems early. Who knows? but we got there. Eventually.

Side note: we had to opt for roller bags due to the things we (Dan, really) needed. I’m so torn between the roller bag and our packs. My back isn’t great, and I have neck problems, so a pack hurts, but it sure isn’t fun carrying luggage up stairs, and there were a lot of stairs to get from one place in the tube to another.

Our hotel is nothing exciting, but it will suffice: we are only here for one night and tomorrow we take a night train to our destination. London was just a quick stop.

After dropping off our stuff we went to find an ATM and then a pub. Well, except I first realized I’d left my phone in the room so we had to go back. Another mistake!

ATM was found, money was pulled from there, and off to The Lamb we went. Dan ordered fish and chips and I had a chicken and leek pie. Both were yummy pub food and just what we wanted for our first night here.

Cheers!

On our walk back to the hotel we went past this interesting building.

And then it was time to finish this blog, post my daily flora photo, and hit the hay.

I’m not sure I will be able to post every day: it will depend upon time and internet access. But I will actually write every day so I can post later if things don’t work.

For now … cheerio!