Heathrow

As some of you know, Danielle and I flew back to Oklahoma for a weekend to be with family and remember my Grandma a couple weeks ago. While sad, it was also wonderful to learn more about her younger years, see old pictures, and be together as a big family which was one thing she always enjoyed. This post is about the eye-opening experience we had leaving London's Heathrow airport to get there.

Personally, I don't like air travel at all ... the only good thing it has going for it is the destination, the experience of traveling is usually tolerable at best. In all my years of travel, I have never seen anything like Heathrow. We got up 5:20am (or basically midnight Oklahoma time) to begin our journey, and caught one of the first trains of the day, arriving at the airport at 6:30 for our 9:20 flight. As an appetizer, this is what the check in line looked like for American Airlines after we'd be standing in line for 20 minutes:

Notice that we're standing between metal rails, this is not some freak occurrence, the line is that long regularly. They eventually called our flight at 7:40 (we were half way through the line at this point) and we got pulled into the express line for tardy people. We thought we'd be alright with an hour and a half to go, but the fun was only just beginning.

We went up the escalators to the security checkpoint, and, well, it blew my mind. The line stretched from the actual check point down the hall, past a dozen shops and restaurants, and out some doors.

We joined the procession of people searching vainly for the end of the line mouths wide open. The line went out some doors and made a sharp right, and as we rounded the corner things went from ludicrous to just comically unbelievable. The line went all the way down this hallway and out another set of doors.

We eventually found the end of it on the walkway from the parking garage to the terminal. This is a picture from the end of the security line, across a large construction site, to the Terminal where our flight was going to depart from:

And here's us at the end of line:

In that picture you can just see the neon green jacket of one of the poor people whose job it is, day in and day out to shepherd this monstrosity and explain to people that yes, this really is the security line and yes, even though it doesn't make any sense, they should stand in it. The poor man in line behind us knew what he was getting in to, he had arrived at the airport at 6 for his noon flight. It just wouldn't be complete without a little irony:

Anyway, the green jackets eventually called our flight and we joined the mad rush to the express line back out the doors, down the hall, out the other doors, passed all the shops, etc watching the poor people's faces walking the other way as various shades of disbelief passed over their faces.

The security check point as also unbelievable ... it was a huge row of 30 or 40 metal detectors all of them operating. Once we got through that, it was still over a 1/2 mile to our gate and we had to run as they said our flight was "closing." We got there, and after having our tickets and passports checked by seriously 4 different people, sat down exhausted in our seats. At which point a security guard came on looking for "Daniella" and needing to check her ticket one more time to verify that we were on the plane. Eight hours later, we had a brief and relatively painless stint at O'hare ... never thought I'd ever hear anyone say that. We were so very happy to eventually step out onto the red dirt of Oklahoma.

In conclusion, trains are much more civilized.

Lake District

Happy Halloween! In honor of fall, I thought I'd post the pictures from our trip to the Lake District in Cumbria, the colors of the trees were amazing! We rented a car this time as the train doesn't really run to the lakes which was a bit exciting. Danielle did all the driving since she learned on the left in Trinidad, but we were both a little too used to the wide lanes of US suburbs ... some of the country roads were tiny, and two cars could only just squeeze by between the dry stone walls on both sides! Fortunately our rental was a tiny little car and most other cars on the road were small too, don't know what would have happened if we'd encountered an Escalade out there. This was also our first English B&B experience and Armidale Cottages was truly lovely, we felt more like guests at someone's house.

I tried to mention lake and town names throughout the slideshow in case you wanted to follow along on a map and see where these places are. Enjoy!

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Devon

Just a quick link to pictures of our last train trip out to Devon, we leave for the lake district in a couple hours! Devon was lovely, we got to meet Nicola, Mark, & the boys and also poke around a bit on our own. Danielle got to pet a wild pony on the moor!

Without further ado ... (click to go through to actual slideshow)

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ten thousand leagues across the sea

And we're here. Well-steeped in understanding of tube navigation, experienced in pounding the apartment-hunting pavement (by which I clearly mean 'flat-hunting pavement'), and finally clear on what a quid is. Speaking of which, I will now embark on the rant that has been bubbling and brewing over the last week. My god, London is expensive. I know, everybody told us that before, but nobody said it was actually completely unaffordable. We've done expensive. We've done New York, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara... some of the least affordable places in the world. I mean, if Oprah lives there, it's probably expensive, and somehow we pulled it off. London, on the other hand, is a completely ridiculous real estate bubble. Even people who've lived here for years are surprised every now and then when they check rent prices. They have this fabulous scheme going where they charge rent by the week, so you don't quite realize that you're expected to hand over your soul every month. But when you take £260, multiply by four and then again by two (more math than I'm used to, let me tell you), it adds up. Oh well. It could be worse. I could be mutliplying by ten.

That said, we're not homeless (yet), Aunty is keeping us housed (bless her), and we're working out the logistics of moving to what was our back-up but may now be our best hope. That place, which we'll call 'bay house' for ease of reference, is in Stockwell which is south of the river. It's very close to the tube (~25 minutes to work) but not particularly close to anything else. It's pretty cheap, compared to the other options. The people sound super-friendly - older than we are but a laid-back group of friends who've figured out that they can afford better housing together than alone and happen to have an extra room. Thank goodness. The organizers are out of town on holiday until Friday, so although we've been in email contact we can't have a proper phone conversation or a room viewing until then. We'll let you know how that works out.

Other things we've done... Walked along parts of the Thames, past Whitehall, Westminster, the Old Scotland Yard, the London Eye, various museums I didn't pay enough attention to seeing as I can't remember their names, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace... a lot of walking, basically. We've sat in a number of parks, including St. James Park and Hyde Park. We've taken pictures of ducks. Okay, so I took the pictures of the ducks and Joey stood around and indulged me because he had to because I had the map. We've eaten fish & chips, steak & kidney pie (Joey), steak & ale pie (me) (priorities) and cornish pasties. We've obtained mobile phones. They're mobile phones on this side of the ocean, not cell phones. If you'd like to talk to us, email us and we'll tell you our numbers. You have to work for it. We've figured out how to work the many transformers and converters we need to work our small appliances here (Joey) and blown a few small fuses (me). We've learned to say a few enjoyable sentences with a cockney accent. We've seen a friend or two.

As soon as we're set up and have a wireless internet connection, we'll plug in the VOIP phone so we can be reached on our regular phone number. The Santa Barbara one. It will be great to hear from all folks across the water (but only if you call at decent hours given the time difference, otherwise we'll say one of our new cockney sentences and then hang up). We're 5 hours later than east coast time, and 8 hours later than west coast time, which basically means that late morning/early afternoon over there is late evening here.

Hopefully we'll find the stamina to keep this blog going, pictures and all. Feel free to send words of encouragement, pictures of miscellaneous things, news, etc. Stay tuned!