London

My first trip this month was a trip to London. My airline offers two daily flights from my base to London Heathrow, and this trip was the later one. We left at 7:30pm and flew all night arriving into the UK at 10:30am. We weren't full so it made things a little more relaxed. We were at the layover hotel by about 11:30 and I was asleep by noon. I had planned to sleep for just 3 hours, but I ignored my 3:00pm wake up call. When I did wake up, it was dark, but was only just after 5pm.

I cleaned up and went down to Sainsbury to get some bath and shower stuff I liked called Original Source (www.originalsource.co.uk). I had gotten addicted to these products when my friends Carla and Steven were living in Scotland and I would go and visit. Now they are living in the states again, so I have no suppliers. Original Source has a whole line of new products out now so I wanted to stock up. After leaving Sainsbury, I went over to Boots and got some antacid products called Remegel for my friend Terry, one of the guys I play cards with every month (he eats them like they are candy, but swears by them). After Boots, I headed to Waitrose for some snack items for breakfast and then headed back to the hotel to drop the stuff off.

I wanted to go see a musical I had been hearing about called Avenue Q (http://www.avenueqthemusical.co.uk/). It's kind of like an adult version of Sesame Street. I took the Picadilly line down to Leicster Square and went over to the box office at the Noel Coward Theatre, where the show was playing. The bad news was that the reserved seats were sold out, but they had a will call cancellation for one seat and it was in the front row. I scored the seat for twenty pounds (which with the falling British Pound is now down to about $30). The show did not actually start until 8:30pm, so I killed some time and went over to a Cyber Cafe and checked my email and Facebook page, and then went to Pret A Manger, a chain of delicatessens in the UK, and had dinner before heading back to the theatre.

The cast is comprised of puppets and live actors and they sang some great songs like "Everyones a little bit racist" and "The Internet is great....for porn!". It was so hilarious. The whole audience was roaring with laughter.

All the shows in the West End kind of let out at the same time, so the area was really hopping at 11:00pm when I left the threatre. There was a bomb threat on the Underground, so London Transport had closed the Picadilly Line temporarily. When it finally reopened, the tube was packed, and I had to wait for about another 30 minutes before I could finally get on a train. I made it back to the hotel a little after midnight and went to sleep by 1am (which really is only 7pm on my body clock).

Pick up was at 10:50am the next morning. London is the once place where we are required to follow the liquids/gels/aerosols exemption that passengers have to follow, so I had to check my rollerboard as I was prohibited from taking it on the plane. We go thru a special crew clearance lane on the tarmac and don't actually go in the terminal, so after we cleared security, airline personnel tagged my bag and I just left it right next to the right landing gear of the plane. Kind of an uneasy feeling, wondering if I would ever see my bag again.



10 hours and 17 minutes after we left the UK, we touched down at home and miracle of miracles, my bag was waiting for me in the Customs Hall and only one of the bottles of shower gel had actually opened and only leaked a little bit, so it was worth it.