#Christmas In London

When my dad began chemo, he asked me one important question.

“Is there anything you haven’t done that you’d really like to?”

I had plenty of smartass answers, but I blurted out the real one anyway. For a long time, I’ve wanted to go to England and see a real castle. He chose to make that a reality for me, so here I am, spending my Christmas holiday in London. It’s been somewhat surreal. I’ve had proper tea, eaten in a dozen types of restaurant, and seen Stonehenge (I understand that last one is required by law of all tourists, or something like that). Still have a few things on my list, and a few days left to do it all.

This all started, of course, with a disaster. December 17th at Early o’clock, I took my kids to the airport to discover our flight had been cancelled (notice issued while we were already in the car). Southwest couldn’t get us onto another flight until Monday, which would not do. I had a flight Sunday morning to London. I dragged my kids, one crying and the other cranky huffing, across the airport and found another flight to Washington, DC.

Naturally, this didn’t go smoothly. We wound up in Detroit for way too long as our flight got delayed, and then delayed again. Half past midnight, we landed in DC. The kids went with their dad and I hunkered down in Dulles to not sleep for a few hours until my flight to London that morning.

But wait. It gets better. 6am, waiting for a Delta flight to JFK to get to the cross-Atlantic flight, the agent at the gate pointed out that the flight to JFK arrived at the departure time for the London flight, which clearly wouldn’t work. Apparently, the JFK flight had been schedule changed at some point, making the connection impossible. She rebooked me onto the later London flight direct from DC to London.

For fun, because Dad was footing the bill and it’s a long flight, I’d gotten first class on Virgin America. In case anyone is curious, they have a lounge at Dulles for first class passengers. The later flight required an 8 hour or so wait, most of which got spent napping and nibbling in that lounge. Thank goodness for that lounge. Over the course of about 30 hours, I’d gotten maybe 3 hours of sleep in 30-45 minute bursts. In that lounge, I napped again. On the flight, I practically passed out, but only for 4 hours.

Oh, and they have a lounge on the other end too. With showers. Which came in handy since I arrived at 8am and the hotel had a 3pm check-in time. And then, finding food and crashing for much sleep.

An adventure, to be sure.

For the record, The Virgin and Delta employees I interacted with were extremely nice and helpful. I’ve been a Southwest customer for a while, because cheap. I’m rethinking that now. Cheap != best.

Happy holidays. May yours be less exhausting than mine. Unless you like exhausting holidays. Some people are like that. More power to ya.