There is no getting around it. If you are going to an international destination, you have to deal with a long flight. Not my favorite part of the trip, but not as terrible as I expected. We flew out of Portland, had an hour layover in Salt Lake City and then went straight through to England. It's somewhere around a 12 hour flight (all total). We left about 2pm and landed at Heathrow at 10:00 am London time, which is 2am our time. Delta did a great job with service, I might add (even the in flight meals were tasty). Thank goodness for in flight movies, a kindle and downloaded shows from Netflix!
I have to say that the view of London from the air made the whole flight seem worthwhile!!
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| I spotted the Tower Bridge and Tower of London! |
I had heard how big Heathrow airport is and was expecting quite a process to get through customs but it was really quite easy. Hardly any line and we zipped right through! After making our way through customs, we picked up our rental car. You definitely have to feel adventuresome to get a rental car in England! We had talked a lot about transportation for our first week and decided that with all sightseeing we wanted to do we really needed to get a car. Easy for me to say as I wasn't going to be the one driving, lol! Trust me, though, being the navigator isn't so easy either.
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| Everything is opposite! |
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| Driving like a pro |
That first trip out of Heathrow was scary! Not only is Eric sitting on the right side of the car, but we are on the left side of the road and we immediately get to a roundabout!! Right then I wondered if we were going to get our rental car back in one piece after a week of driving?? We had a two hour drive to our hotel, on very little sleep, went through roundabout after roundabout but somehow we made it! We even had a pit stop for a bite to eat and a spot of tea along the way. An interesting thing about England is that they have "services" alongside the highway every once in a while. It could be just a gas station/mini mart, or maybe a hotel/restaurant, but often they are like big US shopping mall food courts. The place we stopped for lunch was a food court style. We ate a place called Patisserie Valerie, which is a UK chain bakery/cafe. It was here that I had my first real English tea.
We made it to our hotel dropped our bags and then went into town for a quick grocery run before passing out for the night.
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| First view of Rutland Water from hotel room |
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| View from bedroom |
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| What an awesome condo! |
I'm so impressed with Eric. It sounds scary driving on opposite side of the road. I love the view from your room!
ReplyDeleteI was impressed too. He did great! The view was amazing!
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