England – Our Long Travel Day

May 22-23

It was an interesting start to our trip. Wendy and Tom were kind to pick us up and take us to the airport. We had a direct flight to Amsterdam and then a small flight to Heathrow in London. The Amstersdam flight went smooth, actually, we were surprised at the extent of the free movies available to us. Ironically, we rented and watched Deadpool the previous night and Mike rented The Revenant for the plane. We could watch both movies for free on the plane -d’oh.  

Things got a bit rockier in Amsterdam. Neither of us had slept much on the first flight; Mike didn’t sleep at all. We found our gate in Amsterdam, decided to wait to eat until we got on the plane or even in London, and waited for the flight. Minutes before our flight was supposed to board, Delta cancelled it and a bunch of flights because of weather. I’m not kidding, it was barely raining. At this time, we’d been awake about 20 hours. We hustled to the Delta Transfer counter, and it was a good thing we hurried. Our wait was about two hours, just standing in a ridiculously slow line, hungry and tired. But, there were more than a hundred people that came shortly after us. Considering the “speed” we got through the line, those poor people must have had a 4-5 hour wait. We were happy that Delta could get us on a later flight that day. We ate lunch, on Delta’s tab, and then waited about an hour for our flight.  

We made the flight; our luggage didn’t. And I had lost the luggage receipts in all the paperwork shuffle. Sh*t! Without the receipts, the luggage lady said they were harder to track. Considering we had only cat-napped on the flight to London, I think we handled it pretty well. After completing the paperwork for our luggage, we caught a cab to the hotel. 

At the hotel, the reception wanted proof of our reservation confirmation. That surprised us, and it took a while to find the email confirmation since it was Mike’s company that made the reservations. Also, we learned Mike’s shipment of video equipment hadn’t been delivered to the hotel yet, and he didn’t know where it was. When we got to our room, we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights. We had to call the front desk for help. 

By this time, we had just over an hour before Mike had to be at a meeting. We were wearing the same comfortable, travel clothes we’d been in for over 24 hours and didn’t have any spare clothes in our carry-ons (packing was a bit tricky for this trip). Mike needed, at least, a clean shirt for the meeting. We wandered the streets until we found a crappy, cheap sports store and bought him a crappy, cheap T-shirt.  

The night ended at a local British pub with ale and steak and ale pie. That was cool and a good way to end our “travel day”.  

The beginning

The end.