London Trip, Day 1-2: Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong But Will Straighten Itself Out in t
London Trip,
Day 1-2: Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong But Will Straighten Itself Out in the End.
(bear with me this one is gonna be long a lot of stuff happened)
We got to Quebec’s airport way early for our flight to Montreal (that was supposed to get us there two hours before our connecting flight to London) and out flight got delayed. Like really delayed. Like Air Canada took pity on us and gave us another flight so we wouldn’t miss our corresponding flight late.
The plane arrive at 6:45pm, 20 minutes before the Montreal-London flight boarded. We were really hungry by that point (me realizing I hadn’t eaten at all since I woke up at 7:30am and Ashes-and-Dust had just had a soup) so we stopped at the airport’s Tim Horton’s to quickly grab a sandwich and fast-walk to the International Gate where our boarding passes were checked by a very rude lady and just after we crossed that line (the line where you can’t come back from) Ashes-and-Dust realized she left her winter coat at the Tim Horton’s, on the other side of that line.
She went back to deal with the rude lady, who turned out to be not-so-rude-after-all , so she could call another person to describe her coat to so that person could call another-other person to go see if her coat was still there. It was! We got in line for board the plane just in time and then waited for about an hour because we were in line to de-ice the plane because by then the light snow had turned into freezing rain (if that’s the correct term for Pluie Verglaçante… Water that falls from the sky and turns to ice when it touches something).
The Flight Attendant was really sweet (and showed us photos of her stop at Winter Wonderland) and there was a girl that kept whining because she kept being delayed in her flights even though Air Canada did all it could to get her on time to Austria. I mean freezing rain is really dangerous for a plane, lady, and before that it was a snow storm so give them a little break, maybe?
We couldn’t sleep at all in the plane (because plane) but the view! Oh god the view! Over the clouds with the moon lighting our way and so many stars!
Got off the plane, went to get our luggage and mine wasn’t there. (yaayy…) When I got to the counter and explained to the clerk and started to fill the reclaim sheet he went… somewhere… and came back with it (he said it fell off the conveyor and it was out in back, but I think he’s a wizard and made it appear. That’s what I’m sticking with, anyway). Passed the border, got a stamp in my passport from THE NICEST border agent I’ve ever encountered. Got caught for filming in a place I thought it was ok to start filming and apparently it wasn’t (Oops)
Then direction Euston Station to leave our biggest bags to go in search or a converter to plug our computers into the wall (we belatedly realized the one I had was for periods of 10 minutes max and not for bigger stuff than hair dryer) and we got directed there, and there, and maybe there and an hour later we found an electronics shop where we learned computer cables do the voltage changes themselves so all we needed was an adapter which we had already.
Direction Paddington Station because both my mom and I watched Paddington when we were young (so that’s her Christmas gift.) were we saw pigeons. Inside. Very zen pigeon, too. Never got so near to one in my life. And they are *everywhere*. Inside. (ok there is a open door to the outside but some places are so big it doesn’t look like we are outside). And boats, that are shops. Or shops, that are boats.
I thought the “mind the gad” thing was a bit over the top, though cute, thing they did for that tiny gap between train and platform, but Oh Geez that gap is huge sometimes!
Came back to Euston, exhausted, to get our bags back and find the overground station to get to our flat. The overground station isn’t indicated anywhere in an obvious way. Or it is but we missed it. After half an hour we asked and got to the train about 5 minutes too late to get the one that would get us to the flat on time for the keys pick-up at 4pm.
No internet, no phone (well, yes phone but hello long-distance fees) meant we couldn’t text Laurie (the landlord) to tell him. (there is wi-fi EVERYWHERE in this city but you need to be a member on it and we aren’t.) We couldn’t remember the right stop, so we took the first of the two that were the closest to our street. Of course it was the wrong one and we had to fast-walk more then 200 door addresses before getting to our flat where nobody was there (we were 20 minutes late by that point).
We thought for sure he had left and just when we were thinking about either giving up on the no-fees and opening our phones or trying to find a free wifi spot, Ian showed up asking if we were there for the flat.
Ian is our upstairs neighbour, really nice guy (well anybody with keys would have fallen in that category quite frankly at that point) and he opened up for us and Laurie was already inside, still cleaning after the last tenants had left at noon (the ring bell doesn’t work. And the tv. But Laurie swore he’d get it working before the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which is all that matters).
We went to Tesco to buy stuff for breakfast this morning. The cheese. The cheese is SO cheap here! I’m living on cheese for two weeks. A huge triangle of Brie that would have cost about 13$ back home was something like £2!
We went to bed at 9pm after sending word to everyone we were still alive, (or 4pm EST) which means we had been up for roughly 33 hours.
Now we are leaving to see Big Ben under the rain, see if Phantom has day tickets and then coming back to get ready for our 8 hours bus trip to Edinburgh!
Day 1-2: Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong But Will Straighten Itself Out in the End.
(bear with me this one is gonna be long a lot of stuff happened)
We got to Quebec’s airport way early for our flight to Montreal (that was supposed to get us there two hours before our connecting flight to London) and out flight got delayed. Like really delayed. Like Air Canada took pity on us and gave us another flight so we wouldn’t miss our corresponding flight late.
The plane arrive at 6:45pm, 20 minutes before the Montreal-London flight boarded. We were really hungry by that point (me realizing I hadn’t eaten at all since I woke up at 7:30am and Ashes-and-Dust had just had a soup) so we stopped at the airport’s Tim Horton’s to quickly grab a sandwich and fast-walk to the International Gate where our boarding passes were checked by a very rude lady and just after we crossed that line (the line where you can’t come back from) Ashes-and-Dust realized she left her winter coat at the Tim Horton’s, on the other side of that line.
She went back to deal with the rude lady, who turned out to be not-so-rude-after-all , so she could call another person to describe her coat to so that person could call another-other person to go see if her coat was still there. It was! We got in line for board the plane just in time and then waited for about an hour because we were in line to de-ice the plane because by then the light snow had turned into freezing rain (if that’s the correct term for Pluie Verglaçante… Water that falls from the sky and turns to ice when it touches something).
The Flight Attendant was really sweet (and showed us photos of her stop at Winter Wonderland) and there was a girl that kept whining because she kept being delayed in her flights even though Air Canada did all it could to get her on time to Austria. I mean freezing rain is really dangerous for a plane, lady, and before that it was a snow storm so give them a little break, maybe?
We couldn’t sleep at all in the plane (because plane) but the view! Oh god the view! Over the clouds with the moon lighting our way and so many stars!
Got off the plane, went to get our luggage and mine wasn’t there. (yaayy…) When I got to the counter and explained to the clerk and started to fill the reclaim sheet he went… somewhere… and came back with it (he said it fell off the conveyor and it was out in back, but I think he’s a wizard and made it appear. That’s what I’m sticking with, anyway). Passed the border, got a stamp in my passport from THE NICEST border agent I’ve ever encountered. Got caught for filming in a place I thought it was ok to start filming and apparently it wasn’t (Oops)
Then direction Euston Station to leave our biggest bags to go in search or a converter to plug our computers into the wall (we belatedly realized the one I had was for periods of 10 minutes max and not for bigger stuff than hair dryer) and we got directed there, and there, and maybe there and an hour later we found an electronics shop where we learned computer cables do the voltage changes themselves so all we needed was an adapter which we had already.
Direction Paddington Station because both my mom and I watched Paddington when we were young (so that’s her Christmas gift.) were we saw pigeons. Inside. Very zen pigeon, too. Never got so near to one in my life. And they are *everywhere*. Inside. (ok there is a open door to the outside but some places are so big it doesn’t look like we are outside). And boats, that are shops. Or shops, that are boats.
I thought the “mind the gad” thing was a bit over the top, though cute, thing they did for that tiny gap between train and platform, but Oh Geez that gap is huge sometimes!
Came back to Euston, exhausted, to get our bags back and find the overground station to get to our flat. The overground station isn’t indicated anywhere in an obvious way. Or it is but we missed it. After half an hour we asked and got to the train about 5 minutes too late to get the one that would get us to the flat on time for the keys pick-up at 4pm.
No internet, no phone (well, yes phone but hello long-distance fees) meant we couldn’t text Laurie (the landlord) to tell him. (there is wi-fi EVERYWHERE in this city but you need to be a member on it and we aren’t.) We couldn’t remember the right stop, so we took the first of the two that were the closest to our street. Of course it was the wrong one and we had to fast-walk more then 200 door addresses before getting to our flat where nobody was there (we were 20 minutes late by that point).
We thought for sure he had left and just when we were thinking about either giving up on the no-fees and opening our phones or trying to find a free wifi spot, Ian showed up asking if we were there for the flat.
Ian is our upstairs neighbour, really nice guy (well anybody with keys would have fallen in that category quite frankly at that point) and he opened up for us and Laurie was already inside, still cleaning after the last tenants had left at noon (the ring bell doesn’t work. And the tv. But Laurie swore he’d get it working before the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which is all that matters).
We went to Tesco to buy stuff for breakfast this morning. The cheese. The cheese is SO cheap here! I’m living on cheese for two weeks. A huge triangle of Brie that would have cost about 13$ back home was something like £2!
We went to bed at 9pm after sending word to everyone we were still alive, (or 4pm EST) which means we had been up for roughly 33 hours.
Now we are leaving to see Big Ben under the rain, see if Phantom has day tickets and then coming back to get ready for our 8 hours bus trip to Edinburgh!