Red Eye Special

We now know the true meaning of the saying "red eye special". We are grateful to have arrived in England safely, but not without considerable delay and much ado! The karma of our day was established at 5:00 a.m., on our way to Pangborn airport (in Wenatchee), when we lost a hub cap off the front driver's side of the Mitsubishi. Little did we know, there would be delays and snafus at nearly every turn to England.

We arrived in Seattle on time at 6:45 a.m. and promptly settled in for our scheduled 4 hour lay-over. As if this weren't bad enough, the 4 hours turned into 5 hours, which caused concern because we only had a 90 minute plane change lay-over scheduled in Chicago. This was cutting it close. We did finally board the plane to Chicago, but sat there for an additional 30 minutes because the vehicle pushing the plane away from the gate broke it's tow bar. So, we had to wait for another which was on the opposite side of the airport. Our plane connection in Chicago was now in serious jeopardy. We did make up lost time inflight, but lost it again taxi-ing around the terminal waiting for a gate. We finally deplaned in Chicago with 20 minutes to spare before our London departure. We hurried off the plane and scurried to our assigned gate. I haven't seen Max move so fast since a bull jumped the arena at the Ellensburg Rodeo many years ago and headed directly for me and Max!

We arrived at the gate, only to discover it was loading a plane destined for Japan! A new panic set in. But, there was no need for panic because the London plane was supposed to pull up as soon as the Japan bound plane got out of the way. As it turned out, there was no rush to get to the gate afterall. Unfortunately, you never know these things until after you've nearly given yourself a heart attack by running through the terminal, throwing all caution to common courtesy. Anyway, we sat at the gate for a while until they announced the gate assignment had been changed and we had to move back down the terminal... one gate from where our incoming plane had landed. Aaarrrgh. Finally, we got out of Chicago only about 1 hour late. This didn't really concern us because we knew our daughter, Lana, would wait for us at the airport in London. No worries. We were on the last 7 hour and 30 minute leg of this, already, long day.

Well... when we got to London's Heathrow airport, the fog was so bad that the incoming traffic was so stacked up and there was a 1 hour "holding pattern". Unfortunately, our plane did not have enough fuel to circle for 1 hour, so they diverted us to Birmingham to refuel. We got fueled, no problem, in Birmingham but the tower in London told us it could be another 3 hours before they could put us back into the landing schedule. There were big sighs throughout the plane over that news! Because we were an international flight they could not let us off the plane in Birmingham because they were not prepared to handle the required immigration and customs inspections, so we just had to sit on the plane and wait. Finally, only two hours later, we were cleared to go back to London. We flew off, with our full tanks of fuel, and landed in London 4 1/2 hours after our original scheduled touchdown. Fortunately, I had ordered a wheelchair for Max because of the long walk to the baggage claim and immigration inspection station. What a blessing this was. Our assigned helper literally whizzed us through the airport, to baggage claim, and through customs. At one point, during the ride, Max asked this guy if there were brakes on the wheelchair... and the answer was NO! Anyway, we sailed through customs. We didn't have to wait in line more than 1 minute at any point. This, we could fully appreciate because it routinely takes an hour or more to get through customs at Heathrow.

Lana, bless her soul, was waiting for us with a smille right outside of customs. We were in safe hands. Our strife was not quite over, though. When we got to the parking garage to load our bags, Lana could not remember where she parked the van. She was in such a rush to get in to fetch us that she didn't pay close enough attention to where she parked. Little did she know, there was no rush! We must have spent an hour searching for the van, searching all 5 levels of the parking garage... getting to the point of thinking it may have been stolen. It was finally located, and she took us home via the scenic route of the original Stonehenge and the historic town of Bath...home of the old Roman Bath Houses. We did have a lovely dinner of Lamb, new potatoes, and vegetables at Sally Lunn's Buns, a quaint little restaurant in the heart of Bath. It was nearly dark by the time we got to Bath, so I only took a few pictures which I haven't even looked at yet. I'll tell you more about that, and post some pictures later.

We finally got to bed last night about midnight local time, which was 4:00 Monday afternoon in Wenatchee. This means we had been up for 36 straight hours, with the exception of a few winks on the plane. Thank goodness, our son-in-law, Rob had upgraded us to Business class. This took some of the discomfort out of the extreme length of the trip.

This is the loooong story of our loooong trip to England.

More later...

Cheers,
Carol