London,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
So yesterday I spent about 17 hours traveling from Atlanta to Dallas to London, 23 if you count lost hours. I met up with Jon, his girlfriend Jill, and her friend Kelly in Dallas Fort Worth, and we all got on the same flight to London. Apparently our seats got screwed up, and I was initially put 10 rows behind the others, but we convinced the chick behind the counter to move me to the row in front of Jon. As it would turn out this seat lie between an enormously obese couple. I think that flight would have been quite memorable, as the 4 minutes I sat there feeling like a remora caught between two frisky beluga whales, and considering whether I could survive 8 hrs in that squashed position, will make me always grateful for that uncommon thing called human kindness. You see, Jon noticed that behind him was a dude who seemed to be traveling alone, and who had an empty seat next to him. So, he asked if the guy would switch seats with him. Fortunately the guy assented and instead of being ripped in half by two opposing gravitational forces, I got to sit next to Jon and a pretty, blond Lithuanian triple jumper whose husband was apparently in the last Olympics and runs the marathon at a 5 min pace. So no matter how much I hate long flights, I've got NOthing to complain about, I guess.
We arrived in London today at 10am local time, or 4 in the morning my-exhausted-brain time. Like most of the transatlantic trips I've taken, I probably slept 15 or 20 winks max. Anyway, from Gatwick we took a train into London and then a tube to Gloucester station, where we quickly headed to our room and Kelly and I went comatose for 3 hours while Jon and Jill went on walkabout. When I got up at around 3:30, Kelly and I met up with Jon and we all went to Kensington Gardens to play Frisbee and lounge about a bit. Then we were a bit peckish, so we headed for some local pub grub and we'll probably be hitting the sack pretty soon. Unfortunately we were all pretty tired to do too much site-seeing in London today, and tomorrow we'll grab a morning train to Brugge, Belgium. Really excited about getting a full night's rest and seeing some gorgeous sites tomorrow. More on that later.
Ciao for now,
Matt
