Europe 2006 - Getting there is not half the fun

Whoever said that getting there is half the fun did not have to fly over an ocean. Flying is already a big enough hassle, but a transcontinental flight? Sheesh. They are always too early or too late in the day, and the flight itself? It just lasts forever and ever. The fun never stops. Wake me up when teleporters are a reality.

Our last-minute plan to get out of Boston begins with an early AM flight, May 23 2006, from Boston Logan on American Airlines. Our friendly neighbor Nick gives us a lift to Logan as a cab will run us into $60.

Now one thing I did not know was that you can’t use those nice internet-based flight check-in web pages for international flights. At least not on American. So flash back to the prehistoric days of flight and we’re back, waiting in a long queue to check in for our flight. A couple counters and passport checks later (oh, and like 2 hours) and we’re seated on a Boeing 777 headed for London Heathrow.

I fall asleep when my butt hits the seat. I wake up when the flight attendant brings me my “food”. Now, I make it a habit to put down “vegetarian” as my meal preference on all flights that offer food. One reason is that often, what airlines think of as meat does not meet my minimum criteria for food. Thus, the vegetarian (or vegan, or kosher) meals are often better. It made more of a difference back when airlines used to serve food. But since they can’t seem to do anything but lose billions of dollars per second, well, food had to go. But on international flights, we’re big ballin’, so we get food.

On this particular flight, I learned a second, more sinister reason for checking that vegetarian box when buying my tickets: people go crazy when you get special treatment. And crazy people are hilarious. On many airlines, a vegetarian meal is delivered by hand, from the galley, before the main meal service begins. This gives you, the recipient of said vegetarian meal, plenty of time to watch the wacky people around you that witnessed your early meal arrival crane their necks in your direction and whine to every flight attendant that walks by, “why didn’t I get my food like that guy?”

Trust me. When you’ve had two hours of sleep and were just awakened by the thump of a cold plate of “food” placed in the tray table in front of you, it is hilarious in an evil sorta way.

The plane arrives nearly on time to London and we do the dance of the queues. From the passport line to the baggage reclaim line to the customs line. Ah, humans queue up so nicely, don’t we? Since we’re now starving for actual food, we hit up the Marks and Spencer right there in the arrivals terminal. I am met with some serious sticker-shock when I realize that two, cold, prepackaged, refrigerator sandwiches, a couple bottles of water, and a “sushi plate” costs 12 UK pounds. That’s damn near $24. Yikes. Glad they take plastic.

Munch down the awful food and make our way to the London Underground — or as it is more affectionately known as, The Tube. Tube over to Earl’s Court and switch to the District Line to Kensington High Street. A quick 10 minute walk in the cool 50F weather of London gets us to Abbey House Kensington [gmaps], our home for the night.

Abbey House is a budget B&B right near Hyde Park in a rather nice part of London. I had negotiated with the owner over email to leave the keys in a potted plant on the doorstep as we would be arriving near 10PM. All was well, and we rolled our baggage into Room 11, right on the main floor.

We were greeted with a clean, if not spartan, room with four single beds and a creaky door. There was an in-room sink, and we shared bathroom facilities down the hall. We quickly got into bed and sacked out.

Next up, a quick day of London…