Four Countries in Two Days
[Timestamp in EWDT]
... and most of them with significant bodies of water between them.
So while Buffalo Airport was very friendly, they also stuffed up my ticket, and I ended up in a middle seat. Grrr! I was unimpressed with British Airways' attitude towards it, but the plane at least had really good cushions folding out of the headrest. Instead of lifting flaps at either side of the headrest like on Australasian airlines, you swivel them from the side, providing your head with more support. I was therefore able to sleep, sort of, without a window to lean against.
It's amazing how close Europe and North America are. It only took five hours to get to London thanks to the 150km/h tailwind we had. The Brits didn't know what to do with us, though, so we spent half an hour going in circles above Heathrow before we were allowed to land. Then it took another 20 minutes to find a flight of stairs to push against the plane. But still, it's so close, it's a wonder I don't come here more often. This is my first time in London since October 2002.
I have a knack for quickly working out public transport, and since I've been here before, it was a breeze. I was actually disappointed about how unremarkable it all felt, until I got a rush at London Bridge Station. I'm not sure what triggered it; maybe it was the extraordinarily long escalators, or the fact that they were selling wine at the tuck shop. But it's the rush I seek as a traveller-it is to culture shock what compersion is to jealousy. It's a high that's much more expensive than a drug high, but the stories you can tell about your experience getting there are at least as entertaining, and the photos you take are still interesting when the trip is over.
twangman and a_musing_amazon have provided me with a wonderful base for the European/African leg of my journey: I have a real bed with my own shower in a cute five-level townhouse, about as suburban as it gets in London. They're two blocks from Honor Oak Park Station, which they tell me got its name from some long-buried monarch knighting a tree one drunken night. I went out to lunch with twangman, but since the earth kept moving and I was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with that particle accelerator that everyone's been crapping on about today, I had a little nap this afternoon. I won't have much time for sight seeing in London this year, but I should still be able to check out the huge ferris wheel thingie that hopeforyou and I keep seeing in the background when we watch MI-5/Spooks.
Right now I'm on a train that will take me to a ship to Holland, hence the title of this article. I left Canada at about 21:00 UTC yesterday, and I should arrive at Hoek van Holland at something like 08:00 UTC tomorrow, less than 36 hours later.