Friday, December 01, 2006

Thanksgiving without Turkey

If you are a regular reader of the RM's blog you know that she and I spent Thanksgiving in the UK. Because we could.
The British Airways flight was delightful. Although the pre-flight booking process was irritating in both directions.

Corporate rules are very inflexible as are their computer systems. If you do not do things early enough and properly you are in for plenty of wackiness. That or BA just hates me. Which is also entirely possible.

The food was very bland and I spilled a full cup of water on myself right after the plane took off. On the plus side they gave us a travel toothbrush with a tiny little tube of toothpaste and dark blue socks. Socks!

The flight itself was good although foolishly instead of sleeping the whole way I watched two movies: "Trust the Man" which was not horrible and occassionally quite funny and "The Ant Bully" which was scientifically inaccurate. I would like to see more children's movies about space aliens and mythical creatures because what they are "learning" about "nature" in these movies is misleading at the least.

We arrived at Heathrow at 7am very tired. The RM didn't feel like she was in a foreign country yet b/c airports all look the same. I beg to differ. Looking out the window I could see a tree and a very well tended hedge right on the tarmac (is that what it's called?) I have never seen a hedge, much less a well manicured hedge in an American airport landing or tarmac area.

And after getting off the plane I am confronted with further differences:
This is the symbol for Women's room in at Heathrow:

brit women's room

In fact the men and women's signs are both different in proportion:

britcouple

Walking into the bathroom aka: "toilet" or "loo" I found that the RM and I did not need to pack a toothbrush because in the UK they have:

chewable toothbrush

The RM thought I had lost my mind taking pictures in bathrooms at the airport. I mean we hadn't really seen anything yet. Cracked out from air travel and sleep deprivation, she was probably right.

The guy at the visa line thought that the RM and I were sisters. I was too tired to be able to tell if he was kidding.

We got our luggage and proceeded to discover that the Train and the Underground are two different things and asking for one will not get you directions to the other.

After a long ride on the Underground while it was above ground in which we did much giggling we arrived in London. Our stop was at Piccadilly Circus. Here we dropped off our luggage at the Regent Palace Hotel with a exterior and a name a bit more grandiose than it's modest interior and went out to get breakfast and see the Rosetta Stone.

On the way we ran into a Tardis.

me & phonebooth

Sadly, it was not working and disappointly small on the inside. In fact, I couldn't even figure out how to use it as a phone booth either for most of the trip. It just kept eating my coins and giving nothing back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Damn machine! ate my coins too *grumble*