Finally! The LONG Awaited Trip to London and My First Impressions (Part 1)

FINALLY!!!

 I'm here! Safe 'n Sound! Or as safe/sound as I can be. These last four days have been such a whirlwind, but luckily my wonderful mother gave me a beautiful journal to keep track of all of my wonderful adventures while I couldn't blog them. That being said, I have A LOT to tell you about, and a limited amount of your gracious attention. Therefore I'm going to post several posts, (at least two) representing different days, on the same day. This way I can post as much as I want without making you feel obligated to read one LARGE post, and instead you can break it up or even save a post for another day. So, here I go, starting with the plane and actual trip here...

Tuesday. The day of my departure. The long-awaited day that I would finally move on with my life and plans and travel to the Great country known as Britain. Up until this point I had been half-packed, scattered, and getting quite comfortable in my sedentary, parent-dependent ways. Needless to say I had to get out. The only problem was, my little sister. Bless her heart, she did all she could to make me stay from trying to sabotage my luggage by throwing it back downstairs, to literally hanging off of it, to giving me her adorable "stay here I'll miss you" puppy eyes. But I was set on going, no matter how much her pathetic little voice made me want to stay. (Pic 1: Me at the airport with my wonderful calendar/gift my roommates gave me!)

I arrived at the airport in the evening and, in a valiant effort to minimize jet-lag, tried my best to sleep on my 27min flight to Chicago. This wasn't too bad considering there were only 11 people on this flight, so I got two whole seats to myself! :D Even though I wasn't tired, I did relax for the first time in a while, so it was worth something. In no time I was in O'Hare. Now, my second flight (the one that shot me across the pond) was scheduled to leave in an hour, so of course I thought I'd have time to find my gate, maybe eat something, whatever. Except that I didn't. (Pic 2: Chicago... kinda)

Little did I know, my flight boarded in 20 minutes, which seems like plenty of time until I figured out that it takes 10 minutes to travel from wing B to my gate in wing C! I have no idea when I'm supposed to board, so I'm moseying along behind this guy with a UK backpack who looks like he knows where he's going. Finally, when I arrive at my gate, I'm convinced that I'm early and the people who are boarding now must be for a flight that leaves before mine (there weren't any signs). Not convinced that I'm in the right place, I check my ticket and happen to see that my flight started boarding almost seven minutes ago. Quickly I jump up and prepare to get in line when the intercom announces that passports need a stamp to be let through. Ok, front desk. The nice man there took my passport with a "how's it going?" and with a simple reply of "I'm fine thanks" he asked if I was a singer because I had such a beautiful voice and he should know because he's in music. Well, I was extremely flattered and in the sweetest voice I could muster I told him I wasn't, thanked him, then awkwardly walked away very fast and got in line. (Pic 3: Proof of flight! Passport and Tix on complimentary blanket)


Thankful that I actually made it onto the plane (one step closer to London) I didn't mind standing in line for forever while people (obviously more important than I) found their seats. Plus, this way I got to ogle over the First Class seating without looking too poor. But SERIOUSLY!!! One day I too hope to be important enough to deserve the type of luxury those in First Class feel entitled to. They didn't have seats, they had Freaking BEDS! Their comfy, overly fluffed lazy-boy chairs reclined a considerable amount within their PERSONAL cubbies. Not to mention their LARGE TV screens mounted a perfect distance from where their face will view it and little CUBBIES within their large cubby for socks or their bags of money or whatever those people need little cubbies for. (Wish I had a pic) And Business class wasn't much worse!

As I stood there looking like the broke student I am, a nice British man ahead of me took up a conversation with me. We laughed about how excessive First and Business class were and how our seats would pale in comparison. He was very kind and with every accented syllable he spoke, I became more and more excited about my journeys ahead of me.

Longer story short, I ended up lucking out again as the seat next to me was vacant. It was a three-seater though, so I sort of had one and a half seats I could politely claim. As we took off I grabbed a magazine and instantly knew that my flight was blessed when I saw, on the back cover, Leonardo DiCaprio's face (my love) blown up in an advertisement! With Leo's smoldering eyes safely in the seat pocket, I got as comfortable as I could in my aisle 1 1/2 seat, watched some Star Trek (the newest one/yum Benedict Cumberbatch's face), pretended I was actually on the Starship Enterprise (being from Iowa, going to London, flying in the air, it made sense to me), and tried to get as much cat-nap-worthy sleep as I could. In 8 hours I would land. In 8 hours, my adventure would begin!

To be continued...