London & anger
Pretty soon all my anger and frustration is going to come out. I try to be nice and I try to hide it, but I have so much frustration built up towards someone it's not going to be able to be hidden much longer. In the beginning I was able to brush it off and get over it, but as time goes on it's kind of hard to do that. People tell me to speak up, but I know me... and when I'm mad I say stuff I dont mean, and things come out the wrong way. I just cause more problems because of my attitude. So therefore, I've let this all build up and now I'm to the point where it's kind of too late to really say anything. Because this person's response will be "you should've said something earlier." Yes, I could have said something earlier, but I'm pretty patient. I can brush things off pretty easily. But apparently this person took advantage of that, which just pisses me off even more. So if and when I do say something it's not going to be very pretty, cause it's a lot of anger that's going to be let out. Let's just say, what you did may have really effed things up. Because you not only pissed off me, you also pissed off several other people too.
Moving on...
So London... It didnt start off that bad. Our flight there was delayed like 2 hours, which isnt that big of a deal. I slept at the airport anyway, and I slept most of the flight over. When we finally arrived at the hotel, my parents and I planned to relax for a little bit then tour the neighborhood. But that never happened, we ended sleeping until like 8:00. So we just got up, went out to dinner and came home. I didnt sleep much that night because I took like a 5 hour nap. So I was up and ready to go at 2am. On Monday we went to the War Rooms. They're in the bunker where Winston Churchill hid and did all his work from during WWII. That was really interesting. They still have a lot of the stuff that was there from the war. His bedroom, office, kitchen, etc. are the exact same way they were when he abandonned it. After that we went to Westminster Abbey. I didnt find that all that thrilling. It was pretty and everything, but it wasnt worth waiting over an hour for. But it's something you have to do while you're there.
Tuesday we went to the Tower of London and the London Eye (the ferris wheel that goes like 20 stories high and you can see all of London). Then we went out to dinner with Jimmy and Sam. It was good to see them, but they're not the most exciting people ever. Before I went over there I was excited to get to see my cousin, but after dinner I realized that if we hadnt seen them it was nothing that I would've been upset over. Oh well...
My bed was really uncomfortable and I barely slept, so Wednesday morning I didnt want to get up for breakfast, so my parents went and then ended up ditching me. They went to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and I did the Princess Diana Memorial Walk. This is when it all goes downhill... First off, I was pissed because the walk was not that interesting. All you do is just walk through St. James Park and Hyde Park. There's one little part that has flowers, which are really pretty. And then the fountain they built for her is closed because it's broken (how nice... you build it for her and then it breaks like a year later...) Anyway, so after walking for several hours and probably several miles I gave up. When I finally found an exit to the park, I was lucky enough to see the tube (subway) station right across the street. As I was waiting at the light to cross, I got stung by something. I dont know what it was, but it hurt like a bitch and it left the stinger in my finger. There were like 3 people next to me, they heard me say 'Ow' and they saw my trying to pull the stinger out of my finger. Instead of asking if I was ok or if I needed help or anything, they just decided to stand there and stare at me. Jerks. I didnt know if I should find a cop or try to find ice or whatever, so I just ran to the station to get home quickly. At this point, my finger had already swelled up so much that my ring was stuck on my finger so I couldnt get that off to make sure it didnt cut off the circulation. I didnt realize that I had walked so far that I was nowhere near my hotel. I got into the station and realized I was on a different line. So I had to wait several stops to switch over and then wait quite a few other stops to get to my station. At this point the pain was bad that I was holding back tears (I hate crying in front of people) and whatever reaction I was having was making me really lightheaded, nauseous and really sweaty. That must've been a sight for those people. Some American (they absolutely hate Americans over there) holding her hand, trying to also fan herself to get some kind of air so that she didnt pass out, sitting there with tears in her eyes. When I finally got off the train, I ran back to the hotel. When I walked into the room, I started to cry. I couldnt even talk, so all I did was hold out my hand to show my mother. She didnt even have to ask, cause she saw how swollen my finger was, and at that time my whole hand was starting to swell up. All my dad had to say was that I'm a baby and all I knew how to do was wait to get home to cry... right, and people wonder why I hate him so much. Not once did he ask if I was ok or if I needed anything. My mother went and got me ice. But I couldnt even use it. Everytime I got the part of my finger that was stung in it it would hurt even more. That night (even though I was still in a lot of pain) my mother and I went on a Pub Walk. We went to 3 famous pubs in London. We saw where they filmed the scene in Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise is at the pub, another one was where Charles Dickens wrote one of his books, and the 3rd one is right next to an alley where Harry Potter 3 is filmed, and I think someone in Shakespeare's family had some kind of relation to it. Best part of the night was what my mother said: "This is weird... a mother bonding with her 20 year old daughter by going on a pub crawl." Yea, she was definitely a little tipsy... she cant hold the alcohol :) I personally just thought the beer was gross and had to force myself to drink it. So if any of you go over to London, dont drink the English beer.
Thursday we tried to go to St. Paul's Cathedral (I think that's where Princess Diana was married). But they're doing a lot of renovations and stuff, so a lot of stuff is covered or blocked. We decided it wasnt worth the money because we couldnt see more than half the cathedral. So instead we tried to get tickets to see a show, but nothing good was playing for the matinee. So instead we went shopping. The souvenires over there suck. There was nothing that appealing or worth buying. I got myself a shotglass and a necklace. Then that night we went on a Jack the Ripper tour. It took us to the 5 locations that he murdered the prostitutes, and we even saw some of their houses. That was really interesting, but it gross to hear what he did to the people. But it was all ruined when my mother asked how they came to that conclusion and he said every tour has a different conclusion.
Now, Friday is where the shit hit the fan. We boarded the plane and the air conditioning in the back part of the plane broke. So they had to fix that. They said it would take like a half hour and it took an hour and a half. As they were fixing that, they found some battery that needed to be changed. But they had to order the battery which took an hour and a half, and then they had to change it. Finally, we started to taxi so we could take off and the pilot got a light on his board they he didnt know what it was. So he ended up cancelling the flight. So after 5 hours of sitting on the runway and stuck in the plane, the flight was cancelled. Needless to say, we were all very pissed. It was amazing though how quickly all the passengers became friends. So they eventually got us all off of the plane, after they got the first class passengers off because they were going to put them on another flight that was going into JFK. They put us on a shuttle to go into a room to get our boarding passes back. Now in those 5 hours you would think they could get our tickets and hand them out on the plane, but no, that would make too much sense. At this point, 2 other people and I were so pissed off we just started making jokes about it. The guy took out his video camera and started taping, and the other girl (which I found out is from La Salle) were going to use it and put it on the TV station there. Turns out the guy wasnt really joking around like we were. I think he's going to go after the airline for negligence. It took forever to get everybody their tickets and get us to the airport. We got to the hotel finally at like 11:30 (and our flight was supposed to take off at 4...). After we checked in, there were 6 of us on the elevator. The guy who pushed the button said "Now wouldnt it be funny if the lift stopped working?" And at that very second it did indeed stop working. At that point I was so tired and so pissed at the airline, I wanted to hit him. Luckily one of the ladies one the elevator is from London and had her cell phone. So she called the desk, cause no one was answering the emergency bell (how convenient). It took 3 calls to the front desk to finally get some help. The first 2 times they never told the manager about the problem. So 20 minutes later we finally got out of there. So we went to our rooms, then went down to dinner. I havent decided if the dinner was actually really good or I was just really hungry. But it doesnt matter, because we finally had food and I had my own room that night.
The next morning we had to be in the lobby to get the bus back to the airport at 7:45. Except the assholes only sent 1 bus for 250 people. So instead of it taking like a half hour to get us all there (there was a lot of traffic), it took like 2 hours. Our flight was at 11 (even though we were also told 8,9 and 10:00) and we didnt even have a gate to go to until 10:20. We didnt have everybody boarded until almost noon. Then they realized that people were missing, so for some reason they were searching for those passengers because they never told them they were switching to another flight. When they gave up, we had to wait to get their luggage off of the plane. Then we started to pull out and they discovered we had luggage on the plane from another flight, so we yet again had to wait to get that off. So eventually we took off a little after 1:00.
Now this whole time, my sister was at home trying to call the airline to find out what was going on. They had given us message cards for us if we wanted them to call anyone, but never called anybody... go figure. Everytime my sister called they told her that they couldnt give her any information and that she wouldnt until after 7pm. My sister finally got so pissed off and so upset that she asked if she had to turn on the television to hear if a plane had crashed. The bitch wouldnt tell her if we were in the air, on the runway or missing somewhere. And then she finally somehow got the number to our hotel and found out that they didnt put 3/4 of us into the computer because there were so many of us. But luckily they had me put in there and she got through to me in my room. Usually I dont care if I talk to her, but I could tell how upset she was at that point, so it felt good to talk to her. And then on Saturday, they wouldnt tell her what time we took off, or when we were supposed to land. They told her we were supposed to land at 10pm Saturday night. Bastards...We were supposed to land at 6:40 Friday night... we landed at 4:00 Saturday afternoon.
Some other stuff from the flight: all the cheering we did when we FINALLY took off (on the 3rd try between the 2 days), the booing everytime the pilot or flight attendant came on the PA. me and a few other people purposely pissing off the flight attendants... one person would ask for something to drink, and then as soon as she came back with that the person next to them would ask... we had her run back and forth a good 5 or 6 times before the humor just died. And the pool that some guy started. We had a pool to see what time we would finally land in Newark. For $1 you could place your bet... there was a lot of money in that bag when he was done. And the website that the guy who was videotaping made. He's compiling a list of complaints and letters that we're all going to send to Virgin Atlantic, and I'm not sure what else he's going to do with it. But after seeing everything he did in those 2 days, it's going to be a very humorous site. Oh yea, one couple missed a wedding, someone missed a funeral and the same guy's mother was in the hospital here in the states, quite a few people missed their connecting flights, and the people they took from first class to put on another flight never got on that flight because the flight attendants refused to do another flight, so they were also put up in a hotel for a flight early the next morning. We all got vouchers for 50% off our next flight, and several of us were ready to have a bonfire with them. But then we decided it wouldnt be a good idea to hold it on the plane... I cant even use mine because the lady only signed half of the pile. So when I got on the plane and realized I had one that was unsigned, I asked the flight attendant what to do, and of course she told me she didnt know. My response was "it doesnt matter, I was just curious... I refuse to use this or ever use your airline again... I'm just going home to burn it." She just looked at me with this shocked look. Tough shit, I was pissed. And of course all the jokes that we were making and the good time we had sitting on the plane waiting to see what screw up they would come up with next. I know there's more, but I dont remember right now... Maybe when I remember I'll post, but dont count on it.
This was definitely a memorable trip... unfortunately one filled with a lot of bad memories... I'm definitely not flying anytime soon, and never flying Virgin Atlantic ever again.
Until next time...
Moving on...
So London... It didnt start off that bad. Our flight there was delayed like 2 hours, which isnt that big of a deal. I slept at the airport anyway, and I slept most of the flight over. When we finally arrived at the hotel, my parents and I planned to relax for a little bit then tour the neighborhood. But that never happened, we ended sleeping until like 8:00. So we just got up, went out to dinner and came home. I didnt sleep much that night because I took like a 5 hour nap. So I was up and ready to go at 2am. On Monday we went to the War Rooms. They're in the bunker where Winston Churchill hid and did all his work from during WWII. That was really interesting. They still have a lot of the stuff that was there from the war. His bedroom, office, kitchen, etc. are the exact same way they were when he abandonned it. After that we went to Westminster Abbey. I didnt find that all that thrilling. It was pretty and everything, but it wasnt worth waiting over an hour for. But it's something you have to do while you're there.
Tuesday we went to the Tower of London and the London Eye (the ferris wheel that goes like 20 stories high and you can see all of London). Then we went out to dinner with Jimmy and Sam. It was good to see them, but they're not the most exciting people ever. Before I went over there I was excited to get to see my cousin, but after dinner I realized that if we hadnt seen them it was nothing that I would've been upset over. Oh well...
My bed was really uncomfortable and I barely slept, so Wednesday morning I didnt want to get up for breakfast, so my parents went and then ended up ditching me. They went to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and I did the Princess Diana Memorial Walk. This is when it all goes downhill... First off, I was pissed because the walk was not that interesting. All you do is just walk through St. James Park and Hyde Park. There's one little part that has flowers, which are really pretty. And then the fountain they built for her is closed because it's broken (how nice... you build it for her and then it breaks like a year later...) Anyway, so after walking for several hours and probably several miles I gave up. When I finally found an exit to the park, I was lucky enough to see the tube (subway) station right across the street. As I was waiting at the light to cross, I got stung by something. I dont know what it was, but it hurt like a bitch and it left the stinger in my finger. There were like 3 people next to me, they heard me say 'Ow' and they saw my trying to pull the stinger out of my finger. Instead of asking if I was ok or if I needed help or anything, they just decided to stand there and stare at me. Jerks. I didnt know if I should find a cop or try to find ice or whatever, so I just ran to the station to get home quickly. At this point, my finger had already swelled up so much that my ring was stuck on my finger so I couldnt get that off to make sure it didnt cut off the circulation. I didnt realize that I had walked so far that I was nowhere near my hotel. I got into the station and realized I was on a different line. So I had to wait several stops to switch over and then wait quite a few other stops to get to my station. At this point the pain was bad that I was holding back tears (I hate crying in front of people) and whatever reaction I was having was making me really lightheaded, nauseous and really sweaty. That must've been a sight for those people. Some American (they absolutely hate Americans over there) holding her hand, trying to also fan herself to get some kind of air so that she didnt pass out, sitting there with tears in her eyes. When I finally got off the train, I ran back to the hotel. When I walked into the room, I started to cry. I couldnt even talk, so all I did was hold out my hand to show my mother. She didnt even have to ask, cause she saw how swollen my finger was, and at that time my whole hand was starting to swell up. All my dad had to say was that I'm a baby and all I knew how to do was wait to get home to cry... right, and people wonder why I hate him so much. Not once did he ask if I was ok or if I needed anything. My mother went and got me ice. But I couldnt even use it. Everytime I got the part of my finger that was stung in it it would hurt even more. That night (even though I was still in a lot of pain) my mother and I went on a Pub Walk. We went to 3 famous pubs in London. We saw where they filmed the scene in Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise is at the pub, another one was where Charles Dickens wrote one of his books, and the 3rd one is right next to an alley where Harry Potter 3 is filmed, and I think someone in Shakespeare's family had some kind of relation to it. Best part of the night was what my mother said: "This is weird... a mother bonding with her 20 year old daughter by going on a pub crawl." Yea, she was definitely a little tipsy... she cant hold the alcohol :) I personally just thought the beer was gross and had to force myself to drink it. So if any of you go over to London, dont drink the English beer.
Thursday we tried to go to St. Paul's Cathedral (I think that's where Princess Diana was married). But they're doing a lot of renovations and stuff, so a lot of stuff is covered or blocked. We decided it wasnt worth the money because we couldnt see more than half the cathedral. So instead we tried to get tickets to see a show, but nothing good was playing for the matinee. So instead we went shopping. The souvenires over there suck. There was nothing that appealing or worth buying. I got myself a shotglass and a necklace. Then that night we went on a Jack the Ripper tour. It took us to the 5 locations that he murdered the prostitutes, and we even saw some of their houses. That was really interesting, but it gross to hear what he did to the people. But it was all ruined when my mother asked how they came to that conclusion and he said every tour has a different conclusion.
Now, Friday is where the shit hit the fan. We boarded the plane and the air conditioning in the back part of the plane broke. So they had to fix that. They said it would take like a half hour and it took an hour and a half. As they were fixing that, they found some battery that needed to be changed. But they had to order the battery which took an hour and a half, and then they had to change it. Finally, we started to taxi so we could take off and the pilot got a light on his board they he didnt know what it was. So he ended up cancelling the flight. So after 5 hours of sitting on the runway and stuck in the plane, the flight was cancelled. Needless to say, we were all very pissed. It was amazing though how quickly all the passengers became friends. So they eventually got us all off of the plane, after they got the first class passengers off because they were going to put them on another flight that was going into JFK. They put us on a shuttle to go into a room to get our boarding passes back. Now in those 5 hours you would think they could get our tickets and hand them out on the plane, but no, that would make too much sense. At this point, 2 other people and I were so pissed off we just started making jokes about it. The guy took out his video camera and started taping, and the other girl (which I found out is from La Salle) were going to use it and put it on the TV station there. Turns out the guy wasnt really joking around like we were. I think he's going to go after the airline for negligence. It took forever to get everybody their tickets and get us to the airport. We got to the hotel finally at like 11:30 (and our flight was supposed to take off at 4...). After we checked in, there were 6 of us on the elevator. The guy who pushed the button said "Now wouldnt it be funny if the lift stopped working?" And at that very second it did indeed stop working. At that point I was so tired and so pissed at the airline, I wanted to hit him. Luckily one of the ladies one the elevator is from London and had her cell phone. So she called the desk, cause no one was answering the emergency bell (how convenient). It took 3 calls to the front desk to finally get some help. The first 2 times they never told the manager about the problem. So 20 minutes later we finally got out of there. So we went to our rooms, then went down to dinner. I havent decided if the dinner was actually really good or I was just really hungry. But it doesnt matter, because we finally had food and I had my own room that night.
The next morning we had to be in the lobby to get the bus back to the airport at 7:45. Except the assholes only sent 1 bus for 250 people. So instead of it taking like a half hour to get us all there (there was a lot of traffic), it took like 2 hours. Our flight was at 11 (even though we were also told 8,9 and 10:00) and we didnt even have a gate to go to until 10:20. We didnt have everybody boarded until almost noon. Then they realized that people were missing, so for some reason they were searching for those passengers because they never told them they were switching to another flight. When they gave up, we had to wait to get their luggage off of the plane. Then we started to pull out and they discovered we had luggage on the plane from another flight, so we yet again had to wait to get that off. So eventually we took off a little after 1:00.
Now this whole time, my sister was at home trying to call the airline to find out what was going on. They had given us message cards for us if we wanted them to call anyone, but never called anybody... go figure. Everytime my sister called they told her that they couldnt give her any information and that she wouldnt until after 7pm. My sister finally got so pissed off and so upset that she asked if she had to turn on the television to hear if a plane had crashed. The bitch wouldnt tell her if we were in the air, on the runway or missing somewhere. And then she finally somehow got the number to our hotel and found out that they didnt put 3/4 of us into the computer because there were so many of us. But luckily they had me put in there and she got through to me in my room. Usually I dont care if I talk to her, but I could tell how upset she was at that point, so it felt good to talk to her. And then on Saturday, they wouldnt tell her what time we took off, or when we were supposed to land. They told her we were supposed to land at 10pm Saturday night. Bastards...We were supposed to land at 6:40 Friday night... we landed at 4:00 Saturday afternoon.
Some other stuff from the flight: all the cheering we did when we FINALLY took off (on the 3rd try between the 2 days), the booing everytime the pilot or flight attendant came on the PA. me and a few other people purposely pissing off the flight attendants... one person would ask for something to drink, and then as soon as she came back with that the person next to them would ask... we had her run back and forth a good 5 or 6 times before the humor just died. And the pool that some guy started. We had a pool to see what time we would finally land in Newark. For $1 you could place your bet... there was a lot of money in that bag when he was done. And the website that the guy who was videotaping made. He's compiling a list of complaints and letters that we're all going to send to Virgin Atlantic, and I'm not sure what else he's going to do with it. But after seeing everything he did in those 2 days, it's going to be a very humorous site. Oh yea, one couple missed a wedding, someone missed a funeral and the same guy's mother was in the hospital here in the states, quite a few people missed their connecting flights, and the people they took from first class to put on another flight never got on that flight because the flight attendants refused to do another flight, so they were also put up in a hotel for a flight early the next morning. We all got vouchers for 50% off our next flight, and several of us were ready to have a bonfire with them. But then we decided it wouldnt be a good idea to hold it on the plane... I cant even use mine because the lady only signed half of the pile. So when I got on the plane and realized I had one that was unsigned, I asked the flight attendant what to do, and of course she told me she didnt know. My response was "it doesnt matter, I was just curious... I refuse to use this or ever use your airline again... I'm just going home to burn it." She just looked at me with this shocked look. Tough shit, I was pissed. And of course all the jokes that we were making and the good time we had sitting on the plane waiting to see what screw up they would come up with next. I know there's more, but I dont remember right now... Maybe when I remember I'll post, but dont count on it.
This was definitely a memorable trip... unfortunately one filled with a lot of bad memories... I'm definitely not flying anytime soon, and never flying Virgin Atlantic ever again.
Until next time...